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1.  1862 - The first of several famous battles that occurred on July 1.The Battle of Malvern Hill.  In an eerie preview of Gettysburg a year later, Union artillery cut down Confederate attackers charging uphill - like Pickett’s Charge- on the last of the Seven Days' battles.

     1863  -  The Battle of Gettysburg began as  advance elements of Lee and Meade's armies clashed in Gettysburg, PA.  The Confederates drove the Union forces from the town but fortunately, the Union now occupied the high ground.  Lee would spend the next 2 days trying to defeat them.  The battle ended in defeat for the Confederates.

    1867 - Canadian Independence Day. The autonomous Dominion of Canada, a confederation of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the future provinces of Ontario and Quebec, was officially recognized by Great Britain with the passage of the British North America Act.  Lower Canada was renamed Quebec, and Upper Canada was renamed Ontario. Prior to 1982, Canada Day was known as Dominion Day and Confederation Day. The name was changed to Canada Day on October 27, 1982 by an act of parliament

            1872 - Happy Birthday, Louis  Bleriot, French aviator who invented the monoplane (precursor of the stereoplane?).  He is best known for his flight over the English Channel on July 25, 1909, the world's first flight over a large body of water in a heavier-than-air craft.

             1874- The first public zoo in the U.S  - Philadelphia - was opened.  The charter establishing the Zoological Society of Philadelphia was approved and signed on March 21, 1859. Due to the Civil War, however, it was another 15 years before America's first zoo was ready to open.  Admission was 25 cents for adults and 10 cents for children to see the 813 animals.

            1898 -  The Battle of San Juan Hill occurred as part of the campaign to capture Spanish-held Santiago on the southern coast of Cuba.  The U.S. Army Fifth Corps attacked Spanish forces at El Caney and San Juan Hill.  Included among the U.S. ground troops were the Theodore Roosevelt-led "Rough Riders," a collection of Western cowboys and Eastern blue bloods officially known as the First U.S. Voluntary Cavalry.

            1903- Happy Birthday, Amy Johnson, pioneering British female aviator, the first woman (1930) to fly solo  from London to Darwin, Australia. Echoes of Amelia Earhart, Johnson, while on a flying mission for the Air Ministry on Jan. 5 1941 crashed in the Thames River estuary and was drowned.

            1910-  It was kneaded.  The first completely automatic bread plant in the U.S. was opened by the Ward Baking Company of Chicago, Illinois. The dough was not touched, nor the bread handled until it was placed on the wrapping machine

            1916 The Battle of the Somme began as the British launched a massive offensive against German forces in the Somme River region of France. During the preceding week, 250,000 Allied artillery had pounded German positions near the Somme. As the battle opened, 100,000 British soldiers came out of their trenches and into no-man's-land on  expecting to find the way cleared for them by the shelling . But no..... disastrously, many  heavy German machine guns had survived the artillery attack, and the infantry were massacred. By the end of the day, 20,000 British soldiers were dead and 40,000 wounded. It was the single heaviest day of casualties in British military history. The disastrous Battle of the Somme stretched on for more than four months, with the Allies advancing a total of just five miles.

            1934 - The first X-ray photograph of the whole body taken in a one-second exposure, using ordinary clinical conditions such as would exist at an average hospital, was made at Rochester, N.Y.  Wilhelm Rontgen had taken the first x-rays in 1895 (he x-rayed his wife’s hand) He was interested in x-rays in particular because he had also discovered that these could traverse organic matter like human skin. Since the human body has different densities (skin, bones, cartilage), the differences in them could then be captured in gradations by the photographic medium behind the subject.

            1941 - A day that should live in infamy as NBC broadcast the first official TV commercial during a Dodgers-Phillies baseball game . In the first commercial, the Bulova watch company paid $9 to advertise its watches on the air.   Just note that a 30 second commercial for the 2007 Super Bowl cost $2.6 million.

            1942 – Yet another famous battle on this day, El Alamein in, about 150 miles from Cairo, Egypt as British forces under General Bernard (Monty) Montgomery halted the German army advance led by the great Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox). The Allied victory at El Alamein lead to the retreat of the Afrika Korps and the German surrender in North Africa in May 1943.

