Today in History

[TimSJ]

Jan 7 1943
Nikola Tesla dead. The inventor of alternating current, Tesla was driven mad by Edison and spent his final days trying to invent a death ray.

Jan 7 1948
Residents of Maysville and nearby towns report UFO sightings, and at 2:45 PM, the US Air National Guard investigates. Capt. Thomas Mantell radios that the craft is "metallic and tremendous in size". It may have been a weather balloon. At 3:18 PM Mantell's P-51 goes down, the first UFO related fatality.

Jan 7 1950
Thirty-nine lunatics and one normal person die in the Mercy Hospital fire, Davenport IA.

Jan 7 1961
Young hoodlum Al Pacino arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. He and his compatriots were driving around a suburb of Providence RI, in the middle of the night, wearing masks and gloves. Not suspicious at all.

Jan 7 1989
Marine biologist Emperor Hirohito dead from cancer. Prior to his scientific career, Hirohito was the highest profile unindicted war criminal, presiding over such events as the Rape of Nanking and the unnecessary deaths of over 1 million Japanese in 1945 after it became quite clear the war was lost.

[Looger]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 7 1943
Nikola Tesla dead. The inventor of alternating current, Tesla was driven mad by Edison and spent his final days trying to invent a death ray.

that's funny, i swear that in every book i've read on the subject tesla died penniless in a chicago hotel feeding pigeons in his room.

his death ray papers were confiscated by the FBI who raided his storage lockers. i'm really not convinced he was doing much research at that point, he was writing ideas down but the major tesla-style build-it-and-turn-the-#####er-on style of invention was not in practice.

alternating current, the hydroelectric dam, 3-phase AC (still in wide use today), tesla has the reputation of being screwed out of all his best ideas but that's not totally true.

when asked aboot marconi and his cross-atlantic radio transmission, tesla wished him luck as he was using 17 of nikola's patents.

in the very early 1900s tesla invented radio to control small boats remotely that he figured could mount explosives to allow guided torpedos, when demonstrated publicly tesla was such an odd duck that he would put the control in his pocket and claim that he was controlling the robots with the power of his mind - things like this gave him a cult-like status with the gullible and a charlatan reputation with the learned.

tesla in new york when he became wealthy would throw huge ornate dinner parties, don shoes with huge rubber soles, and have lightning dance from his fingertips like a god in demonstrations. some of these parties literally cost over a million dollars each.

even jp morgan, who got even richer with westinghouse all based on tesla's work and is reputed for robbing him blind (not far from the truth), would occasionally sneak him a lot of money out here and there - probably to steal more of his work!

it's true that much of tesla's research was lost in suspicious circumstances, he had a long-running feud with edison. he'd worked for edison when he first came over from paris and regarded the man as a complete and total moron and made no secret of that opinion. he described edison's research methods as (paraphrasing) 'looking for a needle in a haystack by picking up each needle and carefully studying it for minutes before placing it back on the stack and trying again', point of fact thomas actually lost a patent case while defending his claim on the lightbulb when he could not demonstrate in court that he knew ohm's law - as in his only invention was total blind luck and his other 'inventions' were business acquisitions for the most part.

edison sold DC power stations and he wanted to see them on every block as their range was atrocious, AC was a major threat to that inefficient and expensive dream. with westinghouse he eventually made a lot of money off AC however...

tesla would put huge crowds to sleep with his long and dull speeches, he'd go into gigantic descriptions of things like a brush with death he had as a small boy in croatia escaping death by waterfall and what it taught him aboot turbines for water generating electricity.

interesting fellow, i recommend to everyone to read as much as they can find on the man, there are many interpretations and no shortage of documentation and research notes. there's even some pretty funny anecdotes here and there, one of his friends was sam clemons (mark twain) and they would do wacky stuff like try out this huge vibrating platform that tesla used to test things (he and his overworked assistant used it to occasionally cure constipation), they both crapped their pants messing around with the contraption.

tesla is a man worth reading aboot.

[TimSJ]

Jan 8 1815
The Battle of New Orleans began. The War of 1812 had officially ended on December 24, 1814, with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. The news of the signing had not reached British troops in time to prevent their attack on New Orleans.

Jan 8 1880
Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, dead in San Francisco. Born Joshua A. Norton, he was adopted by the citizens of the city and issued frequent imperial proclamations.

Jan 8 1935
Elvis born, Tupelo Mississippi.

