MIKE GRACIA

On this day in 1962, President Kennedy went on radio and television to inform
the United States about his order to send U.S.forces to blockade Cuba. The blockade was in response to the discovery of Soviet missile bases on the
island.

On this day in 1979, the ousted Shah of Iran, Mohammad Riza
Pahlavi (below), was allowed into the U.S. for medical treatment.

It was on this day in 1931.

The body of gangster Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd is shown propped
on a slab in the county morgue in East Liverpool, Ohio.

On this day in 2002, bus driver Conrad Johnson was shot at 5:56 a.m. while standing on the steps of his bus at the 14100 block of Grand Pre Road in
Aspen Hill, Maryland. He was the last victim in the D.C. Sniper shootings.

The snipers

Pablo Casals (Pau Casals i Defilló)
(December 29, 1876 – October 22, 1973)

Pablo Casals was a cellist, composer, and conductor from Catalonia,
Spain. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first
half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time. He
made many recordings throughout his career and was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy.

TIM MAGUIRE

On this day in 1859, Abolitionist John Brown led a raid on Harper’s Ferry, VA
(now located in West Virginia).

During the French Revolution on this day in 1793, Queen Marie Antoinette (below) was beheaded after being convicted of treason.

Poland’s Karol Josef Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II
on this day in 1978.

On Friday, October 16, 1998, police from Britain’s Scotland
Yard entered a room in a small, private hospital in London
and arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
Ugarte who was recovering from back surgery.

On this day in 1987, rescuers freed Jessica McClure from the abandoned
well that she had fallen into in Midland, TX. She was trapped for 58 hours.

Jessica McClure Morales turned 31 in March.

James Albert Michener (February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997)

Michener was the author of more than 40 books, most of which were
fictional, family sagas. His first book was adapted as the popular
Broadway musical South Pacific by Richard Rodgers and Oscar
Hammerstein.

Michener’s typewriter at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

TIM MAGUIRE

Several thousand people gather in the Daley Center Plaza in downtown Chicago on Sept. 14, 2001, for a memorial service to honor those killed
in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Cities across the country held similar
events after President George W. Bush declared Sept. 14 a day of
prayer.

President George W. Bush’s Remarks At Ground Zero September 14, 2001.

After President William McKinley died of gunshot wounds inflicted
by an assassin, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, at age 42,
succeeded him on this day in 1901.

On this day in 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star-Spangled
Banner," a poem originally known as "Defense of Fort McHenry,"
after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry, MD,
during the War of 1812 (above). The song became the official U.S. national anthem on March 3, 1931.

On this day in 1982.

It was announced on this day in 1994, that the season was over for
the National Baseball League on the 34th day of the players strike
and the final days of the regular season were canceled.

Margaret Higgins Sanger (Margaret Louise Higgins)
(September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) 

Margaret Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex
educator, eugenicist, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized
the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in
the United States, and established organizations that evolved
into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

TIM MAGUIRE

President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded on this
day in 1901 (he died eight days later) by Leon Czolgosz (below). The
American anarchist was executed the following October.

Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances Spencer)  
(July 1, 1961 – August 31, 1997) 

The concept of a self-service grocery store was developed by
Clarence Saunders and his Piggly Wiggly stores. His first store
(above) opened on this day in 1916.

Clarence Saunders
(August 9, 1881 – September 23, 1953)

George Roger Waters is 74 years old today.

Roger Waters was the Bass player, composer, vocalist, and front man of the
English rock band Pink Floyd, the group known for songs like "Shine On
You Crazy Diamond." He was the chairman of the Cambridge Youth
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at age fifteen. Waters helped
compose the soundtrack to the 1970 documentary The Body.

Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and began a legal dispute with the remaining
members over their use of the band’s name and material. They settled out
of court in 1987, and nearly eighteen years passed before he performed
with them again. As a member of Pink Floyd, Waters was inducted into
the U.S. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of
Fame in 2005

CAMILLE BOHANNON

On this day in 1997.

Lech Walesa (standing), anti-communist leader of Solidarity in
Poland.

Poland’s Solidarity labor movement was born on this day in 1980 
with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a 17-day strike.

Jack the Ripper’s first victim found dead in London on this day
in 1888.

Itzhak Perlman in 1964.

Itzhak Perlman is 72 years old today.

Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist, conductor, and pedagogue. Over
the course of his career, he has performed worldwide, and throughout the
United States, in venues that have included a State Dinner at the White
House honoring Queen Elizabeth II, and a Presidential Inauguration, and
he has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

On August 31, 1969, the evening before his 46th birthday,
Marciano was a passenger in a fatal small private plane
crash near an airfield outside Newton, Iowa.

The wreckage of the Cessna 172 lies under a large oak tree. Rocky
Marciano along with the pilot and another passenger died in the
crash.

Sir George Ivan Morrison is 72 years old today.

Known as "Van the Man", singer/songwriter Van  Morrison
1950s, Much of his music is structured around soul music
and R&B, such as the popular single "Brown Eyed Girl”.