Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Today in History

Just can't think of anything to post right now; but since this is the end of the year, and everybody is feeling in more or less a nostalgic mood, I thought a this-day-in-history piece wouldn't be bad. Incidentally, the figure pictured to the right is Clio, the Greek muse of history.

1460: The Battle of Wakefield, a major battle in the Wars of the Roses, takes place. Richard Plantagenet, Third Duke of York and claimant to the throne, is killed. Although his death in battle comes betwixt the coronation and his hopes, two of his sons (Edward IV and Richard III) become kings.

1640: Death of St. John Francis Regis, patron of lacemakers and founder of the Confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament.

1862: Sinking of the U.S.S. Monitor, the U.S. Navy's first ironclad ship.

1865: English writer Rudyard Kipling is born.

1884: Hideki Tojo, Japan's wartime prime minister, is born.

1905: Former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg is assassinated at his home in Caldwell by a bomb on his gate. Steunenberg's statue stands directly in front of the State House, across Jefferson Street.

1919: Lincoln's Inn, to which St. Thomas More belonged, admits its first female member.

1928: Bo Diddley, who died in June of this year, is born.

1942, 1945: Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones, two of the Monkees, are born.

1975: Tiger Woods is born.

1979: Richard Rodgers, of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame, dies.

1993: The Vatican opens diplomatic relations with the State of Israel.

1996: Death of actor Lew Ayres.

2006: Saddam Hussein kicks the bucket at the end of a rope.

See? At least now you have something you didn't have before: some more trivial information for use at cocktail parties.

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