Jan 8 1973
Ed Kemper, Santa Cruz, California's own serial killer, shoots a hitchhiking co-ed. Her body is hidden at the home of Ed's mother to be molested and dismembered the next day.

Jan 8 1991
Guitarist Steve Clark from Def Leppard found dead from a drug and alcohol overdose. He was 31.

Jan 8 1992
George Bush, sick with the stomach flu, decides not to excuse himself at a Tokyo state dinner. He vomits in the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister while cameras are rolling, to the great amusement of everyone except the Prime Minister.

Jan 8 1998
Unabomber suspect Ted Kaczynski attempts to hang himself in his jail cell with his underwear. Let's hope for his mother's sake that the underwear he chose was clean.

[TimSJ]

Jan 9 1985 Flames set NHL record 264th regular season game without being shut-out

[pope04]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 9 1985 Flames set NHL record 264th regular season game without being shut-out

Now, I seem to remember it was Les Nordiques that broke the string.

Or maybe not.....memory's not what it used to be

[TimSJ]

Jan 9 1349
All the jews of Basel Switzerland are rounded up and incinerated, because they caused the bubonic plague.

Jan 9 1570
Ivan The Terrible, thinking that the town of Novgorod on the verge of defecting to Poland, commences a massacre on its citizens that lasts five long weeks. Every day men, women, and children are brutally murdered by flame or thrown in the Volkhov river. Estimates vary between 15,000 and 60,000 killed.

Jan 9 1913
Richard Nixon born.

Jan 9 1914
Birthday of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

Jan 9 1972
The luxury liner Queen Elizabeth is destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbor.

Jan 9 2002
The DOJ confirms reports that a criminal investigation of mega-corporation Enron has begun. The Texas energy profiteers gave loads of cash to the Republican party before accounting fraud and insider trading caused thousands of Enron employees to lose their savings and pensions.

[Looger]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 9 1349
All the jews of Basel Switzerland are rounded up and incinerated, because they caused the bubonic plague.

yep, nothing like a good scapegoat. interesting that during much of christian europe's past jews were not permitted to work in this or that trade, leaving pretty much only lending money, and if you were king and you owed them too much, you could always just kick them out.

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 9 1570
Ivan The Terrible, thinking that the town of Novgorod on the verge of defecting to Poland, commences a massacre on its citizens that lasts five long weeks. Every day men, women, and children are brutally murdered by flame or thrown in the Volkhov river. Estimates vary between 15,000 and 60,000 killed.

despite their having their own empire for awhile, i think in general history has been unkind to the poles as a national identity/language, imagine trying to defend saskatchewan from invasion...

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 9 1913
Richard Nixon born.

wasn't he the original gerber baby, or is that some futurama off-colour joke?

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 9 1972
The luxury liner Queen Elizabeth is destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbor.

as a kid on vancouver island i was fascinated when i first saw fire-fighting boats. imagine, being on fire surrounded by water! what a bizarre concept.

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 9 2002
The DOJ confirms reports that a criminal investigation of mega-corporation Enron has begun. The Texas energy profiteers gave loads of cash to the Republican party before accounting fraud and insider trading caused thousands of Enron employees to lose their savings and pensions.

it's cool, don't worry, the SEC files were all in world trade center 7 so case closed.

[TimSJ]

Jan 10 1645
Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud is beheaded with an axe on Tower Hill despite his trial ending without a verdict and having been granted a royal pardon years earlier.

Jan 10 1883
A fire at the six-story Newhall Hotel in Milwaukee kills 71 people. Two famous midgets residing there, General Tom Thumb and Commodore Nut, are rescued by firefighters.

Jan 10 1939
Linda Lovelace's birthday. She starred in Deep Throat, the most profitable adult movie in history, and certainly one of the most groundbreaking.
Jan 10 1982
The gayest Hollywood Square, Paul Lynde, dead naked in his West Hollywood home with a bottle of poppers (amyl nitrate, to relax muscles used during anal intercourse) next to the bed. By the next morning, Lynde's mysterious male companion had fled.

Jan 10 1998
German psychologist Heidi Fittkau-Garthe was charged in the Canary Islands with a plot of murder-suicide in which 31 cult followers, including five children, were to ingest poison. After the suicides they were to be picked up by spaceship for an unspecified destination.

[TimSJ]

Jan 11 1892
After sampling the services of many adolescent women in the tropics, the fifty year old painter Paul Gauguin marries Tehura, an awfully cute 13 year old Tahitian girl.

