July 29th

 

Birthdays

Booth Tarkington 1869
Benito Mussolini 1883
Sigmund Romberg 1887
Clara Bow 1894
Melvin Belli 1907
Stephen McNally 1913
Richard Egan 1923
Lloyd Bochner 1924
Robert Horton 1924
Ted Lindsay 1925
Don Carter 1926
Paul Taylor 1930
Randy Sparks (New Christy Minstrels) 1933
Robert Fuller 1934
Peter Jennings 1938
David Warner 1941
Neal Doughty (REO Speedwagon) 1946
Simon Kirk (Bad Company) 1949
Ken Burns 1953
Geddy Lee (Rush) 1953
Michael Biehn 1956
Patti Scialia (E Street Band) 1956
Alexandra Paul 1963
Martina McBride 1966
Chris Gorman (Belly) 1967
Wil Wheaton 1972
Stephen Dorff 1973
Wanya Morris (Boyz II Men) 1973
 

Misc. History


1588 - The English defeated the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines.

1754 - The first international boxing match was held. The 25-minute match was won when Jack Slack of Britain knocked out Jean Petit from France.

1773 - The first schoolhouse to be located west of the Allegheny Mountains was built in Schoenbrunn, OH.

1786 - "The Pittsburgh Gazette" became the first newspaper west of the Alleghenies to be published. The paper's name was later changed to "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette".

1874 - Major Walter Copton Winfield of England received U.S. patent for the lawn-tennis court.

1890 - Artist Vincent van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers, France.

1914 - The first transcontinental telephone service was inaugurated when two people held a conversation between New York, NY and San Francisco, CA.

1940 - John Sigmund of St. Louis, MO completed a 292-mile swim down the Mississippi River. The swim from St. Louis to Caruthersville, MO took him 89 hours and 48 minutes.

1950 - Disney's adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" was released.

1957 - Jack Paar began hosting the "Tonight" show on NBC-TV. The name of the show was changed to "The Jack Paar Show". Paar was host for five years.

1957 - The International Atomic Energy Agency was established.

1958 - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1967 - Fire swept the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin. 134 U.S. servicemen were killed.

1968 - Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's stance against artificial methods of birth control.

1975 - OAS (Organization of American States) members voted to lift collective sanctions against Cuba. The U.S. government welcomed the action and announced its intention to open serious discussions with Cuba on normalization.

1981 - England's Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were married.

1983 - Steve Garvey of the Los Angeles Dodgers set the National League consecutive game record at 1,207.

1985 - General Motors announced that Spring Hill, TN, would be the home of the Saturn automobile assembly plant.

1993 - The Israeli Supreme Court acquitted retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk of being Nazi death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible." His death sentence was thrown out and he was set free.

1997 - Minamata Bay in Japan was declared free of mercury 40 years after contaminated food fish were blamed for deaths and birth defects.

1998 - The United Auto Workers union ended a 54-day strike against General Motors. The strike caused $2.8 billion in lost revenues.

1999 - Mark O. Barton killed nine people and wounded 13 others in a shooting rampage in Atlanta, GA. He wife and two children had been found bludgeoned to death earlier in the day.

2005 - Astronomers announced that they had discovered a new planet larger than Pluto in orbit around the sun.