(AP) – The stars of History Channel’s “American Pickers” never expected to
come across a hunk of rock and roll history, specifically a piece of Aerosmith’s history, while filming their hit TV show.

Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz of “American Pickers” were astonished to find the dilapidated van during filming in Chesterfield, a town about 100 miles west of Boston. The episode aired on July 30.

The property owner said the 1964 International Harvester Metro van was there
when he bought the land from someone with a connection to Aerosmith.

The reality show stars were able to get in contact with Ray Tabano, a founding member of Aerosmith, who confirmed it was the van the rockers used in the
1970s before they hit it

The pickers paid $25,000 for the van Wolfe called a “piece of American rock
and roll history.”

Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz

Aerosmith today.

SANDY KOZEL

On this day in 1974, President Richard Nixon announced that he
would resign the following day.

The Great Train Robbery is the name given to a $45 million train
robbery committed on this day in 1963 at Bridego Railway.

Arrests soon followed the robbery. Here three men are taken to a
police van at Linslade Court House, Buckinghamshire, after being remanded in custody in late August 1963.

Gang member Bruce Reynolds, pictured here circa 1963 on 
the left with his wife Frances, Barbara Daly and brother-in-
law John Daly. Daly was arrested but released due to lack
of evidence.

It was on this day in 1942.

Actor Dustin Lee Hoffman is 81 today. He was born in 
Los Angeles, California.

Dustin Hoffman won the Academy Award for Best Actor in
1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, and in 1989 for Rain Man. He
also played leading roles in the films Midnight Cowboy
(1969) and Tootsie (1982). Hoffman had his breakthrough
role as Benjamin Braddock in the 1967 classic film The
Graduate.

1995

    1976

JOHN BELMONT

On this day in 1964, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Johnson broad powers in dealing
with reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.

U.S. forces landed at Guadalcanal on this day in 1942, marking the
start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World
War II.

U.S. Marines rest in the field during the Guadalcanal campaign.

On this day in 1947, the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, which had carried
a six-man crew (below) 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean,crashed
into a reef in a Polynesian archipelago.

On this day in 2007, at the Giants home AT&T Park in San Francisco, Berry Bonds hit a 435 foot (133 m) home run, his 756th, off a pitch
from Mike Bacsik of the Washington Nationals, breaking the all-
time career home run record, formerly held by Hank Aaron. Bonds,
was indicted later that year on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying under oath to a federal grand jury looking
into steroid use among pro athletes.   

    
    
    
    
   

Barry Lamar Bonds turned 54 in July.

SANDY KOZEL

On this day in 1945, the U.S. B-29 bomber, known as the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb on an inhabited area. The bomb
named "Little Boy"(pictured below) was dropped over the center
of Hiroshima, Japan. An estimated 140,000 people were killed.

The above August 6, 1945 file photos shows the destruction from the atomic bomb explosion on Hiroshima, Japan.

The Voting Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson 
on this day in 1965.

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. at the
Capitol after the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Pope Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini)

Pope Paul VI reigned from 21 June 1963 to his death in 1978 at age 80.

Sir Alexander Fleming  (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) He died
in London of a heart attack.

Fleming was a Scottish physician, microbiologist, and pharmacologist. His
best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the world’s
first antibiotic substance benzylpenicillin (Penicillin G) from the mold
Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris
Chain. Modern antibiotics are tested using a method similar to Fleming’s
discovery.

Charlotte Rae (Lubotsky)  (April 22, 1926 – August 5, 2018)

(Fox  News) – Charlotte Rae, the Emmy and Tony-nominated actress who entertained TV audiences as Mrs. Garrett on "The Facts of Life" and
"Different Strokes,"

The actress passed away Sunday in her home in Los Angeles, surrounded
by family, according to her publicist, who did not provide a cause of death.

Rae was best known for her role as beloved housemother Edna Garrett,
who first appeared on "Diff’rent Strokes" in 1978 before earning her own
spinoff, "The Facts of Life," the following year. 

Diff’rent Strokes aired on NBC from November
3, 1978, to May 4, 1985, and on ABC from
September 27, 1985, to March 7, 1986.

The spin-off of Diff’rent Strokes that originally aired on NBC
from August 24, 1979 to May 7, 1988, making it one of the
longest-running sitcoms of the 1980s.