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Almanac ~ Thursday, 3/23/17

Gemini 3 astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young (1965)

Today is Thursday, March 23, 2017 the 81st day of the year with 283 days remaining.

  • Sunrise: 7:08am  
  • Sunset: 7:25pm

...giving us 12 hours and 17 minutes of daylight.  29% of the waning moon will be visible, setting at 3:02pm
Tides at the Golden Gate

  • High: 8:36am/10:35pm
  • Low:  2:51am/3:17pm

Special international celebrations today…

  • Pakistan Day
  • World Meteorological Day

It’s also…

  • National Chip and Dip Day
  • National Melba Toast Day (see 1901 anecdote)
  • OK Day (see 1839)
  • Near Miss Day (see 1989 below)

On this day in…

1026 - Koenraad II crowned himself king of Italy.

1066 - The 18th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet took place.

1490 - The first dated edition of Maimonides "Mishna Torah" was published.

1657 - France and England formed an alliance against Spain.

1775 - American revolutionary Patrick Henry declared, "give me liberty, or give me death!"

1794 - Josiah G. Pierson patented a rivet machine.

1806 - Explorers Lewis and Clark, reached the Pacific coast, and began their return journey to the east.

1808 - Napoleon's brother Joseph took the throne of Spain.

1835 - Charles Darwin reached Los Arenales, in the Andes.

1836 - The coin press was invented by Franklin Beale.

1839 - The first recorded printed use of "OK" [oll korrect] occurred in Boston's Morning Post.

1840 - The first successful photo of the Moon was taken.

1848 - Hungary proclaimed its independence of Austria.

1857 - Elisha Otis installed the first modern passenger elevator in a public building. It was at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City.

1858 - Eleazer A. Gardner patented the cable streetcar.

1861 - John D. Defrees became the first Superintendent of the United States Government Printing Office.

1861 - London's first tramcars began operations.

1868 - The University of California was founded in Oakland, CA.

1880 - John Stevens patented the grain crushing mill. The mill increased flour production by 70 percent.

1881 - The Boers and Britain signed a peace accord ending the first Boer war.

1881 - A gas lamp caused a fire in an opera house in Nice, France. 70 people were killed.

1889 - U.S. President Harrison opened Oklahoma for white colonization.

1901 - Dame Nellie Melba, revealed the secret of her now famous toast.

1901 - It was learned that Boers were starving in British concentration camps in South Africa.

1901 - Shots were fired at Privy Councilor Pobyedonostzev, who was considered to be Russia's most hated man.

1902 - In Italy, the minimum legal working age was raised from 9 to 12 for boys and from 11 to 15 for girls.

1903 - The Wright brothers obtained an airplane patent.

1903 - U.S. troops were sent to Honduras to protect the American consulate during revolutionary activity.

1909 - British Lt. Shackleton found the magnetic South Pole.

1909 - Theodore Roosevelt began an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

1910 - In the Canary Islands, women offered candidates for legislative elections.

1912 - The Dixie Cup was invented.

1917 - Austrian Emperor Charles I made a peace proposal to French President Poincare.

1917 - In the Midwest U.S., four tornadoes kill 211 people over a four day period.

1918 - Lithuania proclaimed independence.

1919 - Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy.

1920 - Britain denounced theU.S. because of their delay in joining the League of Nations.

1920 - The Perserikatan Communist of India (PKI) political party was formed.

1921 - Arthur G. Hamilton set a new parachute record when he safely jumped from 24,400 feet.

1922 - The first airplane landed at the U.S. Capitol in Washington,DC.

1932 - In theU.S., the Norris-LaGuardia Act established workers' right to strike.

1933 - The German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act. The act effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial legislative powers.

1934 - TheU.S. Congress accepted the independence of the Philippines in 1945.

1936 - Italy, Austria & Hungary signed the Pact of Rome.

1937 - The L.A. Railway Co. started using PCC streetcars.

1940 - "Truth or Consequences" was heard on radio for the first time.

1942 - The Japanese occupy the Andaman Islands.

1942 - During World War II, theU.S. government began evacuating Japanese-Americans from West Coast homes to detention centers.

1951 -U.S. paratroopers descended from flying boxcars in a surprise attack in Korea.

1956 - Pakistan became the first Islamic republic. It was still within the British Commonwealth.

1956 - Sudan became independent.

1957 - TheU.S. Army sold the last of its homing pigeons.

1965 - America's first two-person space flight took off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young aboard. The craft was the Gemini 3.

1965 - The Moroccan Army shot at demonstrators. About 100 people were killed.

1967 - Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. called the Vietnam War the biggest obstacle to the civil rights movement.

1970 - Mafia "Boss" Carlo Gambino was arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.

1972 - TheU.S. called a halt to the peace talks on Vietnam being held in Paris.

1972 -Evel Knievel broke 93 bones after successfully jumping 35 cars.

1973 - The last airing of "Concentration" took place. The show had been on NBC for 15 years.

1980 - The deposed shah of Iran, Muhammad Riza Pahlavi, left Panama for Egypt.

1981 -U.S.Supreme Court upheld a law making statutory rape a crime for men but not women.

1981 - CBS Television announced plans to reduce "Captain Kangaroo" to a 30-minute show each weekday morning.

