July 3

It’s Compliment Your Mirror Day and Disobedience Day and Stay out of the Sun Day

ON THIS DAY…
1608 French explorer Samuel de Champlain establishes the first permanent European settlement in Canada, a trading post along the St. Lawrence River that becomes the city of Québec
1775 George Washington takes command of the Continental Army of the American colonies at Cambridge, MA
1806 Michael Keens, a market gardener of Isleworth near London, exhibited the first cultivated strawberry that combined size, flavor, and color at the Royal Horticultural Society
1819 The first savings bank in the United States opens: the Bank for Savings in New York City
1844 The last pair of Great Auks are killed
1852 Congress establishes the United States’s second mint in San Francisco, CA
1863 A Confederate charge led by General George E. Pickett fails to break the Union line in the Battle of Gettysburg, sealing a Union victory and turning the tide of the Civil War
1884 Dow Jones published its first stock average
1886 Karl Benz officially unveils the Benz Patent Motorwagen – the first purpose-built automobile
1890 Idaho is admitted as the 43rd state
1903 The first cable across the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii, Midway, Guam and Manila was completed and spliced at Manila, Philippine Islands
1928 First color television broadcast in London
1929 Foam rubber was developed at the Dunlop Latex Development Laboratories in Birmingham, England
1938 The Mallard was documented as the world’s fastest steam locomotive traveling at 126 mph at milepost 90¼, on straight, slightly downhill tracks, between Little Bytham and Essendine, on the East Coast Main line of the London and North Eastern Railway, in England
1952 Puerto Rico’s Constitution is approved by the Congress of the United States
1961 Three men were killed in the first fatal nuclear accident in the US when an experimental reactor exploded. The Stationary Low-Power Plant No.1, was part of the National Reactor Testing Station, near Idaho Falls, ID
1962 After a long and brutal colonial war and a vote by Algerians for independence, French president Charles de Gaulle proclaims the independence of Algeria from France
1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits segregation in public places
1978 The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the FCC was within its rights to issue a reprimand to New York radio station WBAI-FM for its broadcast of George Carlin’s “Filthy Words” comedy skit
1979 President Jimmy Carter signs the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul
1987 British millionaire Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand became the first to cross the Atlantic by hot-air balloon, named Virgin Atlantic Flye
2005 Part of Australia’s Twelve Apostles rock formation collapses
2005 The national law legalizing same-sex marriage takes effect in Spain

BORN:
1883 Franz Kafka, one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century (The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Castle)
1906 George Sanders, Academy Award-winning actor (All About Eve, Disney’s The Jungle Book, A Shot in the Dark, Village of the Damned)
1927 Ken Russell, director (Women in Love, Tommy, Altered States, Gothic, The Rainbow)
1937 Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, CBE, Academy Award winning screenwriter and 3-time Tony Award winning playwright (Shakespeare in Love, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, The Coast of Utopia)
1943 Kurtwood Smith, actor (That 70’s Show, Deep Impact, Boxing Helena, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Dead Poet’s Society)
1947 Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winner for his syndicated humor column in The Miami Herald
1962 Tom Cruise, actor (Minority Report, Legend, Endless Love, Interview with the Vampire)
1962 Thomas Gibson, actor (Criminal Minds, Dharma & Greg, Eyes Wide Shut, Chicago Hope, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City)
1964 Yeardley Smith, actress and Emmy Award-winning voice artist (The Simpsons, Dharma & Greg, Herman’s Head, City Slickers)

DIED:
1935 André Citroën, engineer and industrialist who introduced Henry Ford’s methods of mass production to the European automobile industry, dies at 57
1937 Jacob Schick, inventor and manufacturer of the first successful electric dry razor, dies at 59
1969 Brian Jones, musician (The Rolling Stones) drowns in his swimming pool at 27
1971 Jim Morrison, singer, songwriter, poet (The Doors), dies in Paris at 27
1981 Ross Martin, character actor (Wild, Wild West, The Colossus of New York, Mr. Lucky, The Great Race), dies of a heart attack at 61
1987 Viola Dana, silent film actress (Naughty Nanette, Merton of the Movies, The Girl Without a Soul), dies at 90
1988 Gabriel Dell, actor and one of the original Dead End Kids, dies at 68
1989 Jim Backus, radio, theater, television and film actor (Gilligan’s Island, Mr. Magoo, Rebel Without a Cause, Pete’s Dragon), dies at 76