On This Day...

James Stewart in Harvey, playing Elwood P Dowd, one of his most famous roles

History
1506 - Christopher Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain.

1520 - Herán Cortés defeats Spanish troops that had been sent to punish him in Mexico.

1690 - England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.

1774 - Britain's Parliament passes the Coercive Acts to punish the American colonists for their increasingly anti-British behaviour.

1775 - North Carolina becomes the first colony to declare its independence. 86 years later, in 1861 it is the eleventh state to secede from the Union.

1830 - The fountain pen is patented by H.D. Hyde.

1874 - Levi Strauss begins marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.

1902 - The US military occupation of Cuba ends.

1927 - Charles Lindbergh takes off from New York to cross the Atlantic for Paris aboard his aeroplane the Spirit of St. Louis. The trip took 33 1/2 hours.

1932 - Amelia Earhart takes off to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She became the first woman to achieve the feat.

1939 - The first telecast over telephone wires is sent from Madison Square Garden to the NBC-TV studios at 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The event was a bicycle race.

1939 - The first regular air-passenger service across the Atlantic Ocean begins with the take-off of the Yankee Clipper from Port Washington, New York.

1978 - Mavis Hutchinson, at age 53, becomes the first woman to run across America. It took Hutchinson 69 days to run the 3,000 miles.

1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope sends back its first photographs.

1993 - The final episode of Cheers is aired on NBC-TV.

1996 - The US Supreme Court struck down a Colorado measure banning laws that would protect homosexuals from discrimination.

Happy Birthday
William Thornton, American inventor and painter; designed the United States Capitol: 1759 - 1828

Honoré de Balzac, French novelist: 1799 - 1850

John Stuart Mill, British philosopher: 1806 - 1873

William George Fargo, American expressman, organizer of Wells, Fargo & Company, currently known as American Express: 1818 - 1881

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau, French painter: 1844 - 1910

Jimmy Stewart, American actor (Philadelphia Story, The Glenn Miller Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Harvey): 1908 - 1997

William R. Hewlett, Co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Company (HP): 1913 - 2001

Joe Cocker, British singer and songwriter: b.1944

Cher (Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre), American "singer" and "actress" (Moonstruck, The Witches of Eastwick, Silkwood, Mask): b.1946

Busta Rhymes, American rapper: b.1972