On July 6, 1994, the movie Forrest Gump opened in theaters. A
huge box-office success, the film starred Tom Hanks in the title
role of Forrest, a good-hearted man with a low I.Q. who winds
up at the center of key cultural and historical events of the
second half of the 20th century.

The film also won an Oscar for its then-cutting-edge computer-
generated imagery (CGI) special effects, which incorporated
Forrest Gump into existing news footage with famous world
figures including John F. Kennedy, John Lennon and Richard
Nixon.

Tom Hanks will be 69 years old on July 9th.

    
    
    
1949

   

William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey
(June 24, 1895 – May 31, 1983) 

Also nicknamed The Manassa Mauler, was a boxer who competed
from 1914 to 1927, and world heavyweight champion from 1919 to
1926. One of the most iconic athletes of his era, Dempsey is ranked
sixth on The Ring magazine’s list of all-time heavyweights and
fourth among its Top 100 Greatest Punchers, while in 1950 the Associated Press voted him as the greatest fighter of the past
50 years.

He is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and was
in the previous Boxing Hall of Fame.

Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable
screen incarnations—San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty”
Harry Callahan—the actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker Clint
Eastwood is born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California.

With his father, Eastwood wandered the West Coast as a boy
during the Depression. Then, after four years in the Army
Special Services, Eastwood went to Hollywood, where he got
his start in a string of B-movies.

For eight years, Eastwood played Rowdy Yates in the popular
TV Western series Rawhide, before emerging as a leading man
in a string of low-budget “spaghetti” Westerns directed by
Sergio Leone: Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More
(1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).

Recognized for heroically protecting the American flag during
the Civil War, Army Sgt. William Harvey Carney receives the
Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, on
May 23, 1900.

The first Black American service member to earn the award,
Carney was born into slavery in Virginia in 1840.

He was one of many Civil War-era honorees to be granted the
medal decades later.

SANDY KOZEL

The Spirit is on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution‘s National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, D.C..