June 21
It’s Go Skateboarding Day and National Hollerin’ Contest Day and Summer Solstice
ON THIS DAY…
1404 Owain Glyndwr established a Welsh Parliament at Machynlleth and was crowned Prince of Wales
1734 In Montreal in New France (today primarily Quebec), a black slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique, having been convicted of the arson that destroyed much of the city, was tortured and hanged by the French authorities in a public ceremony that involved her disgrace and the amputation of a hand
1749 Halifax, Nova Scotia is founded
1788 New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution and is thus admitted as the 9th state in the United States
1808 The isolation of the element boron was announced* by French chemist, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, nine days ahead of Englishman Humphry Davy who had independently separated boron
1834 Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his reaping machine, recognized as the first such practical machine
1838 His discovery of the stereoscopic viewer was described in a paper by Charles Wheatstone, On some remarkable, and hitherto unobserved, Phenomena of Binocular Vision, which he read to the Royal Society, London
1853 The first US patent for a commercially successful “Envelop-Folding Machine” was issued to Dr. Russell L. Hawes of Worcester, MA
1859 Andrew Lanergan, of Boston, MA, received the first rocket patent for “an improvement in exhibition rockets”; his design allowed for the fuse (which he called the “match”) to be pre-assembled with the rocket
1877 The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants who were labor activists, are hanged in the Carbon County, Pennsylvania Prison
1886 The foundation stone of the Tower Bridge in London, England was laid (over a time capsule) by the Prince of Wales
1893 The Ferris Wheel premieres at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition; it held 2,160 passengers in 36 cars, a load of about 150 tons
1898 Guam becomes a US territory
1915 The US Supreme Court hands down its decision in Guinn v. United States, striking down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens
1939 The New York Yankees announce Lou Gehrig’s retirement
1942 A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by the Japanese against the US mainland
1947 A seaman named Harold Dahl claims to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island, United States; the next morning Dahl reported the first modern MIB encounter
1948 The first stored-program computer, the Small-Scale Experimental Machine, SSEM, ran its first program; written by Professor Tom Kilburn, it took 52 minutes to run
1948 The first successful long-playing microgroove phonograph records were introduced to the public at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City
1957 Ellen Louks Fairclough is sworn in as Canada’s first woman Cabinet Minister
1961 The first practical plant for the conversion of seawater to drinking water was dedicated when President John Kennedy pressed a switch installed in his office in Washington DC
1964 Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, MS by members of the Ku Klux Klan
1966 Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (and the first film to be given the MPAA tag: “No one under 18 will be admitted unless accompanied by his parent”) is released in the US
1973 In handing down the decision in Miller v. California, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the Miller Test, which now governs obscenity in US law
1978 Evita, a musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice based on the life of Argentine political figure Eva Perón, opens in London
1982 John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan
1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit? opens in US movie theaters
1989 The US Supreme Court rules in Texas v. Johnson that flag burning is protected speech under the United States Constitution
1991 The Rocketeer opens in US movie theaters
1997 The New York Liberty defeats the Los Angeles Sparks 67-57 in the inaugural game of the Women’s National Basketball Association
2002 The World Health Organization declares Europe polio free
2003 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in J.K. Rowling’s series, is published
2004 Mike Melvill became the first civilian to pilot a craft into space; by flying to 62 miles in altitude, SpaceShipOne left the Earths atmosphere in a sub-orbital space flight
2005 The world’s first solar sail spacecraft placed in orbit to test controlled flight was launched on a Volna rocket fired from a Russian submarine submerged in the Barents Sea
BORN:
1903 Al Hirshfield, caricaturist best known for his simple black and white satirical portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars
1905 Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic
1916 Joseph Cyril Bamford, inventor and industrialist who invented and manufactured the JCB construction machine with a hydraulically operated shovel on the front and an excavator arm on the back
1921 Jane Russell, actress (The Outlaw, Paleface, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)
1921 Judy Holliday, Academy Award-winning actress (Born Yesterday, Adam’s Rib, It Should Happen to You, Bells are Ringing)
1925 Maureen Stapleton, Academy and Emmy Award-winning actress (Reds, Among the Paths to Eden, Passed Away, Cocoon, Bye Bye Birdie)
1933 Bernie Kopell, actor (Get Smart, That Girl, When Things Were Rotten, The Love Boat)
1938 Ron Ely, actor (South Pacific, The Night of the Grizzly, Tarzan, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze)
1940 Mariette Hartley, Emmy Award-winning actress (The Incredible Hulk, Encino Man, Genesis II, The Return of Count Yorga, Marooned, Marnie)
1941 Joe Flaherty, comedian, actor and 2-time Emmy Award-winning writer (SCTV, Freaks and Geeks, Detroit Rock City, Police Academy: The Series, Stuart Saves His Family)
1944 Ray Davies, rock musician, best known as lead singer-songwriter for The Kinks – one of the most prolific and long-lived British Invasion bands – which he led with his younger brother, Dave; he has also written books, as well as acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television
1947 Joey Molland, musician (Badfinger)
1947 Michael Gross, actor (Family Ties, Tremors, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct, Batman Beyond: The Movie, ER)
1947 Meredith Baxter Birney, actress (Family Ties, Ben, Family, A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story, Cold Case)
1954 Robert Pastorelli, actor (Beverly Hills Cop II, Dances with Wolves, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Murphy Brown, Cracker)
1957 Berkeley Breathed, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and creator of “Bloom County”
1964 Sammi Davis, actress (Mona Lisa, Hope and Glory, The Lair of the White Worm, Homefront)
1964 David Morrissey, actor (State of Play, Blackpool, Cape Wrath, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, Sense and Sensibility, Doctor Who)
1965 Steve Niles, credited as bringing horror comics back to prominence, authoring such works as 30 Days of Night, its sequel, Dark Days, and Criminal Macabre
1973 Juliette Lewis, actress (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Cape Fear, Kalifornia, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Strange Days, From Dusk Till Dawn)
1982 Prince William of Wales, second in the line of succession to the British throne and those of each of the other Commonwealth Realms
DIED:
1377 King Edward III of England, one of the most successful English monarchs of the Middle Ages, dies at 64
1527 Niccolò Machiavelli, diplomat, political philosopher, musician, poet and playwright who was a figure of the Italian Renaissance, and a central figure of its political scene; he is best known for his treatises on realist political theory, The Prince, dies at 58
1954 Gideon Sundback,inventor who made several advances in the development of the zipper, dies 74
1980 Bert Kaempfert, orchestra leader and songwriter who made easy listening and jazz-oriented records, and wrote the music for a number of well-known songs, such as “Strangers in the Night” and “Spanish Eyes”, dies at 56
2001 Carroll O’Connor, 5-time Emmy Award-winning actor (All in the Family, In the Heat of the Night, Kelly’s Heroes, Cleopatra), dies at 76
2001 John Lee Hooker, blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter, dies at 83
2003 Leon Uris, novelist, known for his historical fiction and the deep research that went into his novels (Trinity, Exodus, QB VIII), dies at 78