            2007 – The Big Bang to the Big Bounce and ……….? In the journal Nature Physics, published on-line Professor Martin Bojowald, of Penn State University posited the “Big Bounce” theory of the universe. The Big Bang theory holds that a infinitesimally small  “singularity” containing of zero volume nevertheless contained infinite density and infinitely large energy went BANG and created our expanding universe.  Dr. Bojowald and other physicists used a mathematical time machine called Loop Quantum Gravity. This theory, which combines Einstein's Theory of General Relativity with equations of quantum physics that did not exist in Einstein's day, is the first mathematical description to systematically establish the existence of the Big Bounce and to deduce properties of the earlier universe from which our own may have sprung. Instead of being infinitely small and dense, the singularity  compacted down into a ball of some volume and density. The researchers believe that a previous Universe collapsed down to a tiny ball, and then had a Big Bounce to expand again. The previous Universe was very similar to the space-time geometry we have in our current Universe.

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2.  1862 - Happy Birthday, Sir William Henry Bragg, Australian physicist and chemist famous for his work on the atomic structure of crystalline substances and the measurement of x-ray lengths.   We're not sure if he bragged about his work or not.

      1867-  The first elevated railroad in the U.S. opened  in New York City. The first half-mile test section was built by Charles T. Harvey on single columns. It ran along the curb line of Greenwich Street, between Battery Place and Dey Street. It traveled at speeds up to 15 mph.

      1881 - Four months into his administration, President James A. Garfield was shot as he walked through a railroad waiting room in Washington, D.C. The assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, was an office seeker who had unsuccessfully sought an appointment to the U.S. consul in Paris. The president was shot in the back and the arm, and Guiteau was arrested. Garfield, mortally ill, was treated in Washington and then taken to the seashore at Elberon, New Jersey, where he attempted to recuperate with his family. During this time, Vice President Chester A. Arthur served as acting president. On September 19, 1881, after 80 days, President Garfield died of blood poisoning. The following day, Arthur was inaugurated as the 21st president of the United States.

      1900- The dirigible, Zeppelin made its first flight at the Lake of Constance in Germany.

      1903- The only major league baseball player to fall over Niagara Falls - Hall of Fame outfielder Ed Delahanty,  then playing for  the Washington Senators, was traveling by train from Detroit to New York, having been suspended by his team.   At International Bridge near Niagara Falls, the conductor put him off the train for being drunk and disorderly. Staggering along the tracks in the dark, he fell through an open drawbridge and was swept over the falls to his death.

1922- The first water skis as they are used today were used by 19 year old (actually, it was the day before his 19th birthday), Ralph W. Samuelson at Lake Pepin, Minnesota. He had tried a few days earlier with barrel staves and snow skis, with no real success.

      1937 - Amelia Earhart disappeared as the aircraft carrying her and navigator Frederick Noonan was reported missing near Howland Island in the Pacific. The pair were attempting to fly around the world when they lost their bearings during the most dangerous part their of the journey from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, a tiny island 2,227 nautical miles away, in the center of the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca received intermittent messages from Earhart as she approached Howland Island and the last was  that she was lost and running low on fuel. She was never heard from again and she probably tried to ditch the plane in the ocean. No trace of Earhart or Noonan was ever found

      1940- A patent was issued to Enrico Fermi et al., for a process of producing radioactive substances

     2001- Doctors at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky., implanted the first self-contained, mechanical heart replacement into 59-year-old Robert Tools. The device, called the AbioCor, was battery powered and the size of a softball. The patient died a few months later when he was hit for a double off the wall during a softball game in which he was assigned the role of softball and the outfielder dropped him.

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3.   1775 - George Washington formally took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge Common in Massachusetts.

