July 5

It’s Work-a-holics Day

ON THIS DAY…
1610 John Guy sets sail from Bristol with 39 other colonists for Newfoundland
1687 Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica; it contains the statement of Newton’s laws of motion forming the foundation of classical mechanics, as well as his law of universal gravitation and a derivation of Kepler’s laws for the motion of the planets (which were first obtained empirically) and is widely regarded as one of the most important scientific works ever written
1811 Venezuela declares its independence from Spain under the leadership of Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Miranda
1841 Thomas Cook arranged a special train between Leicester and Loughborough in England for a temperance meeting; it is believed to be the first publicly advertised excursion train in England and from this initiative grew the worldwide travel agency Thomas Cook and Son
1865 A lower speed limit – of 2 mph in town and 4 mph in the country – was imposed in Britain under the Locomotives and Highways Act
1865 Methodist minister William Booth founds the Christian Mission in London, an evangelical and social-welfare ministry that becomes the Salvation Army in 1878
1879 A near-complete skeleton of a mastodon was discovered near Newburgh, NY by a farmer’s son while digging a ditch
1932 António de Oliveira Salazar becomes prime minister of Portugal, a country he rules as a dictator for the next 36 years
1934 On “Bloody Thursday” in San Francisco, police shoot down striking longshoremen and supporters at Rincon Hill, killing two and injuring more than 100
1937 Spam, the luncheon meat, was introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation
1940 The United Kingdom and the Vichy France government break off diplomatic relations
1944 Harry Crosby took the first rocket airplane, MX-324, for its maiden flight, at Harper Dry Lake, CA
1946 The bikini is introduced in Paris, France
1947 Outfielder Larry Doby debuts for the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first black player in baseball’s American League; three months earlier, Jackie Robinson joined the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers
1948 The British government adopts the National Health Service Act, which establishes a national system of publicly funded medical services
1951 The invention of the junction transistor was announced by Dr. William Shockley in Murray Hill, NJ
1952 Thousands of onlookers watched the run of London’s last tram, which ran from Woolwich to New Cross
1954 The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin
1954 Nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley has his first recording session at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. The session produces Presley’s rendition of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right”
1966 A Saturn I-B rocket, an unmanned Apollo test flight, the first Apollo orbital mission, was launched at Cape Kennedy and made 4 orbits at an altitude of about 113 miles
1971 The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, is formally certified by President Richard Nixon
1975 Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title
1989 Oliver North is sentenced by US District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service for his part in the Iran-Contra Affair
1989 Tokyo Disneyland welcomes its 70-millionth guest
1989 The pilot episode of Seinfeld premiered on NBC-TV
1994 The United States announced it would refuse further unrestricted immigration from Haiti
2003 Taiwan is the last territory to be removed from the WHO’s list of SARS affected areas

BORN:
1805 Robert Fitzroy, naval officer, hydrographer, and meteorologist who commanded the voyage of HMS Beagle, aboard which Charles Darwin sailed around the world as the ship’s naturalist
1810 P.T. Barnum, showman who is best remembered for his entertaining hoaxes and for founding the circus that eventually became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
1867 Andrew Ellicott Douglass, astronomer and archaeologist who coined the name dendrochronology for tree-ring dating, a field he originated while working at the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ
1904 Milburn Stone, Emmy Award-winning actor (Gunsmoke, The Private War of Major Benson, Invaders from Mars, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death)
1928 Warren Oates, character actor (Major Dundee, Return of the Magnificent Seven, In the Heat of the Night, The Wild Bunch, Dillinger, Badlands, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, 1941)
1934 Katherine Helmond, stage, screen and television actress (Soap, Who’s the Boss?, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Family Plot, Time Bandits, Brazil, Overboard)
1950 Huey Lewis, musician, songwriter and occasional actor
1958 Bill Watterson, cartoonist, is the author of the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes”
1963 Edie Falco, 3-time Emmy Award-winning actress (The Sopranos, Oz, Bullets Over Broadway, Trust)
1966 Kathryn Erbe, actress (Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Oz, Stir of Echoes, What About Bob?)
1996 Dolly the sheep, clone

DIED:
1937 Chester Greenwood, inventor and manufacturer of earmuffs, which, while a teenager, he designed and patented, dies at 78
1948 Carole Landis, singer and actress (One Million B.C., Topper Returns, Moon Over Miami, Secret Command), commits suicide at 29
1969 Leo McCarey, 2-time Academy Award-winning director and 1-time Academy Award winning writer (The Awful Truth, Going My Way, An Affair to Remember, Duck Soup), dies at 70
2002 Ted Williams, nicknamed The Kid, the Splendid Splinter, Teddy Ballgame and The Thumper, was an American left fielder in Major League Baseball who is widely considered to be one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball with a career batting average of .344, with 521 home runs, dies at 83
2005 Vice Admiral James Stockdale, one of the most highly decorated officers in the history of the United States Navy; he was awarded 26 personal combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor and four Silver Stars, dies at 81
2007 Kerwin Mathews, actor (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Octaman, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf), dies at 81