Thomas (Tom) Jeffrey Hanks

Legendary actor who won back-to-back Academy Awards for
Best Actor for his roles in Philadelphia in 1993 and Forrest
Gump in 1994. He has starred in many other classics, including 
Cast Away (2000), The Green Mile (1999), Saving Private Ryan
(1998), and Apollo 13 (1995). He voiced the lead character Woody
in the Pixar animated film series Toy Story beginning in 1995.  

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

On this  day in 1947, a United States Army Air Forces balloon crashed at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Following wide initial interest in the crashed "flying disc", the US military stated that it was merely a conventional weather balloon. Interest subsequently waned until the late 1970s, when Ufologists began
promoting a variety of increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories, claiming
that one or more alien spacecraft had crash-landed and that the extraterrestrial occupants had been recovered by the military, which then engaged in a cover-
up.

In the 1990s, the US military published two reports disclosing the true nature
of the crashed object: a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul.

Roswell Army Air Field Intelligence Officer Jesse Marcel, sr. holding
foil debris from Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash site.

    
    
 
Ringo Starr (Sir Richard Starkey)

English musician, singer, songwriter Ringo Starr gained worldwide fame as
the drummer for the Beatles. He occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, usually for one song on each album, including "With a Little Help from My
Friends", "Yellow Submarine", "Good Night", and their cover of "Act Naturally".
   

ROSS SIMPSON

From left: John  Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The front-page headline of the Liverpool Evening Express on July 6, 1957,
read “MERSEYSIDE SIZZLES,” in reference to the heat wave then gripping
not just northern England, but all of Europe. The same headline could well
have been used over a story that received no coverage at all that day: The
story of the first encounter between two Liverpool teenagers named John
Lennon and Paul McCartney. Like the personal and professional relationship
it would lead to, their historic first meeting was a highly charged combination
of excitement, rivalry and mutual respect.

It’s easy to assume that John and Paul would eventually have met on some
other day had a mutual friend not chosen that hot and humid Saturday to
make the introduction. But as much as they had in common, the two boys
lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools and were nearly
two years apart in age.

Only John was scheduled to perform publicly on July 6, 1957. The occasion
was the annual Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete, a parade and outdoor
fair at which John and his Quarrymen Skiffle Group had been invited to play.

SANDY KOZEL

An artists depiction of the incident.

In the Persian Gulf on this day in 1988, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes
shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile Iranian
fighter aircraft. Two missiles were fired from the American warship–the
aircraft was  hit, and all 290 people aboard were killed. The attack came
near the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when U.S. vessels were in the gulf
defending Kuwaiti oil tankers. Minutes before Iran Air Flight 655 was
shot down, the Vincennes had engaged Iranian gunboats that shot at
its helicopter.

Iran called the downing of the aircraft a “barbaric massacre,” but U.S.
officials defended the action, claiming that the aircraft was outside the
commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,800 feet, and was on a
descent toward the Vincennes. However, one month later, the United
States acknowledged that the airbus was in the commercial flight
corridor, flying at 12,000 feet, and not descending. The U.S. Navy
report blamed crew error caused by psychological stress on men
who were in combat for the first time. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay
$62 million in damages to the families of the Iranians killed in the attack.