TIM MAGUIRE

President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield
in Pennsylvania on this day in 1863.

On this day in 1959, Ford Motor Co. announced it was ending the production of the unpopular Edsel. Ford began selling the ill-
fated line of cars in 1957.

Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is 56 years young today.

Foster first gained fame for her role as a teenage prostitute in the 1976
Martin  Scorsese film Taxi Driver. She won Academy Awards for Best
Actress for her performances in The Accused (1988) and Silence of the
Lambs (1991) and also had starring roles in Contact (1985), Anna and
the King (1999), and Panic Room (2002).

Jodie Foster in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 masterpiece The Silence
of the Lambs.  

ROSS SIMPSON

On this day in 1978, Cult leader Jim Jones and hundreds of his
followers died in a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana
in South America. It was the largest mass suicide in modern
history and resulted in the largest single loss of American
civilian life in a non-natural disaster until September 11, 2001.

Shown are bodies of members of the Peoples Temple who died
after their leader Jim Jones ordered them to drink Flav-R-Aid
laced with cyanide. 

Congressman Leo Ryan (above) was among five killed by Temple members at the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip (below).

The first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon premiered
in New York on this day in 1928. It was Walt Disney’s "Steamboat
Willie," starring Mickey Mouse.

Walt Disney drawing “Steamboat Willie”.

CAMILLE BOHANNON

On this day in 1973, President Richard 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."

The U.S. Congress held its first session in Washington, DC,
in the newly completed north wing of the unfinished Capitol
building (above)  on this day in 1800. They moved from
Philadelphia.

 

        

CAMILLE BOHANNON

On this day in 1966, Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard was acquitted in his
second trial of charges he had murdered his pregnant wife, Marilyn,
in 1954.

Samuel Holmes "Sam" Sheppard
(December 29, 1923 – April 6, 1970)

On this day in 1959, the musical "The Sound of Music" opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

CAMILLE BOHANNON

Union Gen. William T. Sherman and his troops began their "March to
the Sea" during the U.S. Civil War on this day in 1864. They left the
captured city of Atlanta (depicted above). The campaign ended with
the capture of the port of Savanna on December 21.

William Tecumseh Sherman (February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891)

Union soldiers destroying telegraph poles and railroads, and freeing slaves, who are assisting Union soldiers in making their way to
safety.

GENERAL SHERMAN’S HEADQUARTERS DURING MARCH TO
THE SEA.

General Sherman at the port city of Savannah on the Atlantic coast.

Explorer Zebulon Pike (above) spotted the mountaintop
that became known as Pikes Peak in Colorado.

Pikes Peak, called America’s Mountain for its summit’s role inspiring Katharine Lee Bates to pen “America the Beautiful.”