On this day in 1973, the nostalgic teenage coming-of-age movie
American Graffiti, directed and co-written by George Lucas,
opened in theaters across the U.S. Set in California in the
summer of 1962, American Graffiti was nominated for five
Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture,
and helped launch the big-screen careers of Richard Dreyfuss
and Harrison Ford, as well as the former child actor and future
Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard. The film’s success
enabled Lucas to get his next movie made, the mega-hit Star
Wars (1977).

Wolfman Jack (Robert Weston Smith) appears as the D.J. 

Harrison Ford

Explorer  6

From the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the U.S.
unmanned spacecraft Explorer 6 is launched into an orbit around the
earth (above). The spacecraft, commonly known as the “Paddlewheel”
satellite, featured a photocell scanner that transmitted a crude picture
of the earth’s surface and cloud cover from a distance of 17,000 miles
and was received in Hawaii after nearly 40 minutes.

The first image taken by Explorer 6 shows a sunlit area of the
Central Pacific Ocean and its cloud cover.

On May 3, 1783, General George Washington (above) awarded the
Badge of Military Merit to two brave Connecticut soldiers at the Continental Army headquarters in Newburgh, New York.

On this day in 1782, in Newburgh, New York, General George Washington,
the commander in chief of the Continental Army, creates the “Badge for
Military Merit,” a decoration consisting of a purple, heart-shaped piece of
silk, edged with a narrow binding of silver, with the word Merit stitched
across the face in silver (above). 

The badge was to be presented to soldiers for “any singularly meritorious
action” and permitted its wearer to pass guards and sentinels without
challenge. The honoree’s name and regiment were also to be inscribed in
a “Book of Merit.”

Washington’s “Purple Heart” was awarded to only three known soldiers
during the Revolutionary War: Elijah Churchill, William Brown and Daniel
Bissell, Jr. The “Book of Merit” was lost, and the decoration was largely
forgotten until 1927, when General Charles P. Summerall, the U.S. Army
chief of staff, sent an unsuccessful draft bill to Congress to “revive the
Badge of Military Merit.”

In 1931, Summerall’s successor, General Douglas MacArthur, took up the
cause, hoping to reinstate the medal in time for the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth. On February 22, 1932, Washington’s 200th birthday,
the U.S. War Department announced the creation of the “Order of the
Purple Heart” (below).

Richard (Dick) Wagstaff Clark (November 30, 1929 – April 18, 2012)

Television, rock and roll and teenagers. In the late 1950s, when television and
rock and roll were new and when the biggest generation in American history
was just about to enter its teens, it took a bit of originality to see the potential power in this now-obvious combination. The man who saw that potential more clearly than any other was a 26-year-old native of upstate New York named
Dick Clark, who transformed himself and a local Philadelphia television
program into two of the most culturally significant forces of the early rock-
and-roll era. His iconic show, American Bandstand, began broadcasting
nationally on this day in 1957, beaming images of clean-cut, average
teenagers dancing to the not-so-clean-cut Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta
Shakin’ Goin’ On” to 67 ABC affiliates across the nation.

The show that evolved into American Bandstand began on Philadephia’s
WFIL-TV in 1952, a few years before the popular ascension of rock and
roll. Hosted by local radio personality Bob Horn (below).

Donald Loyd "Bob" Horn
(February 20, 1916 – July 31, 1966)

MIKE GRACIA

On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death
the night before, Charles Whitman,(above) a former Marine, took
rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main
Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin, then opened
fire indiscriminately on persons on the surrounding campus and
streets. Over the next 96 minutes he shot and killed 16 people
(including one unborn child) and injured 31 others; a final victim
died in 2001 from the lingering effects of his wounds. The incident
ended when a policeman and a civilian reached Whitman and shot
him dead. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone
gunman in U.S. history until it was surpassed 18 years later by the
San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre.

The University of Texas at Austin Tower, Austin, Texas.