CARLATA BRADLEY

On this day in 1947, over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California,
pilot Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket plane and became the
first person to break the sound barrier.

Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager turned
95 in February.

The Battle of Hastings occurred in England on this day in 1066. The Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II of England.

Battle Abbey is a partially ruined Benedictine abbey in Battle, East Sussex, England. The abbey was built on the site of the Battle of Hastings and dedicated to St Martin of Tours.

On this day in 1977, singer Bing Crosby died of a heart attack.

singer and actor Bing Crosby was the first multimedia star, Crosby
was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture
grosses from 1931 to 1954. Crosby won an Academy Award for
Best Actor for his role as Father Chuck O’Malley in the 1944 motion
picture Going My Way and was nominated for his reprise of the role
in The Bells of St. Mary’s opposite Ingrid Bergman the following year.

1940

1942
 

1944

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr.(May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977)

CAMILLE BOHANNON

President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, (above) 
a federal Circuit Judge in 1991, to succeed retiring Supreme Court 
Justice Thurgood Marshall. Senate confirmation hearings on Thomas 
were initially completed until a report of a private interview of Anita
Hill by the FBI was leaked to the press. The hearings were then 
reopened, and Hill was called to publicly testify. She said in the 
televised hearings on this day in 1991, Thomas had sexually
harassed her while he was her supervisor at the Department of
Education and the EEOC.

Anita Faye Hill

Anita Hill turned 62 in July.

Clarence Thomas became 70 years old in June.

On this day in 1975, "Saturday Night Live" was broadcast for the first time. George Carlin (below) was the guest host.

Cheesebuga! Cheesebuga! Cheesebuga!

JOHN BELMONT

Anthrax-laced  letters were sent to Capitol Hill on this day in 2001.

On Oct. 7, 1985, the Italian cruise ship MS Achille Lauro was hijacked
by four members of the Palestine Liberation Front off the coast of
Egypt in the Mediterranean. The hijackers took the more than 400 passengers and crew members hostage and demanded the release
of 50 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.

On this day in 1985, the hijackers surrendered on the condition
that they and the hijacking mastermind Abu Abbas be given a
plane to escape. However, on Oct. 10, the plane was intercepted by 
United States military aircraft and forced to land at a NATO base 
in Sicily, where Mr. Abbas and the hijackers were arrested.
 

    
    
    
   

The four Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the cruise ship.

Released hostages of the Achille Lauro liner hijacking are shown 
being taken ashore.

Palestinian militant Abu Abbas, mastermind of the 1985 Achille
Lauro cruise ship hijacking was captured in Iraq April 2003. He
died in US custody from a heart attack in 2004.

John Winston Ono Lennon  (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980)

John Lennon became one of the most influential songwriters in the history
of popular music after co-founding The Beatles with Paul McCartney and
George Harrison. In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked John Lennon the fifth-
greatest singer of all time. In 1987, he was posthumously inducted into
the Songwriters Hall of Fame and twice posthumously inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: first in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and
again in 1994 as a solo artist.

One of the last photos of John Lennon before he was killed.

ROSS SIMPSON

On this day in 1871, The Great Chicago Fire began in southwest
Chicago, possibly in a barn owned by Patrick and Katherine O’Leary,
was fanned by strong southwesterly winds, the flames rage for more
than 24 hours, eventually leveling three and a half square miles and 
wiping out one-third of the city. Approximately 250 people were
killed in the fire; 98,500 people are left homeless; 17,450 buildings
were destroyed. Parts of the upper Midwest were also scorched.

Donald James Larsen (New York Yankees) pitched the first perfect
game in the history of the World Series on this day in 1956.

New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra leaping into the
arms of pitcher Don Larsen after the completion of his
perfect game.

Don James Larsen turned 89 August 7.

New York Yankees’ Don Larsen (above) sits in the dugout at the
Yankees Old Timers’ Day baseball game Sunday, June 17, 2018,
at Yankee Stadium in New York.

ROSS SIMPSON

Samuel F.B. Morse formally opened America’s first telegraph line on
this day in 1844. The first message was sent from Washington, DC,
to Baltimore, MD. The message was "What hath God wrought?"

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872)

On this day in 1994, the four men convicted of bombing the New
York’s World Trade Center were each sentenced to 240 years in
prison.

Queen Victoria of England was born in London on
this day in 1819. 

This painting by Frederick Winterhalter shows Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert with 5 of their children.

After 14 years of construction the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to
traffic on this day in 1883.

Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman)

Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan revolutionized folk music in the
1960’s with albums such as The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Highway 61
Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde and songs such as "The Times They
Are a-Changin’," "Like a Rolling Stone," and "Positively 4th Street."

On October 13, 2016 the Nobel Prize committee announced it had awarded Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created
new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".