TIM MAGUIRE

On this day in 1996, a single homemade pipe bomb left in a knapsack exploded amid a crowd of spectators in Centennial Olympic Park,
near the main sites of the Olympic Games in Atlanta. The blast
caused by the crude device killed one person and injured 112
others.  

Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

The first major battle of the U.S. Civil War began. It was the Battle
of Bull Run at Manassas Junction, VA. The Confederates won the
battle. Union forces endured a loss of 3,000 men killed, wounded,
or missing in action while the Confederates suffered 2,000
casualties.

ROSS SIMPSON

From left: John  Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The front-page headline of the Liverpool Evening Express on July 6, 1957,
read “MERSEYSIDE SIZZLES,” in reference to the heat wave then gripping
not just northern England, but all of Europe. The same headline could well
have been used over a story that received no coverage at all that day: The
story of the first encounter between two Liverpool teenagers named John
Lennon and Paul McCartney. Like the personal and professional relationship
it would lead to, their historic first meeting was a highly charged combination
of excitement, rivalry and mutual respect.

It’s easy to assume that John and Paul would eventually have met on some
other day had a mutual friend not chosen that hot and humid Saturday to
make the introduction. But as much as they had in common, the two boys
lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools and were nearly
two years apart in age.

Only John was scheduled to perform publicly on July 6, 1957. The occasion
was the annual Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete, a parade and outdoor
fair at which John and his Quarrymen Skiffle Group had been invited to play.

Kenneth R.  “Kenny” Shadrick (August 4, 1931 – July 5, 1950)

Near Sojong, South Korea on this day in 1950, Private Kenneth Shadrick,
a 19-year-old infantryman from Skin Fork, West Virginia, becomes the
first American reported killed in the Korean War. Shadrick, a member of
a bazooka squad, had just fired the weapon at a Soviet-made tank when
he looked up to check his aim and was cut down by enemy machine-gun
fire.

A U.S. soldier with a 2.36-inch bazooka prepares to take aim at a
North Korean tank during the Battle of Pyongtaek. On the right
is Private Shadrick.  

This picture was mailed home to Shcarick’s parents signed, the            
hard labor kid.

TIM MAGUIRE

North Korea invaded South Korea initiating the Korean War on this
day in 1950.