MIKE GRACIA

Sir Elton Hercules John (Reginald Kenneth Dwight) is 72.

Rock and roll legend Elton John has sold over 250 million albums in a career
that’s spanned over 50 years. He is best known for such hit songs as "Rocket
Man," "Tiny Dancer," "Bennie and the Jets" and "Candle in the Wind."Elton
began playing the piano at age three and won a junior scholarship to the
Royal Academy of Music.

ED DANAHUE

It was on this day in 1975.

On this day in 1965, U.S. President Johnson (center) signed into law Social Security Act that established Medicare and Medicaid. It went
into effect the following year. Former President Harry S. Truman
is seated on the right. 

A photo of Truman’s application form.

Black Tom pier shortly after the explosion.

The Black Tom explosion on July 30, 1916, in Jersey City, New Jersey, was an
act of sabotage by German agents to destroy American-made munitions that
were to be supplied to the Allies in World War I.

The USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on
this day in 1945. The ship had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian. Only 316 out
of 1,196 men aboard survived the attack.

An artists illustration of the attack on The USS Indianapolis.

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947)

Henry Ford was an American industrialist and a business
magnate, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the
sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique
of mass production.

Henry Ford with a Model T in Buffalo, New York, in 1921.

Actor Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is 71 years old today.

Bodybuilder, actor, and politician who served as the governor of California
from 2003 to 2011. His best known films include Conan the Barbarian (1982) 
Predator (1987) The Terminator series (beginning in 1984) and Total Recall
(1990). In 1996 he portrayed Howard Langston in the holiday comedy film 
Jingle All the Way.

                
                   1994

Workers at a Chevrolet plant in Flint, Michigan, assemble the
first Corvette, a two-seater sports car that would become an
American icon. The first completed production car rolled off
the assembly line two days later (below), one of just 300
Corvettes made that year.

(History) – The last Packard–the classic American luxury car with the
famously enigmatic slogan “Ask the Man Who Owns One”–rolls off
the production line at Packard’s plant in Detroit, Michigan on this
day in 1956.

Mechanical engineer James Ward Packard and his brother, William
Dowd Packard, built their first automobile, a buggy-type vehicle with
a single cylinder engine, in Warren, Ohio in 1899 (below).

The first Boeing 737 (100 series) makes its maiden flight.

The first Boeing 737 under construction at Boeing Field in 1966.

The original Boeing 737 prototype is given a champagne christening during the January 17, 1967 roll out event by flight attendants representing the aircraft’s customers.