      1863- The Battle of Gettysburg, 3rd day - Pickett's Charge (General Pickett charged breakfast, lunch and the catering on his American Express Card…….no, no, no Professor Sy Yentz has his retail sense of humor).  A 15,000-man unit under the command of General George Pickett was organized in a last, desperate attempt attacking the middle of the Union line of defense on Cemetery Ridge.  Lee ordered a massive bombardment of the Union positions.  At 3 p.m., Pickett led his force into no-man's-land and found that Lee's bombardment - just like those at Malverne Hill and the Somme- had failed. Only a few hundred Virginians reached the Union line, and within minutes they all were dead, dying, or captured. In less than an hour, more than 7,000 Confederate troops had been killed or wounded.  Lee retreated the next day.

     1886- The Daily Tribune in New York City became the first newspaper to be set in linotype.

     1890 - Idaho was admitted to the union as the  43rd state

     1956- The Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass. placed the first ship outfitted for hurricane research into service.

     1971 - Lead singer Jim Morrison of the Doors was found dead in a bathtub in Paris. Morrison was 27, when he died of heart failure, likely caused by a drug overdose.

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4.        1054- The brightest known supernova started shining for 23 days.

            1776 - The Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia. It was drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776.  While the political philosophy of the Declaration was not new; its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in "self-evident truths". “When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.                                                                                            We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It wasn't until July 8 that representatives of all "states" had signed and the Liberty Bell was rung for the first time.

            1753 – Happy Birthday, Jean-Pierre Blanchard French balloonist who  made first English Channel aerial crossing….some people would do anything to avoid the lines for the ferry at Dover.

                1790 - Happy Birthday, Sir George Everest, British military engineer and geodesist who worked on the trigonometrical survey of India from 1818-43, providing the accurate mapping of the subcontinent. Yes, Mt. Everest is named for him.

            1804 – Happy Birthday, author Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem, Mass. Author of  The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables among others.

            1807 – Happy Birthday, Giuseppe Garibaldi Italian patriot, Italian patriot and soldier, a leading figure in the Risorgimento (the movement for Italian unification). He remains perhaps the most popular of all Italian heroes and a great revolutionary hero in the Western world.

                1826 - John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, respectively, both died on this day, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.  Adams was 90 and Jefferson, 83.   

            1828-  The cornerstone was laid for the first U.S. hotel to install bathrooms was the Tremont House, Boston, Mass.  Presumably they were flushed with success.    

            1839 - The first iron cast bridge in the U.S. was dedicated. Dunlap's Creek Bridge in Brownsville, Pennsylvania was 80-foot long, 25-ft wide, and spanned the raging waters of Dunlap's Creek Bridge in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. The bridge was so well built – by T Captain Richard Delafield of the US Army Corps of Engineers -  that it has withstood time and carries a modern road ….cars and all!

            1855- A “budding” classic, American poet Walt Whitman’ first edition of his self published Leaves of Grass was published.  It contained twelve poems.  He continued to release revised editions up to 1892.

            1863 – The surrender of Vicksburg (Mississippi).  In May and June of 1863, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s armies converged on Vicksburg, surrounding the city and trapping a Confederate army of 29,000 men under Lt. Gen. John Pemberton. On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered after prolonged siege operations. This was the culmination of one of the most brilliant military campaigns of the war. With the loss of Pemberton’s army and this vital stronghold on the Mississippi, the Confederacy was effectively split in half. Grant's successes in the West boosted his reputation, leading ultimately to his appointment as General-in-Chief of the Union armies.

          1872 – Happy Birthday, (John) Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States.  Coolidge became president  when Warren G. Harding died in 1923.

            1883 - Happy Birthday, Rube Goldberg, engineer and cartoonist famous for ridiculously complicated machines used for the simplest of tasks.

            1883 – Same day as Rube Goldberg was born -  the first three-wire (An electric circuit that consists of three separate currents delivered at one-third cycle intervals by means of a three-wire circuit) central-station incandescent-lighting plant in the U.S. started operations in Sunbury, Pennsylvania built by the Edison Electric Illuminating Co

            1903-  President Theodore Roosevelt sent the first official message over the new cable across the Pacific Ocean between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila. He booked using Hotel.com

            1906 - A seedy business....Happy Birthday, Vincent J. Schaefer who invented the process of cloud seeding to cause rain.  Professor Sy Yentz can cause rain by just washing his car.