Jan 11 1922
At Toronto General Hospital, Leonard Thompson became the first person to be successfully treated with insulin.

Jan 11 1960
Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas kills his 74 year old mother. He tells Toledo police that he raped her corpse, but later recants this. The murder ends his career as a serial killer; he is variously attributed to having killed between 100 and 600 people. The truth is probably below 100.

Jan 11 1962
In the Peruvian Andes, an avalanche buries 3,000 people alive as the volcano Huascaran erupts.

Jan 11 1964
The US Surgeon General warns against smoking for the first time. It's amazing how many dumb****s need to be told that inhaling smoke is harmful.

Jan 11 1966
Numerous people, including the mayor of Wanaque and their police chief, observe a UFO over Wanaque Reservoir, burning holes in the ice. The Air Force explained it as a weather balloon, but later withdrew that claim and called it a helicopter.

[TimSJ]

Jan 12 1865
General William T. Sherman issues Special Field Order No. 15, entitling the household of each freed slave "a plot of no more than forty acres of tillable ground" along the Carolina coastline between Charleston and Jacksonville. After the Confederate surrender, the Johnson administration makes a halfhearted attempt to follow through on the acreage, but all efforts to parcel out the land in question are abandoned just a few months later.

Jan 12 1914
Industrialist Henry Ford offers the incredible sum of a $5 per day wage for unskilled labor (previously $2.34), but only to married white Christian men willing to subject themselves to surveillance and random home inspections by the company's Sociology Department.

Jan 12 1928
Murderer Ruth Snyder executed in the Electric Chair at Ossining. Photographer Thomas Howard catches the moment of death with a camera secretly strapped to his ankle, and the photo runs on the front page of the New York Daily News.

Jan 12 1965
At 10:58 a.m. PST, scientists conduct what they called a "controlled excursion", burning up a nuclear rocket in Nevada and putting a radioactive cloud over Los Angeles.

Jan 12 1966
Premiere on television of the homoerotic comedy "Batman" starring Adam West and Burt Ward.

Jan 12 1971
The first episode of "All in the Family" made television history by broadcasting the sound of a toilet flushing.

Jan 12 1979
One of the Hillside Stranglers, security guard Kenneth Bianchi, is arrested in Bellingham, Washington for a pair of rape/strangulations. After he moved north from Los Angeles he made the mistake of continuing his high profile hobby.

Jan 12 1993
A transcript of the infamous 1989 intercepted phone call between Camilla and Prince Charles is published by the Sun. "I'll just live inside your trousers or something". Good god. Advice Re: Camilla -- that tuna can't possibly taste good.

[Frank the Tank]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 12 1965
At 10:58 a.m. PST, scientists conduct what they called a "controlled excursion", burning up a nuclear rocket in Nevada and putting a radioactive cloud over Los Angeles.

Oh thats got Looger's name all over it! Just kidding Looger!

[Looger]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 12 1865
General William T. Sherman issues Special Field Order No. 15, entitling the household of each freed slave "a plot of no more than forty acres of tillable ground" along the Carolina coastline between Charleston and Jacksonville. After the Confederate surrender, the Johnson administration makes a halfhearted attempt to follow through on the acreage, but all efforts to parcel out the land in question are abandoned just a few months later.

wasn't this guy responsible for the flames' moniker by burning down an entire city?

hard to believe someone like that could betray someone...

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 12 1914
Industrialist Henry Ford offers the incredible sum of a $5 per day wage for unskilled labor (previously $2.34), but only to married white Christian men willing to subject themselves to surveillance and random home inspections by the company's Sociology Department.

henry ford was... an interesting fellow.

i haven't read his book called 'the international jew' but seems to be one of these guys that saw zionist conspiracies in every closet and under every bed. funny but in everything i read aboot the federal reserve act of 1913, there were plenty of christian international bankers involved, the myth that the 'new world order' is a jewish one is one hell of a cloak - everyone claiming banking interests are at least partly behind wars or economic collapses is automatically an anti-semite!

he did say something like 'if every common man knew the truth aboot how much he's been stolen from there would be a revolution before morning.'

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 12 1928
Murderer Ruth Snyder executed in the Electric Chair at Ossining. Photographer Thomas Howard catches the moment of death with a camera secretly strapped to his ankle, and the photo runs on the front page of the New York Daily News.

