Camille Bohannon

Samuel Atkinson "Sam" Waterston is 74 today

1984

From left: Dr. Haing S. Ngor and Sam Waterston

 
Tonya Maxene Harding was born in Portland, Oregon where
she stopped attending David Douglas High School during her
sophomore year and later earned a GED.

Harding was a figure skating champion, a two-time Olympian, and
a two-time Skate America Champion. She became the subject of
controversy after her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, conspired with
Shawn Eckhardt and Shane Stant to physically assault her skating
competitor Nancy Kerrigan at a practice session during the 1994
U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit.

Tonya Harding (left) with Nancy Kerrigan

.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed Armistice Day for November 11,
1919.

The United States Congress passed a concurrent resolution seven years
later on June 4, 1926, requesting that President Calvin Coolidge issue
another proclamation to observe November 11 with appropriate
ceremonies. A Congressional Act, approved May 13, 1938, made the
11th of November in each year a legal holiday: "a day to be dedicated
to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known
as ‘Armistice Day’.”

In 1945, World War II veteran Raymond Weeks from Birmingham, Alabama,
had the idea to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, not just
those who died in World War I. Weeks led a delegation to Gen. Dwight
Eisenhower, who supported the idea of National Veterans Day. Weeks
led the first national celebration in 1947 in Alabama and annually until
his death in 1985.

U.S. Representative Ed Rees from Emporia, Kansas, presented a bill
establishing the holiday through Congress. Then President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, also from Kansas, signed the bill into law on May 26, 1954.

Congress amended this act on June 1, 1954, replacing "Armistice" with
"Veterans," and it has been known as Veterans Day since.

President Ronald Reagan honored Weeks at the White House with the
Presidential Citizenship Medal in 1982 as the driving force for the national
holiday. Elizabeth Dole, who prepared the briefing for President Reagan,
determined Raymond Weeks as the "Father of Veterans Day."

President Eisenhower signs the Veterans Day bill

President Ronald Reagan (left) awarding
Raymond Weeks with the Presidential
Citizenship Medal.

Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler)
November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000

Lamarr appeared in Ecstasy in 1933 and Samson and Delilah in
1949. She also appeared in Boom Town and Comrade X with
Clark Gable (1940). She was born in Austria and studied theatre
in Berlin.

At the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s Sixth Pioneer Awards in
1997, Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil were honored with special
awards for their "trail-blazing development of a technology that has
become a key component of wireless data systems used for radio-
controlled torpedoes.

Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah

Helix High School photo

William Theodore "Bill" Walton III, born in La Mesa, California.

Former basketball center Bill Walton won a NBA championship with the
Portland Trail Blazers’ (1977) and the Boston Celtics (1987) after leading
UCLA to back-to-back 30-0 seasons and two straight NCAA Championships
in 1972 and 1973.