LTJG Kennedy (standing at far right) with his crew on PT-109 in 1943.

On this day in 1943, future President John F. Kennedy was serving as the
commander of a torpedo boat in the Solomon Islands when his ship was
fired upon by the Japanese navy.   
 

As a young man, Kennedy had desperately wanted to go into the Navy but
was originally rejected because of chronic health problems, particularly a
back injury he had sustained playing football while attending Harvard
University. In 1941, though, his politically connected father used his
influence to get Jack, as he  was called, into the Navy. In 1942,
Kennedy volunteered for PT (motorized torpedo) boat duty in the
Pacific.   

SANDY KOZEL

On this day in 1965, the United States landed about 3,500 Marines in South Vietnam to defend the U.S. air base at Da Nag. They were the
first American combat troops to land in Vietnam. They joined 23,000 American military advisors already in Vietnam.

As American troops fight their first large scale battles against the
North Vietnamese Army, college students march against the war
in Boston, October 16, 1965.

Joseph Paul DiMaggio (November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999)

Joe DiMaggio was a baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year
career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. He is widely
considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, and is perhaps
best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15 – July 16, 1941), a record
that still stands. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955 and
was voted the sport’s greatest living player in a poll taken during the
baseball centennial year of 1969.

DiMaggio, a heavy smoker for much of his adult life, was admitted to
Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, on October 12, 1998,
for lung cancer surgery and remained there for 99 days. He returned to
his home in Hollywood, Florida, on January 19, 1999; he died there at
age 84 on March 8.

DiMaggio’s grave at the Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma, CA.

    
                     Mount Rushmore commemorative stamp.  

      

On August 11, 1952, the U.S. Post Office issued the Mount Rushmore Memorial commemorative stamp on the 25th anniversary of the dedication of the National
Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. On January 2, 1974, a 26-cent stamp
depicting the monument was also issued. 

Mariner 10 was a robotic space probe launched by NASA on November 3,
1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus. The spacecraft flew past
Mercury three times with the first encounter taking place on March 29,
1974 (below). Mariner 10 was deactivated March 24, 1975.

Mercury in black and white.

Artists’ impression of the Mariner 10 mission.

This stamp, known as "Position 58," was valued at between 
$525,000 and $1.6 million.

(AP) – An ultra-rare stamp could sell for more than $1 million when it hits
the auction block in New York City next week, analysts have estimated.

It was one of 100 "inverted Jenny" stamps, legends among collectors. They
were issued in 1918 to celebrate the launch of U.S. air mail, but showed the
Curtiss JN-4H "Jenny" biplane inverted. A smart customer bought a 100-
stamp sheet before anyone realized the error.

According to the auction house, the stamp hitting the auction block on May
31 was “remarkable for its pristine state of preservation and for its centering”.