 |
7/1/1862 - The 1st federal polygamy legislation was enacted. |
 |
7/1/1863 - The Civil War battle of Gettysburg began. |
 |
7/1/1898 - During the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt & his
Rough Riders waged a victorious assault on San Juan Hill in Cuba. |
 |
7/1/1943 - 'Pay-as-you-go' income tax withholding began. |
 |
7/1/1944 - Delegates from 44 countries met at Bretton Woods, NH, where
they agreed to establish the International Monetary Fund & World Bank. |
 |
7/1/1946 - The US exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in
the Pacific. |
 |
7/1/1963 - The US Post Office 1st began using Zip Codes. |
 |
7/1/1968 - The US, Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other countries
signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. |
 |
7/1/1991 - President GHW Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme
Court ... and the battle began! |
 |
7/1/1997 - Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule after 156 years as a
British colony. |
 |
7/2/1776 - The Continental Congress passed a resolution saying "these
United Colonies are, and of right, out to be, Free and Independent
States." |
 |
7/2/1926 - The US Army Air Corps began. |
 |
7/2/1962 - Ernest Hemingway, the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in
literature, died at 62 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
 |
7/2/1964 - President Lyndon Johnson signed a sweeping civil rights bill. |
 |
7/2/1976 - The Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently
cruel or unusual. |
 |
7/2/2009 - Salvation Army Founders Day |
 |
7/3/1608 - Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Quebec. |
 |
7/3/1775 - General George Washington took command of the Continental
Army at Cambridge MA. |
 |
7/3/1930 - Congress created the US Veterans Administration. |
 |
7/3/1962 - Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule. |
 |
7/3/1971 - Jim Morrison died in Paris. The official cause of death was a
heart attack. |
 |
7/3/2009 - Festival of Cerridwen - Wicca/Celtic |
 |
7/4/1776 - The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of
Independence. |
 |
7/4/1802 - The US Military Academy officially opened at West Point NY. |
 |
7/4/1831 - Dr. Samuel Francis Smith, a Baptist minister in Boston, wrote
America. He scribbled
his original words to a melody he found in a German songbook not
realizing it was the British national anthem. Hours later, the
congregation of Boston's Park Street Church sang it for the 1st
time. |
 |
7/4/1826 - Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence,
died at Monticello VA. |
 |
7/4/1826 - John Adams died in Quincy MA. |
 |
7/4/1884 - France presented the Statue of Liberty to the US as a gift. |
 |
7/4/2009 - Happy Independence Day! |
 |
7/5/1811 - Venezuela became the 1st South American country to
declare its independence from Spain. |
 |
7/5/1865 - William Booth founded the Salvation Army in London. |
 |
7/5/1946 - The bikini made its debut during an outdoor fashion show at
the Molitor Pool in Paris. |
 |
7/5/1975 - Arthur Ashe became the 1st black man to win a
Wimbledon singles title as he defeated Jimmy Connors. |
 |
7/5/1984 - The Supreme Court weakened the 70-year-old "exclusionary
rule," deciding that evidence seized with defective court warrants could
be used against defendants in criminal trials. |
 |
7/6/1854 - The 1st official meeting of the Republican Party
took place in Jackson MI. |
 |
7/6/1923 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formed. |
 |
7/6/1933 - The 1st All-Star baseball game took place at
Chicago's Comiskey Park. The American League defeated the National
League 4 to 2. |
 |
7/6/1945 - President Truman signed an executive order establishing the
Medal of Freedom. |
 |
7/6/1967 - The Biafran War erupted. The war lasted over two years and
claimed over 600,000 lives. |
 |
7/6/2009 - Birth of the Dalai Lama - Buddhist |
 |
7/7/1865 - Officials hanged four people in Washington for conspiring
with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Lincoln. |
 |
7/7/1898 - The US annexed Hawaii. |
 |
7/7/1958 - President Eisenhower signed the Alaska statehood bill. |
 |
7/7/1981 - President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona judge
Sandra Day O'Connor as the 1st female justice on the US
Supreme Court. |
 |
7/7/2009 - Asalha Puja Day (Dharma Day) - Buddhism |
 |
7/8/1663 - King Charles II of England granted a charter to Rhode Island. |
 |
7/8/1856 - Charles Barnes of Lowell, Massachusetts patented the 1st
machine gun. |
 |
7/8/1889 - The Wall Street Journal was 1st published. |
 |
7/8/1947 - The US Army swore in its 1st women recruits. |
 |
7/8/1950 - General Douglas MacArthur became commander-in-chief of UN
forces in Korea. |
 |
7/9/1872 - John Blondell of Thomaston MN patented the doughnut cutter. |
 |
7/9/1893 - Doctors performed the 1st successful open-heart
surgery. |
 |
7/9/1896 - William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous
Cross of Gold speech at
