July 13

It’s Barbershop Music Appreciation Day and Fool’s Paradise Day and International Puzzle Day and Embrace Your Geekness Day

ON THIS DAY…
1837 Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom moves into the first Buckingham Palace in London and is the first British monarch to live there
1863 Four days of rioting against the Civil War military draft begin in New York City; more than 1,000 people are killed, including many African Americans, who are attacked by rioters as the cause of the war
1865 Edward Whymper, an English artist and pioneering mountaineer, becomes the first person to climb the Matterhorn, in the Alps
1887 The second Tay Rail Bridge was opened in Scotland, and remains in use today
1897 Guglielmo Marconi received a US patent for a wireless telegraph
1908 Women compete in modern Olympics for the first time
1923 The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles; it originally reads “Hollywoodland” but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949
1925 Walt Disney marries Lillian Bounds
1937 A patent was issued to Leroy Lind for the Servi-Soft water softener
1941 Montenegrins start popular uprising against the Axis Powers
1945 The first atomic bomb arrived partly assembled at its test site in the New Mexico desert
1953 Louis Prima marries Keely Smith; they would divorce in 1961
1953 José Ferrer marries Rosemary Clooney; they would divorce in 1961 and remarry in 1964 and then redivorce in 1967
1964 The Beatles single “A Hard Days Night”/”I Should Have Known Better” is released in the US
1973 White House aide Alexander Butterfield reveals to members of the Senate Watergate committee the presence of a secret taping system installed in the White House by President Richard Nixon
1977 At 9:34 PM, about 9 million people lose power in a blackout of the New York City metropolitan area; over 3,000 people are arrested, most for looting, during the 25-hour electrical outage
1978 Ford Motor Company President Lee Iacocca is fired by chairman Henry Ford II, ending a long dispute between the men
1982 Montreal hosts the first baseball All-Star Game outside the United States
1985 The Live Aid benefit concert takes place in London and Philadelphia, as well as other venues such as Sydney and Moscow
1985 Vice President George H.W. Bush became the Acting President for the day when President Ronald Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon
1995 The spacecraft Galileo released a probe towards Jupiter that is to become the first Earth emissary ever to penetrate the atmosphere of any of the outer gas giants

BORN:
1913 Dave Garroway, television pioneer and founding host of NBC’s Today from 1952 to 1961
1928 Bob Crane, actor (Hogan’s Heroes, Gus, Superdad)
1933 Patsy Byrne, actress (Blackadder II, The Ruling Class, I, Claudius, Britannia Hospital)
1940 Patrick Stewart, actor (Star Trek: The Next Generation, X-Men, American Dad, Eleventh Hour, Lady Jane, Excalibur, Dune)
1942 Harrison Ford, actor (The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner)
1944 Ern? Rubik, mathematician, educator and inventor of Rubik’s Cube
1946 Cheech Marin, comedian, director, actor (Up in Smoke, Yellowbeard, The Lion King, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Nash Bridges)
1957 Cameron Crowe, producer, director and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, Say Anything…, Fast Times at Ridgemont High)
1962 Tom Kenny, voice actor and comedian perhaps best known for his work in the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, in which he is the voice of SpongeBob, the narrator, and Gary among others

DIED:
1793 Jean-Paul Marat, physician, philosopher, political theorist and scientist best known as a radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution was stabbed to death in his bathtub by the Girondin sympathizer Charlotte Corday at age 50
1882 Johnny Ringo, cowboy who became a legend of the Old West because, among other things, of his affiliation with the Clanton Gang in the era of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, AZ; was found dead at 32 in the crotch of a large tree in West Turkey Creek Valley with a bullet hole in his right temple and an exit at the back of his head with a coroner’s inquest officially ruled his death a suicide although many years afterward Wyatt Earp’s wife of 47 years attributed the killing to Wyatt and Doc Holliday
1955 Ruth Ellis, murderess who was the last woman to receive the death penalty in the UK, was hanged at 28
2006 Red Buttons (Aaron Chwatt), composer, comedian, author and Academy Award-winning actor (Sayonara, Pete’s Dragon, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, The Longest Day, Hatari), dies at 87