            1911 – A heat wave that would not end until July 19  set record temperatures in the northeastern United States. 380 people would die.  In Nashua, New Hampshire, the mercury peaked at 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Other high-temperature records were set all over New England during the 11-day period. The area from Pennsylvania northeast to Maine was most affected by the stifling heat. New York City was particularly hard hit. In fact, the New York City Health Department put out one of its very first heat advisories during July 1911. Mayor William Gaynor tried to make sure that the city’s ice dealers could keep up their deliveries; in the time before refrigeration, ice was critical in keeping the food supply from spoiling.  When the heat wave ended, five people were killed during the violent thunderstorms that finally dropped the temperature.  Professor Sy Yentz has demonstrated his power over the weather by ending a mini-heat wave with the purchase of an air-conditioner.  Within 45 minutes of installation, a storm dropped the temperature to 66^◦.  It’s an awesome power yet he remains humble.

            1939- Baseball player Lou Gehrig, afflicted with the eponymous fatal illness that would eventually bear his name,  bid a tearful farewell at Yankee Stadium in New York, telling fans, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."

            1944- The National Science Teachers Association was established in Pittsburgh, PA.

            1959 - A 49th star was added to the American flag to represent the new state of Alaska.

            1960 - The number of stars on the American flag was increased to 50 to honor the new state of Hawaii.

            1968 -  the Explorer 38, (the first successful U.S satellite was Explorer 1) an unmanned U.S. spacecraft was launched to measure galactic radio sources – no talk radio in the Magellanic Cloud -  and study low frequencies in space. It was one of a series of 55 scientific satellites launched between 1958-75.

            1997 - After traveling 120 million miles in seven months, NASA's Mars Pathfinder became the first U.S. spacecraft to land on Mars since the U.S's  Viking landings of 1976.  On first impact it  bounced about 15 meters (50 feet) into the air, bouncing another 15 times and rolling before coming to rest approximately 2.5 minutes after impact and about 1 km from the initial impact site. The landing site in the Ares Vallis region was at 19.33 N, 33.55 W, the lander was been named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station. Among other findings Pathfinder confirmed that many of the contestants on television reality shows are, in fact, Martians as are several congressmen and women.

            1998- Japan launched Nozomi ("Hope") from Kagoshima Launch Centre, to become the third nation (after Russia and the U.S.) to reach for Mars. The spacecraft made two fly-bys of the Moon in Sep and Dec in order to reshape its trajectory for an intended arrival in a highly elliptical Mars Orbit in Oct 1999. Unfortunately, the attempt failed  due to malfunctioning valve and the plans were changed to alter the spacecraft's trajectory to reach Mars in 2003. Then they used too much fuel for the course correction.  Then as they swung it by Earth again for a momentum gain, solar flares damaged it. The mission was designed to measure the interaction between the solar wind and Martian upper atmosphere but some things are just not meant to be.

            2002 –   Elephant capped tusks In the immortal words of the great philosopher Groucho Marx, “Why do elephants lose their teeth in Alabama?  Because of Tuscaloosa.” On this day at the Calgary, Canada Zoo, Spike Spike the elephant showed off his new dental caps after dental  surgery. The elephant was fitted with 14 kilogram stainless steel caps over his tusks in a three-hour operation.  After about one-third of its left tusk broke off, a crack in the remaining tusk needed protection against further damage to avoid a future medical problem of infection and pain that could require a complicated root canal treatment.  Professor Sy Yentz is trying to figure out how they got Spike in the chair with the little bib and the cotton and the mirror.  Of course expectorating would be no problem since he could use his trunk instead of the little paper cups with the swirling water.

2005 - America returned to space after the Columbia tragedy  as the shuttle Discovery, after foam concerns, was launched at 2:37 p.m. Among the crew members was Stephanie Wilson, the 2nd black woman in space.