the Democratic national convention in Chicago. |
 |
7/9/2009 -
Martyrdom of the Bab - Baha'i |
 |
7/10/1850 - Vice President Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency
following the death of President Taylor. |
 |
7/10/1919 - President Wilson personally delivered the Treaty of
Versailles to the Senate and urged its ratification. |
 |
7/10/1991 - Boris Yeltsin took the oath of office as the 1st
elected president of the Russian Republic. |
 |
7/10/1992 - A federal judge in Miami sentenced former Panamanian leader
Manuel Noriega, convicted of drug and racketeering charges, to 40 years
in prison. The sentence was later cut to 10 years. |
 |
7/11/1533 - Pope Clement VII excommunicated England's King Henry XIII. |
 |
7/11/1798 - A congressional act formally reestablished the Marine Corps
and created the Marine Band. |
 |
7/11/1864 - Confederate forces led by General Jubal Early began an
abortive invasion of Washington DC, turning back the next day. |
 |
7/11/1977 - The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to the
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. |
 |
7/11/2009 - World Population Day |
 |
7/12/100 BC - Roman Dictator Julius Caesar was born. |
 |
7/12/1817 - Naturalist-author Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord
MA. |
 |
7/12/1862 - Congress authorized the Medal of Honor. |
 |
7/12/1881 - William H. Bonney Jr., AKA Billy the Kid, was shot and
killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner NM. |
 |
7/13/1960 - John Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at
his party's convention in Los Angeles. |
 |
7/13/1977 - A blackout lasting 25 hours hit the New York area. (There
were a lot of kids born 9 months later!) |
 |
7/13/2009 -
Ullambana (O-Bon / Festival of Souls lunar) begins – Buddhism / Shinto |
 |
7/14/1798 - Congress passed the Sedition Act making it a federal crime
to publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the US
government. |
 |
7/14/1933 - The German government outlawed all political parties except
the Nazi Party. |
 |
7/14/1958 - The army of Iraq overthrew the monarchy. |
 |
7/15/1606 - Dutch painter Rembrandt was born. |
 |
7/15/1870 - Georgia became the last Confederate state readmitted to the
Union. |
 |
7/15/1964 - Senator Barry Goldwater won the nomination for president at
the Republican national convention in San Francisco. |
 |
7/15/1998 - The Congressional Budget Office estimated federal surpluses
of $1.55 trillion over the next decade. (My, how times have changed!) |
 |
7/16/1790 - The District of Columbia became the seat of the US
government. |
 |
7/16/1918 - The Bolsheviks executed Russian Czar Nicholas II and his
family. |
 |
7/16/1945 - The US exploded its 1st experimental atomic bomb
in the desert near Alamogordo NM. |
 |
7/16/1951 - JD Salinger's Catcher
in the Rye was 1st published. |
 |
7/16/1964 - In accepting the Republican presidential nomination in San
Francisco, Barry Goldwater said "extremism in the defense of liberty
is no vice." Does anyone still believe that? |
 |
7/16/1979 - Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. |
 |
7/17/1821 - Spain ceded Florida to the US. |
 |
7/17/1945 - President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin & British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill met at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of
WWII. |
 |
7/17/2009 -
Ullambana (O-Bon / Festival of Souls lunar) ends – Buddhism / Shinto |
 |
7/18/64 AD - The Great Fire of Rome began. |
 |
7/18/1947 - President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act,
which placed the speaker of the House & the Senate president pro tempore
next in the line of succession after the vice president. |
 |
7/18/1969 - Ted Kennedy drove off the Dike Bridge killing Mary Jo
Kopechne. He received a two month suspended sentence for leaving the
scene of the accident. |
 |
7/19/1848 - A pioneer women's rights convention opened in Seneca Falls,
NY. |
 |
7/19/1941 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his "V for
Victory" campaign in Europe. |
 |
7/19/1969 - Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz
Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon. |
 |
7/19/1979 - The Nicaraguan capital of Managua fell to Sandinista
guerrillas two days after President Anastasio Somoza had fled the
country. |
 |
7/19/1993 - President Clinton announced a compromise allowing
homosexuals to serve in the military if they refrained from all
homosexual activity ... the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. It probably
should have been called "don't ask, don't act." |
 |
7/19/2009 - Lailat al Miraj (The Prophet's Night Journey to
Jerusalem & Ascension) - Muslim |
 |
7/20/1861 - The Congress of the Confederate States began holding
sessions in Richmond VA. |
 |
7/20/1881 - Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the
Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops. |
 |
7/20/1942 - The 1st detachment of the Women's Army Auxiliary
