MIKE GRACIA
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is 56 years old today.
Director, producer, and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino first
received acclaim for his 1990s crime films Reservoir Dogs,
Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. He later went on to direct the
action films Kill Bill: Volume 1, Kill Bill: Volume 2, Inglourious
Basterds and Django Unchained. He dropped out of Narbonne
High School his freshman year to go to acting school.
ROSS SIMPSON
On this day in 1968, U.S.troops in Vietnam destroyed a village
consisting mostly of women and children. The event is known
as the My-Lai massacre.
Over 500 babies, children, women and men were slaughtered by American
soldiers. Many Vietnamese women and girls had been raped. Huts were
burned, livestock was killed, food supplies destroyed.
Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only one
Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was
convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given
a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house
arrest.
William Laws Calley Jr. will be 76 on June 8.
This U.S. Army photo shows the aftermath of the Mỹ Lai Massacre
with mostly women and children lying dead on a road.
The village was burned to the ground.
The My Lai Massacre memorial site.
The Apr. 12, 1971, cover of TIME.
SANDY KOZEL
On his nationwide CBS-TV program, "See It Now," Edward R.
Murrow, on this day in 1954, used the Wisconsin Republican’s
own filmed and tape-recorded voice to portray him as a man
employing the half-truth as a "staple" and "repeatedly stepping
over the line between investigating and persecuting.
Lawyer Joseph Welch at the Army-McCarthy hearings.
MIKE GRACIA
On this day in 1770, a deadly riot called "The Boston Massacre" took place on King Street in Boston. It began as a street brawl between
American colonists and a lone British soldier, but quickly escalated
to a chaotic, bloody slaughter killing five people. Two British troops
were later convicted of manslaughter. The conflict energized anti-
Britain sentiment and paved the way for the American Revolution.
Boston Massacre Site Memorial, on the Freedom Trail behind the Old State House.
Patsy Cline (Virginia Patterson Hensley)
(September 8, 1932 – March 5, 1963)
On this day in 1963, country music performers Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins died in the crash of their plane, a
Piper Comanche, near Camden, Tennessee, along with pilot Randy Hughes (Cline’s manager). The investigation determined that Hughes,
a non-instrument-rated pilot, attempted visual flight in adverse
weather conditions, resulting in disorientation and subsequent loss
of control.
A Piper Comanche PA-24-180, similar to the one that crashed.
Patsy Cline aircraft crash site, Camden, Tennessee.
ROSS SIMPSON
On this day in 1848, James Wilson Marshall
(October 8, 1810 – August 10, 1885) found
a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in northern
California. The discovery led to the gold
rush of ’49’.
The spot where Marshall first discovered the gold that started the California Gold Rush.
John Sutter’s sawmill in 1850. The historians at Marshall Gold State Historic Park concluded the person seen in the above photo was
the photographer’s assistant who was used to show scale.
James Marshall’s cabin in Coloma, California.
James Marshall Monument
