It's frothy, you can lick it sexily off your lips, and it is 140 years old today. No jokes about Larry King's love life, please.
TODAY IN HISTORY (May 16):
1770 - Marie Antoinette (age 14) married the future King Louis XVI (age 15) of France.
1836 - Edgar Allan Poe marries his 13-year-old cousin Virginia.
1866 - Charles Elmer Hires invents root beer.
1868 - President Andrew Johnson is acquitted during his impeachment trial, by one vote in the United States Senate.
1918 - The Sedition Act is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government a jailable offense.
1929 - The first Academy Awards were given on this night. The term, Oscars, was not used to describe the statuettes given to actors and actresses until 1931.
1946 - The Irving Berlin musical, "Annie Get Your Gun," opened on Broadway.
1965 - Campbell Soup Co. introduces Spaghetti-O's.
1975 - Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to summit Mount Everest.
1985 - Michael Jordan was named "Rookie of the Year" in the National Basketball Association.
1989 - Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping met in Beijing, ending the 30-year rift between the two countries.
1977 - NBC aired the made for TV movie Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn in which a confused country boy moves to Hollywood and is exploited by homosexuals who introduce him to drugs and prostitution.
1979 - The National Coalition of Black Gays met at the Gay Community Center in Washington D.C. to discuss discrimination in gay bars. There were many reports that white people were not carded to enter gay bars, but people of color were.
1981 - In Helsinki, Finland, twenty people were arrested for participating in a gay rights demonstration and charged with encouraging lewd conduct.
1998 - In Lancaster South Carolina, Regan Wolf was found by her partner Jenna Wolf after she had been strung-up and brutally beaten. It was the second time she was attacked. Despite being able to identify the three men who attacked her the first time police took no action. She would later be accused of inflicting the injuries on herself.
2005 - Kuwait permits women's suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote. Born on this day:
356 B.C. - Alexander the Great, in Macedonia. One of the greatest generals of all time, Alexander's love of Hephaestion was the basis for the Oliver Stone movie Alexander.
1905 - Henry Fonda, American actor (d. 1982)
1912 - Studs Terkel, American writer
1919 - (Wladziu Valentino) Liberace, American pianist (d. 1987)
1928 - Billy Martin, baseball player and coach (d. 1989)
1953 - Pierce Brosnan, Irish actor
1955 - Olga Korbut, Russian gymnast
1955 - Debra Winger, American actress
1963 - Rosie Perez, American actress
1965 - Krist Novoselic, American bassist (Nirvana)
1966 - Janet Jackson, American singer
1969 - Tucker Carlson, American television commentator
1969 - Steve Lewis, American athlete
1969 - Tracey Gold, American actress
1970 - Gabriela Sabatini, Argentine tennis player
1971 - David Boreanaz, American actor
1973 - Tori Spelling, American actress
1974 - Laura Pausini, Italian pop singer
Do you think it's true that Bette Davis gave Oscar it's name? I think she was promoting that story but I don't know if it's true or not.
Posted by: MT | May 16, 2006 at 08:26 AM
Um, how can root beer be invented on the same day the inventor is born?
That's one child prodigy.
Posted by: Yum Yum | May 16, 2006 at 09:42 AM
Sounds like he invented it around the age of 15.
Posted by: Malcontent | May 16, 2006 at 10:40 AM