Corps, later known as WACs, began basic training at Fort Des Moines IA. |
 |
7/20/1944 - An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate
Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed. |
 |
7/20/1969 - Apollo 11
astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the 1st
men to walk on the moon. |
 |
7/20/2009 - Moon Day |
 |
7/20/2009 - Lailat al Miraj – Muslim |
 |
7/21/1861 - The South won the 1st Battle of Bull Run at
Manassas VA. |
 |
7/21/1925 - The Monkey Trial
ended in Dayton, TN with John Scopes convicted of violating state law
for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The conviction was later
overturned. |
 |
7/21/1949 - The US Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty ... which
created NATO. |
 |
7/21/1954 - France surrendered North Vietnam to the Communists. |
 |
7/21/1980 - Draft registration began in the US for 19- and 20-year-old
men. |
 |
7/22/1934 - Federal agents shot John Dillinger to death in Chicago. |
 |
7/22/1937 - The Senate rejected President Roosevelt's proposal to add
more justices to the Supreme Court. |
 |
7/22/1975 - The House joined the Senate in voting to restore the
American citizenship of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. |
 |
7/23/1846 - Protesting slavery and the US involvement in the Mexican
War, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his $1 poll tax and the Concord
MA constable jailed him. This experience moved him to write
Civil Disobedience. |
 |
7/23/1904 - Charles Menches invented the ice cream cone during the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. |
 |
7/23/1914 - Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia for the
killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin. The dispute
led to WWI. |
 |
7/23/1979 - Ayatollah Khomeini banned Rock and Roll music in Iran. |
 |
7/23/2009 - National Hotdog Day |
 |
7/23/2009 - Birthday of Haile Selassie I -
Rastafarian |
 |
7/24/1929 - President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which
renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy. |
 |
7/24/1946 - The US detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the
Pacific in the 1st underwater test of the device. |
 |
7/24/1974 - The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Nixon had
to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate
special prosecutor. |
 |
7/24/2009 – Pioneer Day - LDS |
 |
7/25/1593 - France's King Henry IV converted from Protestantism to Roman
Catholicism. |
 |
7/25/1946 - The US detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the
Pacific in the 1st underwater test of the device. |
 |
7/25/1952 - Puerto Rica became a self-governing commonwealth of the US. |
 |
7/25/2009 - Papa Ogou (St Jacques le Majeur) - Voudon |
 |
7/26/1775 - Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General. |
 |
7/26/1947 - President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating
the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central
Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. |
 |
7/26/1953 - Fidel Castro began his revolt against Fulgencio Batista with
an unsuccessful attack on an army barracks in eastern Cuba. Castro
ousted Batista in 1959. |
 |
7/26/1990 - President GHW Bush signed into law the Americans with
Disabilities Act. |
 |
7/26/2009 -
Parents’
Day |
 |
7/26/2009 - Gran'Dlai et Gran'Aloumandia (Sainte Anne) - Voudon |
 |
7/27/1794 - French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was
overthrown and placed under arrest. He was executed the following day. |
 |
7/27/1953 - The Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending
three years of fighting. |
 |
7/27/1974 - The House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend President
Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he had personally engaged in a
course of conduct designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case. |
 |
7/27/2009 -
Korean
War Veterans Armistice Day |
 |
7/28/1868 - The 14th Amendment to the Constitution,
guaranteeing due process of law, took effect. |
 |
7/28/1945 - A US Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of
New York's Empire State Building, killing 14 people. |
 |
7/29/1030 - The patron saint of Norway, King Olaf II, died in battle. |
 |
7/29/1890 - Artist Vincent van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot
wound in France. |
 |
7/29/1958 - President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and
Space Act, which created NASA. |
 |
7/29/2009 - Maitresse Silverine - Voudon |
 |
7/30/1729 - The city of Baltimore was founded. |
 |
7/30/1885 - Jean Francois Gravelet stepped out over Niagara Falls for
the 1st tightrope walk over the famous waterfall. She did it
on a 3" rope stretched 1,166 feet. |
 |
7/30/1942 - President Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women's
auxiliary agency in the Nave known as the WAVES (Women Accepted for
Volunteer Emergency Service). |
 |
7/30/1965 - President Johnson signed into law the Medicare bill ...