'old sparky'? seems a particularly bizarre and inhumane form of execution... could it have more to do with gadgetry and a high-tech image, i mean where in humanity's past did someone look back and say 'we need a new way to kill people!'

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 12 1965
At 10:58 a.m. PST, scientists conduct what they called a "controlled excursion", burning up a nuclear rocket in Nevada and putting a radioactive cloud over Los Angeles.

i cannot conceive how anyone can look back at things like this and assume that this kind of thing is not happening today. flabergasts me almost as much as the operation of sewing machines and velcro.

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 12 1966
Premiere on television of the homoerotic comedy "Batman" starring Adam West and Burt Ward.

holy cliche factory batman!

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 12 1971
The first episode of "All in the Family" made television history by broadcasting the sound of a toilet flushing.

man, does that show spew the racial slurs! i know that conventional wisdom says that tv is 'edgier' these days but only in some directions, this show dropped n-bombs more times in one episode then i'd imagine all of today's network television all year.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Looger

man, does that show spew the racial slurs! i know that conventional wisdom says that tv is 'edgier' these days but only in some directions, this show dropped n-bombs more times in one episode then i'd imagine all of today's network television all year.

IIRC didn't Archie when trying to be politically correct refer to them as darkies. This sitcom was maybe more of a political statement then a comedy. I think it made so called middle America think, because atitudes have sure changed since when I was a kid, for the better.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Looger

'old sparky'? seems a particularly bizarre and inhumane form of execution... could it have more to do with gadgetry and a high-tech image, i mean where in humanity's past did someone look back and say 'we need a new way to kill people!'

i cannot conceive how anyone can look back at things like this and assume that this kind of thing is not happening today. flabergasts me almost as much as the operation of sewing machines and velcro.

They concluded at the time that old sparky was probably one of the quickest, cleanest, and most efficient ways to kill people. Also unlike hangings, there was next to no chance that somebody would walk away from the chair. I believe General Electric also invented a portable electric chair that they could haul from town to town to execute prisoners. So one day a week you would literally see a lineup of convicts waiting to die, according to the design specs of this device. Of course they eventually deemed that the electric chair was a cruel death and moved to gassing, however they found out that some people took up to 20 minutes to depart this plain of existance. They moved to lethal injection, to avoid the cruel and unusual punishment death penalty challenges, since it was deemed as both a 100% effective method of painless and cruelty free execution, so now cruel and unusual punishment arguments are focusing around the lenght of time that a prisoner has to wait to die.

Originally Posted by Looger

man, does that show spew the racial slurs! i know that conventional wisdom says that tv is 'edgier' these days but only in some directions, this show dropped n-bombs more times in one episode then i'd imagine all of today's network television all year.

That show had nothing on the movie blazing saddles as illustrated by my sig.

[Looger]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

They concluded at the time that old sparky was probably one of the quickest, cleanest, and most efficient ways to kill people. Also unlike hangings, there was next to no chance that somebody would walk away from the chair.

does anyone know how that law works, is it different in every state? if you survive the attempt are you free to go? has that ever happened? that would be interesting.

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I believe General Electric also invented a portable electric chair that they could haul from town to town to execute prisoners. So one day a week you would literally see a lineup of convicts waiting to die, according to the design specs of this device. Of course they eventually deemed that the electric chair was a cruel death and moved to gassing, however they found out that some people took up to 20 minutes to depart this plain of existance. They moved to lethal injection, to avoid the cruel and unusual punishment death penalty challenges, since it was deemed as both a 100% effective method of painless and cruelty free execution, so now cruel and unusual punishment arguments are focusing around the lenght of time that a prisoner has to wait to die.

i think i remember you listing your preferred execution hierarchy in that creepy saudi executionist interview clip thread, the firing squad i would consider a decent way to go even though it's not instant and probably painful. but shot through the heart or through the head i would prefer to being electrocuted...

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

That show had nothing on the movie blazing saddles as illustrated by my sig.

ain't that the truth. i remember an interview with mel brooks somewhere (i think on rottentomatoes.com or an imdb.com link) where whoever was releasing / distributing the movie said 'no way, recut it' and he said, yep, no problem, and they didn't recheck it so it was released without alteration. i wonder if that's true, that is funny stuff!

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Jan 12 1928
Murderer Ruth Snyder executed in the Electric Chair at Ossining. Photographer Thomas Howard catches the moment of death with a camera secretly strapped to his ankle, and the photo runs on the front page of the New York Daily News.

