Hector Vincent “Heck Harper” Flateau (1919 – 1998)

Robert MacNeil, formerly the anchor of the evening news program
now known as "PBS News Hour," died Friday of natural causes at
New York-Presbyterian Hospital at 93.

   
On July 9, 1955 "Rock Around the Clock" became the first rock
and roll recording to hit the top of Billboard‘s Pop charts.

The song is ranked No. 159 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s
list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The Pythian condominium building,
formerly the Pythian Temple where
the recording session for “Rock
Around the Clock” took place.  

On this day in 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed
away partway through his fourth term in office, leaving Vice
President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting
the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of
unprecedented and terrifying power.

In the afternoon of April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Georgia,
while sitting for a portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff, Roosevelt
said: "I have a terrific headache." He then slumped forward in
his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom.

The president’s attending cardiologist, Howard Bruenn, had
diagnosed a massive intracerebral hemorrhage.

The last photograph of U.S. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, taken at Warm Springs, GA by Nicholas
Robbins for Elizabeth Shoumatoff.          
          

Engraving of the Four Freedoms at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, dedicated in 1997 in Washington,
D.C.