which went into effect the following year. |
 |
7/30/2009 - Tisha B'av - Judaism |
 |
7/31/1777 - The Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman,
became a major-general in the American Continental Army. |
 |
7/31/1919 - Germany adopted its Weimar Constitution. |
 |
7/31/1991 - President GHW Bush and Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow. |
 |
7/31/2009
– Lammas
-
Wicca/Celtic |


Web Sites of Interest
o
Law Library of Congress: North Korea
-
Collection of links to websites on North Korea government, politics, and law.
Includes legal guides, country studies, and links to constitutions and branches
of government (where available).
o
Council on Foreign Relations: North Korea
-
Background,
articles, and opinion pieces about North Korea government and politics. Many of
the articles focus on North Korea's nuclear program. From the Council on Foreign
Relations, "an independent membership organization and a nonpartisan think tank
and publisher."
o
State
of the Union (SOTU)
-
The site
uses an interactive timeline to provide a visual representation of prominent
words in presidential State of the Union addresses by displaying significant
words as "determined by comparing how frequently the word occurs in the document
to how frequently it appears throughout the entire body of SOTU addresses." The
"Appendices" section describes the statistical methods used. Also includes the
full text of addresses.
o
Supreme Court Nominations Not Confirmed - Reasons
include "Senate opposition to the nominating President, nominee's views, or
incumbent Court; senatorial courtesy; perceived political unreliability of the
nominee; perceived lack of ability; interest group opposition; and fear of
altering the balance of the Court. These nominations have been the subject of
extensive legal, historical, and political science writing, a selected list of
which is included in this report." A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report
for Congress. Opens directly into a PDF file.
o
Small Town Papers - This site
provides access to scanned images of recent issues of dozens of small town
newspapers from throughout the United States. "Newspapers are updated
periodically, 2-3 weeks after publication." The site also includes a searchable
archive (of articles, photos, and advertisements), which covers different
periods for each paper, some as far back as the 1890s. Access to the archives
requires free registration.
o
A
summary of the US Supreme Court's 2005 ruling on eminent domain
allowing "local governments to expropriate private property for development."
Includes links to statements from organizations on both sides of the argument as
well as to Supreme Court documents about the case (Kelo v. New London). From
JURIST: The Legal Education Network.
o
This
website "serves as a centralized location to learn about the
Congressional Research Service and
search for CRS reports that have been released to the public by members of
Congress." ("CRS Reports do not become public until a member of Congress
releases the report.") Features a searchable database with more than 8,000
reports, a list of recently released reports, other collections of CRS reports,
and a FAQ about CRS.
o
Stem Cell
Research - The official National Institutes of Health resource for stem cell
research is at
http://stemcells.nih.gov/index.asp. In
2005, NOVA aired an overview of the issue, at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3209/04.html. A 2001 Time Magazine feature is at
www.time.com/time/2001/stemcells.
o
Instances of Use of
United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 - 2004 - This report
lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its armed forces
abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other
than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older lists
and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past US military ventures
abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted.