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5.        1795- Happy Birthday Sylvester Graham of West Suffield, Connecticut inventor of, yes, the graham cracker – in 1829.  Graham was an Presbyterian minister who mainly preached nutrition and wanted to reform the eating habits of America and the world. He believed an unhealthy diet led to sexual excess.  He advocated vegetarianism and the use of only coarse, whole grain flour.  The flour was nicknamed "graham flour" after Minister Graham, and became the  main ingredient in Graham Crackers.  Ironically, today’s graham crackers are made with bleached white flour…..an ingredient that would have Sylvester apoplectic.

            1801- Happy Birthday, David Farragut American Civil War admiral. Famous for saying "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" as his fleet attacked Mobile (Alabama) Bay in 1864.  He would later become the first admiral of the U.S Navy.

                1805 – Happy Birthday, Robert Fitzroy, British naval officer, hydrographer, and meteorologist who commanded the voyage of HMS Beagle, aboard which Charles Darwin sailed around the world as the ship's naturalist. That voyage provided Darwin with much of the material on which he based his theory of evolution. Fitzroy retired from active duty in 1850. He was elected to Parliament and served as governor general of New Zealand. Afterwards, he devoted himself to meteorology. He devised a storm warning system – particularly for gales -that was the prototype of the daily weather forecast, invented a barometer, and published The Weather Book in 1863.

            1810 – Happy Birthday,  P. T. Barnum, the great American showman.  A shameless huckster, Barnum bought the American Museum in New York City in 1841 and turned it into an exhibition hall for the presentation of "freaks" such as "The Feejee Mermaid" and the midget General Tom Thumb (real name: Charles Stratton). His string of successful acts included European opera singer Jenny Lind, Jumbo the elephant and “Siamese” twins Chang and Eng Bunker. In 1871 Barnum opened a circus, billed as "The Greatest Show On Earth." In 1881 he merged with competitor James Bailey, forming Barnum & Bailey's Circus (eventually it became today's Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus).

            1853- Happy Birthday Cecil Rhodes (large family; brother of Lonesome Rhodes, Dusty Rhodes, Back Rhodes, Cor Rhodes, and E. Rhodes) of England who became wealthy via diamond mining - in 1880, he formed the De Beers Mining Company -in South Africa and founded the colony, later country of Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. Rhodes left nearly all his fortune of £6 million to public service. One of his chief benefactions was the Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford.  More than 90 scholarships are now awarded each year to students from the (now former) British colonies, the United States, and Germany.

            1867- Happy Birthday, Andrew E. Douglass, American astronomer and archaeologist who developed the term,  dendrochronology for tree-ring dating, a field he originated while working at the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona from 1894 to 1901. He showed how tree rings could be used to date and interpret past events.  Yes, it was a “tree ring circus”.  . Douglass observed that the width of tree rings is a record of the rainfall, with implications on the local food supply in dry years. Each year a tree adds a layer of wood to its trunk and branches thus creating the annual rings we see when viewing a cross section.

           1879- A near-complete skeleton of a mastodon was discovered near Newburgh, N.Y., by a farmer's son while digging a ditch. The area had been a bog until drained and cultivated 50 years earlier. From a 5-foot deep trench over the next three days, neighbors dug up about 200 bones of ribs, spine, legs, feet and a skull complete with teeth and lower jaw.  And in answer to the burning question…..Although mastodons resembled mammoths (also extinct) and elephants, they were not closely related mammal species.  The ancestors of the mastodons diverged from the evolutionary tree, about 15 million years ago, long before those of the mammoths and elephants did. 

            1917 – Happy Birthday, Manuel Rodríguez Sánchez, “Manolete”, perhaps the greatest bullfighter and certainly the most famous to be killed in the ring – August 1947.

            1921 - The "Black Sox" were accused of throwing the1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. The trial began with jury selection. The eight Chicago White Sox players, including stars Shoeless Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, and Eddie Cicotte, subsequently became known as the "Black Sox" after the scandal was revealed.  There is some doubt to this day that Shoeless Joe, the best of the players, was involved, however they were all acquitted after a jury trial but immediately suspended from baseball for life by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis

            1929- The New York Giants baseball team became the first team to have a public address system in the major leagues.

