President Richard M. Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors
meeting in Orlando, FL, "people have got to know whether or not their
president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook."

President Richard M. Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors
meeting in Orlando, FL, "people have got to know whether or not their
president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook."

Zebulon Montgomery Pike
(January 5, 1779 – April 27, 1813)

Approaching the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains during his second exploratory expedition, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike spots a distant mountain peak
that looks “like a small blue cloud.” The mountain was later named Pike’s Peak
in his honor.
Pike’s explorations of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory of the U.S. began before the nation’s first western explorers, Lewis and Clark, had returned from
their own expedition up the Missouri River. Pike was more of a professional
military man than either Lewis or Clark, and he was a smart man who had
taught himself Spanish, French, mathematics, and elementary science. When
the governor of Louisiana Territory requested a military expedition to explore
the headwaters of the Mississippi, General James Wilkinson picked Pike to
lead it.


Actor/producer Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is 45 yeas old today. As
of 2019, his films have earned $7.2 billion worldwide, and he has
placed eight times in annual rankings of the world’s highest-paid
actors. His accolades include an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio at the 88th Academy Awards (2016):
Best Actor, win, for The Revenant.
During the 1970s, Bonnie Lynn Raitt released a series of roots-influenced
albums that incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk and country. In 1989,
after several years of critical acclaim but little commercial success, she had
a major hit with the album Nick of Time. The following two albums, Luck of
the Draw (1991) and Longing in Their Hearts (1994), were also multimillion
sellers, generating several hit singles, including "Something to Talk About",
"Love Sneakin’ Up on You", and the ballad "I Can’t Make You Love Me"
(with Bruce Hornsby on piano).
Raitt has received 10 Grammy Awards. She is listed as number 50 in
Rolling Stone‘s list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time" and
number 89 on the magazine’s list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of
All Time.

On this day in 1940, the middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state collapsed during a 42 mph windstorm. The suspension
bridge had opened to traffic on July 1, 1940. The collapse had lasting
effects on science and engineering.

William Franklin Graham Jr. (November 7, 1918 – February 21, 2018)
Billy Graham was an American evangelist, a prominent evangelical Christian
figure, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well-known internationally in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him
"among the most influential Christian leaders" of the 20th century.