o
Government Product Recalls
o
Homeland Security
Knowledgebase
o
If you're
worried about retirement, try some of the following sites:
IRS Tax Information for Retirement Plans
Social Security Retirement Planner
Retirement Planning Resources from
Smart Money
Personal Financial Planning Tools from Business Week
o
Keeping the Shi'ites Straight - Based on the
opinion that "no story has been more confusing for the Western news media to
cover in postwar Iraq than the politics of the country's Shi'ite majority," this
article provides a basic outline of Shi'ite religious history. Discusses the
Sadr family (Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and
Muqtada as-Sadr), Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, and other figures.
o
MILITARY DEATH TOLL IN IRAQ - Developed "to
provide information that has been scrupulously culled from government sources
and cross-checked against other existing lists" about the military death toll in
Iraq. It features statistics about fatalities and injuries for Iraqi Coalition
armed forces. Data may be retrieved by month, name, location of occurrences,
cause of death, state residence and more. Includes links to sources of
information.
o
This
commercial site presents brief information about dozens of
Black inventors from the
United States. Some entries include portraits and images. Also includes a
searchable timeline covering 1721-1988. Does not include bibliographic
information.
o
Annenberg Political Fact Check - This site
describes itself as "a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 'consumer advocate' for voters
that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in US politics." The
site provides original articles, with summaries and sources, analyzing factual
accuracy in "TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases."
Searchable. From the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of
Pennsylvania.
o
White House Tapes: The President
Calling - "Three of
America's most compelling presidents -- Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon -- bugged
their White House offices and tapped their telephones. In this documentary
project, American Radio Works eavesdrops on presidential telephone calls to hear
how each man used one-on-one politics to shape history." Includes audio, a
transcript of the documentary and background information on each president and
the tapes.
o
The Government Performance
Project: The Way We Tax: A
50-State Report - This report
from Congressional Quarterly analyzes "the tax structures and tax management of
the 50 states" and evaluates "the way each state raises its revenues." It
includes an overview of major sources of state revenue (sales taxes, personal
income taxes, property taxes and corporate taxes) and features a description of
the tax structure for each state. Also provides related reports back to 1999.
o
History of Guantanamo Bay - Based on two
volumes of "the history of both the area and of the base, contributed to the
base by a former Commander of Naval Base Guantanamo Bay." It begins with
Columbus' discovery of the Cuban bay in the Caribbean through the Spanish loss
in 1898 and until 1982. Includes appendices for flora and fauna, treaties and
agreements of 1934, bibliography and more. Also provides related links.
o
First Amendment
Library - Provides info
on Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence, including rulings, arguments,
briefs, historical material, commentary and press coverage.
o
What Home Pages Tell (and Don't Tell) About a Candidate
o
American Choices: Understanding Foreign
Policy Debates - This "foreign
policy self-assessment ... asks you to weigh some of the fundamental
trade-offs facing US policymakers. At the end of it, you get a summary of your
beliefs, and how they compare with others." Also includes annotated listings of
foreign policy Web resources. From "e-the People, a nonprofit organization whose
nonpartisan mission is to improve civic participation through Internet
technologies."
o
Interested
in lowering your medication costs? Try Doctor Solve at 866-732-0305,
www.needymeds.com, 800-PMA-INFO or
www.benefitscheckup.org.
o
If you are
thinking of changing your electricity provider, go to
www.powertochoose.org or call 866-797-4839.
o
Drug Policy Alliance - This group
claims to be "the leading organization working to broaden the public debate on
drug policy and to promote realistic alternatives to the war on drugs based on
science, compassion, health and human rights." The searchable site includes
information about various topics such as specific drugs, national and
international drug policies, drugs and race, drug treatment options and drugs
and law enforcement. Also includes the Lindesmith Library catalog, a discussion
forum, news and alerts.
o
Check out
www.unitedhealthalliance.com or
www.CrossBorderPharmacy.com for ordering
prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.
o
Primary
Documents in American History

Community
Resources
If
you need a presentation or workshop for your group, use the
Community
link here or at the top of the page.
The link will take you to a list of the topics I currently have available.
To schedule a date or for more information, feel free to contact me
at dramyglenn@earthlink.net.