Natalie Maria Cole(February 6, 1950 – December 31, 2015)
Fifteen years and five #1 hits after breaking into the music industry by working in a style completely different from her famous father’s, Natalie Cole stopped distancing herself from Nat King Cole’s musical legacy and instead embraced it, recording an entire album of standards from her father’s old repertoire. Though it exposed her to charges of exploiting his memory, it also gave Cole the biggest hit album of her professional career: Unforgettable: With Love, which climbed to the top of the Billboard 200 album chart on July 27, 1991.
Cole had "ongoing health issues".According to Cole’s publicist, Maureen O’Connor, the singer’s death was the result of congestive heart failure. She was 65. (HISTORY)
On this day in 1994, The U.S. Figure Skating Association stripped Tonya Harding (left) of the 1994 national championship and banned her from the organization for life for an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan (right).
Nancy Kerrigan just after the attack.
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne(June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010)
Twentieth-century African-American singer and actress Lena Horne famously sang "Stormy Weather," won a Grammy Award for a 1981 album entitled Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, and appeared in film versions of The Wiz, Broadway Rhythm, and Ziegfeld Follies.
Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. Horne died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010, at the age of 92.
On this day in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty could constitute "cruel and unusual punishment." The ruling prompted states to revise their capital punishment laws.
Israel removed barricades, re-unifying Jerusalem on this day in 1967.
On this day in 1995, the shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir docked, forming the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth.
A long-time smoker, Clooney was diagnosed with lung cancer at the end of 2001. Around this time, she gave one of her last concerts in Hawaii, backed by the Honolulu Symphony Pops; her last song was "God Bless America". Her final show was at Red Bank New Jersey’s Count Basie Theater in December 2001. Despite surgery, she died six months later on June 29, 2002, at her Beverly Hills home. Her nephew, actor George Clooney, was a pallbearer at her funeral, which was attended by numerous stars.
Pallbearers carry the casket of Rosemary Clooney out of St. Patrick’s Church after funeral services in Maysville, Ky. Actor George Clooney, at center.
Recorded live on November 16, 2001, Released on November 19, 2001.
Katharine Houghton Hepburn(May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003)
In 1997, Katharine Hepburn had become very weak, was speaking and eating very little, and it was feared she would die.She showed signs of dementia in her final years. In May 2003, an aggressive tumor was found in Hepburn’s neck. The decision was made not to medically intervene, and she died from a cardiac arrest on June 29, 2003, a month after her 96th birthday at the Hepburn family home in Fenwick, Connecticut.
In her later years, Smith was impaired by diabetes. In 1976, she suffered brain damage after slipping into a diabetic coma. In January 1986, Kate’s right leg was amputated due to poor circulation caused by diabetes. Five months later, she underwent a mastectomy. On June 17, 1986, Smith died of respiratory arrest at Raleigh Community Hospital in Raleigh at the age of 79.
King John of England put his seal on the Magna Carta on this day in 1215.
One of only four surviving exemplifications of the 1215 text of the Magna Carta.
This is the seal of King John, which would have been attached to the Magna Carta.
A deadly steamboat fire in New York City on this day in 1904.
On this day in 1978, King Hussein of Jordan married 26-year-old American Lisa Halaby, who became Queen Noor.
Cutting the wedding cake with a ceremonial sword.
An order to establish a military burial ground was signed by The Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (below) on this day in 1864. It later became known as Arlington National Cemetery.
