CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Robert Anthony Plant is 72 today.

Plant has had a successful singing career spanning over
50 years. In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him
number 15 on their list of the 100 best singers of all
time. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers ranked Plant the
greatest of all lead singers. In 2006, Hit Parader
magazine named Plant the “Greatest Metal Vocalist
of All Time”. In 2009, Plant was also voted “the greatest
voice in rock” in a poll conducted by Planed Rock.

A U.S. Marine Corps Hawk air defense missile battalion is deployed to Da
Nang. President Johnson (below) had ordered this deployment to provide protection for the key U.S. airbase there.

This was the first commitment of American combat troops in South Vietnam
and there was considerable reaction around the world to the new stage of
U.S. involvement in the war.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973)

Hawk missile launchers at Da Nang Airfield in 1965.

Complicated and tension-filled negotiations between the United States and
the Soviet Union finally result in a plan to end the two-week-old Cuban
Missile Crisis. A frightening period in which nuclear holocaust seemed
imminent began to come to an end. 

Since President John F. Kennedy’s October 22 address warning the Soviets
to cease their reckless program to put nuclear weapons in Cuba and
announcing a naval “quarantine” against additional weapons shipments
into Cuba, the world held its breath waiting to see whether the two
superpowers would come to blows. U.S. armed forces went on alert and
the Strategic Air Command went to a Stage 4 alert (one step away from
nuclear attack). On October 24, millions waited to see whether Soviet
ships bound for Cuba carrying additional missiles would try to break
the U.S. naval blockade around the island. At the last minute, the vessels
turned around and returned to the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev                Castro                                 Kennedy

      
CAMILLE
BOHANNON

On this day in 1977, Voyager 2 was launched by NASA from a
spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida with a Titan IIIE / Centaur
rocket . The spacecraft was carrying a copper phonograph
record containing greetings in dozens of languages and
samples of music (below).

Singer Robert Anthony Plant is 71 today.

Led Zepplin reunited for a show at London’s O2 arena, 2007.

MIKE GRACIA

The first successful gasoline-powered manned airplane flight took
place near Kitty Hawk, NC. on this day in 1903. Orville and Wilbur
Wright made the flight.

While Wright Brothers were building the Flyer they continued to make 
practice flights with their 1902 glider (above). They made about 2000
total glides. 

Television history was made on this day in 1969 when singer Tiny
Tim and Miss Vicki Budinger were married on "The Tonight Show"
with Johnny Carson on NBC.

Tiny Tim (Herbert Buckingham Khaury)
(April 12, 1932 – November 30, 1996)

Tiny Tim suffered a heart attack just as he began singing at a ukulele festival at the Montague Grange Hall in Montague, Massachusetts.