1983 -U.S. President Reagan first proposed development of technology to intercept enemy missiles. The proposal became known as the Strategic Defense Initiative and "Star Wars."

1983 - Dr. Barney Clark died after 112 days with a permanent artificial heart.

1989 - A 1,000-foot diameter asteroid missed Earth by 500,000 miles.

1989 - Joel Steinberg was sentenced to 25 years for killing his adopted daughter.

1989 - Two electrochemists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman, announced that they had created nuclear fusion in a test tube at room temperature.

1990 - Former Exxon Valdez Captain Joseph Hazelwood was ordered to help clean up Prince William Sound and pay $50,000 in restitution for the 1989 oil spill.

1993 - U.N. experts announced that record ozone lows had been registered over a large area of the Western Hemisphere.

1994 - Luis Donaldo Colosio, Mexico's leading presidential candidate, was assassinated in Tijuana. Mario Aburto Martinez was arrested at the scene and confessed to the killing.

1994 -Wayne Gretzky brokeGordie Howe's National Hockey League (NHL) career record with his 802nd goal.

1994 - Howard Stern formally announced his Libertarian run for New York governor.

1996 - Taiwan held its first democratic presidential elections.

1998 - Germany's largest bank pledged $3.1 million to Jewish foundations as restitution for Nazi looting.

1998 - TheU.S. Supreme Court ruled that term limits for state lawmakers were constitutional.

1998 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Cabinet.

1998 - The movie"Titanic" won 11 Oscars at the Academy Awards.

1998 - The German company Bertelsmann AG agreed to purchase the American publisher Random House for $1.4 billion. The merger created the largest English-language book-publishing company in the world.

1999 - Paraguay's Vice President Luis Maria Argana was shot to death by two gunmen.

1999 - NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana gave formal approval for air strikes against Serbian targets.

1999 - Near Mandi Bahauddin, Pakistan, a bus fell into a fast-moving canal. Nine were confirmed dead, 31 were missing and presumed dead, and 20 were injured.

2001 - Russia's orbiting Mir space station plunged into the South Pacific after its 15-years of use.

Today’s birthday celebrants include (or included)...

  • 1338 – Emperor Go-Kōgon of Japan (d. 1374)
  • 1430 – Margaret of Anjou (d. 1482)
  • 1599 – Thomas Selle, German composer (d. 1663)
  • 1699 – John Bartram, American botanist and explorer (d. 1777)
  • 1750 – Johannes Matthias Sperger, Austrian bassist and composer (d. 1812)
  • 1754 – Jurij Vega, Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer (d. 1802)
  • 1868 – Dietrich Eckart, German journalist and politician (d. 1923)
  • 1869 – Emilio Aguinaldo, Filipino general and politician, 1st President of the Philippines (d. 1964)
  • 1894 – Arthur Grimsdell, English footballer and cricketer (d. 1963)
  • 1895 – Encarnacion Alzona, Filipino historian and educator (d. 2001)
  • 1895 – Dane Rudhyar, French-American astrologer, author and composer (d. 1985)
  • 1898 – Louis Adamic, Slovenian-American author, translator and politician (d. 1951)
  • 1910 – Akira Kurosawa, Japanese director, producer and screenwriter (d. 1998)
  • 1912 – Eleanor Cameron, Canadian-American author and critic (d. 1996)
  • 1912 – Wernher von Braun, German physicist and engineer (d. 1977)
  • 1918 – Helene Hale, American politician (d. 2013)
  • 1919 – Carl Graffunder, American architect and educator (d. 2013)
  • 1923 – Angelo Ingrassia, American soldier and judge (d. 2013)
  • 1925 – David Watkin, English cinematographer (d. 2008)
  • 1929 – Roger Bannister, English runner, neurologist and academic
  • 1932 – Don Marshall, Canadian ice hockey player
  • 1934 – Mark Rydell, American actor, director and producer
  • 1935 – Barry Cryer, English comedian, actor and screenwriter
  • 1942 – Michael Haneke, Austrian director, producer and screenwriter
  • 1942 – Jimmy Miller, American record producer and musician (d. 1994)
  • 1949 – Ric Ocasek, American singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer
  • 1952 – Rex Tillerson, American businessman, engineer and diplomat; 69th United States Secretary of State
  • 1953 – Chaka Khan, American singer-songwriter
  • 1953 – Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Indian zoologist and businesswoman
  • 1954 – Kenneth Cole, American fashion designer, founded Kenneth Cole Productions
  • 1956 – Jeremy Wade, English biologist and author
  • 1957 – Amanda Plummer, American actress
  • 1959 – Catherine Keener, American actress
  • 1964 – Hope Davis, American actress
  • 1965 – Gary Whitehead, American poet and painter
  • 1968 – Mitch Cullin, American author
  • 1973 – Wim Eyckmans, Belgian racing driver
  • 1986 – Brett Eldredge, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
  • 1995 – Jan Lisiecki, Canadian pianist

David Latulippe is host of On the Arts, KALW's weekly radio magazine of the performing arts, as well as for Explorations in Music, and the Berkeley Symphony broadcasts. He has also hosted and produced the radio series From the Conservatory, Music from Mills, and Music at Menlo, and is principal guest host for Revolutions Per Minute.