TODAY IN HISTORY (April 13):
1796 - The first elephant was brought to America from India.
1940 - The first of the ‘Road’ movies with Bob Hope, Big Crosby and Dorothy Lamour opened at the Paramount Theatre in New York City. The film was The Road to Singapore.
1943 - The Thomas Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC. on this, the anniversary of Jefferson’s birth.
1958 - Van Cliburn of Kilgore, TX earned 1st prize in the Soviet Union’s Tchaikovsky International Piano Contest in Moscow.
1970 - An appearance by Mayor John Lindsay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City was interrupted by gay activists demanding an end to discrimination.
1970 - Apollo 13 announced "Houston, we've got a problem," when an oxygen tank burst on the way to the Moon.
1975 - In Montreal the first issue of the English-language news journal Gay Times, is published. It ceased publication in early 1976, after 8 issues.
1975 - Civil War began in Lebanon when gunmen killed 4 Christian Phalangists who retaliated by killing 27 Palestinians.
1980 - Broadway’s longest-running musical (at the time) closed after eight years. "Grease" ran for 3,388 performances and earned $8 million.
1981 - Janet Cook won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Things took a strange turn when she later said that her prize-winning story in The Washington Post was a fake. She made up the story and passed it off as truth. Her award was taken away and given instead to Teresa Carpenter of New York’s Village Voice.
1982 - U.S. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) convened the first congressional hearings on the outbreak of opportunistic infections in gay men.
1986 - Actor Steven Stucker, best known for his role as Johnny in Airplane! died of complications from AIDS.
1986 - Jack Nicklaus won his sixth Masters green jacket with a 9-under-par 279.
1988 - Morton Downey, Jr. was acquitted of assaulting Andy Humm, a gay activist, on his television show. Humm said he brought the charges against Downey because to do otherwise would have been a statement that gay people may be used as punching bags.
1988 - Rep. Pat Schroeder of Colorado spoke before a Washington D.C. gay Democratic club, saying liberals must challenge the narrow right wing concept of the American family, and that as long as the government collects equal taxes from gays and lesbians it should take measures to provide them equal rights.
2000 - Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush met with gay and lesbian Republicans. Ah, the good ol' days.
2005 - The S.C. Senate passes HB 3133, South Carolina's marriage amendment. Born on this day:
1743 - Thomas Jefferson
1852 - F. W. (Frank Winfield) Woolworth
1866 - Butch Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker)
1906 - Samuel Beckett
1909 - Eudora Welty
1919 - Howard Keel
1919 - Madalyn Murray O'Hair
1926 - Don Adams
1935 - Lyle Waggoner
1939 - Paul Sorvino
1944 - Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna)
1945 - Tony Dow
1946 - Al Green
1947 - Deborah Batts, the first out-lesbian African American judge
1950 - Ron Perlman
1951 - Peabo Bryson
1951 - Max Weinberg (E Street Band)
1963 - Garry Kasparov
1963 - Jane Leeves ("Frasier")
1970 - Rick Schroder
1976 - Jonathan Brandis
1978 - Kyle Howard
I need to read some of these things before I post them. WTF are "Christian Phalangists"? Guys that can play the piano really well?
Posted by: Malcontent | April 13, 2006 at 08:12 AM
Happy birthday to a great Virginian, Thomas Jefferson.
Along with Aristotle and Ayn Rand, one of my favorite philosophers.
Posted by: blewsdawg | April 13, 2006 at 12:04 PM