That guy must have had a hell of a limp strolling into the death house with one of these babies

strapped to his ankle. I'm surprised nobody noticed.

[Looger]

hey you strapped into the chair - stay still!

[TimSJ]

Jan 13 1943
Hitler declares "Total War".

Jan 13 1959
Raul Castro, brother of Fidel, lines up 71 Batista supporters in front of a trench and machine guns them. They are then buried by a tractor without any verification that the prisoners were killed.

Jan 13 1962
Television comedy pioneer Ernie Kovacs drives his "unsafe at any speed" Corvair into a utility pole on Santa Monica Boulevard, killing him instantly and turning The Nairobi Trio into a Duo.

Jan 13 1979
The Young Men's Christian Association files a libel suit against the Village People for their popular Y.M.C.A hit.

Jan 13 1984
Wayne Gretsky extended his consecutive scoring streak to 45 games.

Jan 13 1987
New York mobsters Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno and Carmine "Junior" Persico sentenced to 100 years of prison for racketeering, along with six others. All were members of the Mafia "board of directors"

Jan 13 1991
Forty-two people are killed in a soccer stampede and melee at Johannesburg, South Africa.

Jan 13 1998
A woman taking a tour of the White House applies spray paint to two early 19th century marble busts modeled by Giuseppi Ceracchi. No clear motive exists for the vandalism, and it it not clear how spray paint was brought through White House security. Spokesman Mike McCurry stated, "it looks like a bad rouge job on the busts".

[TimSJ]

Jan 14 1601
Authorities of the Catholic Church burn a large percentage of the Hebrew books in Rome. Monks targeted the books because they felt they portrayed Jesus in a blasphemous manner. It would have been healthier to burn the monks.

Jan 14 1943
Actress Frances Farmer forcefully taken to jail for parole violations with regard to her drunk driving conviction. She states her occupation as "##########", receives a 180 day sentence, and some days later is committed to an insane asylum where she receives a lobotomy five years later.

Jan 14 1967
The New York Times reports that the Army is conducting biological germ warfare experiments in secret.

Jan 14 1978
Serial killer Ted Bundy stuns the nation when he breaks into a sorority at Florida State University in Tallahassee, killing two girls and attacking three others. One of the dead girls, Lisa Levy, was found with a Clairol hairspray bottle rammed into her vagina. The bite mark on her buttocks would later be used as evidence to help convict Bundy.

Jan 14 1984
The BBC announces that it will no longer play Frankie Goes To Hollywood single "Relax", because of its obscene lyrics.

Jan 14 1990
Debut of The Simpsons on Fox.

Jan 14 1991
Tyne Daly (the fat one from "Cagney and Lacy") is arrested for drunk driving in Van Nuys, CA.

Jan 14 1998
Jewish extremists Avigdor Eskin and Haim Pakovich are charged in a plot to catapult a pig's head containing the Koran into Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock mosque, in order to spark tensions between Jews and Arabs. It is the latest in a series of pig and pighead incidents by Jewish agitants.

Jan 14 1998
A spokesman for the National Criminal Intelligence Service (United Kingdom) announced to the media that it had encountered ecstasy pills bearing the names of Lady Diana and Dodi Fayed, as well as some displaying the Mercedes logo, the brand of car involved in the fatal accident. The reverse side shows the letters "RIP".

[TimSJ]

Jan 15 1919
In Boston, an immense storage tank alongside a rum distillery suddenly explodes, producing a flash flood of 2.3 million gallons of sticky molasses. Whole buildings are knocked off their foundations and reduced to rubble by an eight-foot wall of liquid traveling 35 miles per hour. 21 killed and 150 injured as a result of this industrial accident.

Jan 15 1947
The body of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short is discovered in a vacant lot, her mutilated corpse chopped in half at the waist. Her murder is known as The Black Dahlia Murder, one of the most lurid murder cases in Los Angeles history. The murderer was never found.

Jan 15 1951
A gaseous volcanic "Cloud of Death" descends from Mount Lamington, New Guinea, killing 5,000.

Jan 15 1974
The first episode of Happy Days airs. Potsie sets Richie up with that Mary Lou slut.

Jan 15 1983
Meyer Lansky, retired Jewish organized crime genius, Godfather of the Mafia, dead of a fatal nosebleed at Mount Sinai Hospital. It is not clear where Lansky's estimated $300 million fortune went.

Jan 15 1988
Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder's racist statements regarding the breeding history of slaves and black athletes costs him his job at CBS