            1944 - The first American rocket airplane, MX-324 was flown in Hawthorn, Ca. (sometimes the date is given as 7/4) The pilot, Harry Crosby, had to lie flat on his back to withstand the effects of gravity. After a tow to 8,000 feet from a P-38, the Aerojet motor was ignited and it began to produce 200 lb. of thrust. The flight lasted over four
minutes and ended with a safe landing.

            1946- Inspired by the U.S atomic testing at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific earlier in the week,  French designer Louis Reard debuted a (at the time) daring two-piece swimsuit which he named the “bikini” at  a popular swimming pool in Paris.

            1954 - Elvis Presley's first commercial recording session took place at Sun Records in Memphis, Tenn. He recorded That’s All Right Mama.

            1996-  Hello Dolly.  Dolly, a cloned sheep, was born at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland. Scientists had replaced the nucleus of an egg cell with the nucleus from a parent cell - in Dolly's case, an udder cell. We found this to be udderly fascinating. Dolly was mated to a male sheep named David and eventually gave birth to four lambs. Later, she was found to have arthritis in her hind legs, a diagnosis that
raised questions about genetic abnormalities that may have been caused
in the cloning process. Still later as she mutated into a creature with long fangs that wore a hockey mask and chopped up nubile teenagers…no, no, no Professor Sy Yentz has his abnormal sense of humor……After suffering from a progressive lung disease, Dolly was put down on February 14 (Valentine’s Day – how appropriate), 2003, at the age of six. Her early death raised more questions about the safety of cloning. It was felt that people should stop “cloning” around. As for Dolly, she was stuffed and is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

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6.   This evening, according to U.S. clocks, our planet Earth reaches its most distant point from the sun for this year. This point is called aphelion, and, at aphelion we’re about three million miles farther from the sun than we will be six months from now at perihelion.  We’re always farthest from the sun in July – and closest in January – and that’s a good reminder that it is the tilt (23 degrees relative to the Sun) of the Earth’s axis NOT distance from the Sun that causes our seasons.

            1483 – Richard, Duke of Gloucester and brother of the late King Edward IV was crowned Richard III – thanks to the Tudors and William Shakespeare he has become one of history’s great villains.  He was the last English king to die on the battlefield; his death in 1485 is generally accepted between the medieval and modern ages in England; and he is credited with the responsibility for several murders: Henry VI , Henry's son Edward, his brother Clarence, and his nephews Edward and Richard (the “princes in the tower”…….although there is a considerable body of thought that places the blame for those murders on Richard’s successor, Henry Tudor (Henry VII).

            1535- Henry Tudor’s son, King Henry VIII  had Sir Thomas More executed in for treason. More, a “sir and a saint”, a nobleman, he  had refused to endorse King Henry VIII's plan to divorce Katherine of Aragón  in1527. Yet  in 1529, More became Lord Chancellor, the first layman yet to hold the post. He resigned in 1532, citing ill health, but the reason was probably his disapproval of Henry's stance toward the Catholic church. He refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn in June 1533.  In April, 1534, More refused to swear to the Act of Succession and the Oath of Supremacy, and was committed to the Tower of London on April 17.  More was found guilty of treason and was beheaded. More was canonized by the Catholic Church as a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1935.

            1766- Happy Birthday Alexander Wilson, Scottish/American ornithologist.  He was the first to study and paint the birds of North America in their natural habitats. His seminal work was  American Ornithology; or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States. 1808-1814. 9 volumes. The book covered the eastern United States north of Florida, based almost entirely on his own observations.

            1687- Isaac Newton's Principia was first published with the help of Edmund Halley.  See Bill Bryon’s A Short History of Nearly Everything for a great description of the process. The book was reviewed  in Sept. 1687 by the philosopher John Locke. A three-volume book, the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), is better known as the Principia. It set forth Newton's three laws of motion, and proceeded to set forth the theory of gravitation, and back it up with rigorous mathematical proofs. It may well be the greatest scientific work ever.

      1858- "There's no business like shoe business......."A shoemaker named Lyman Blake in Abington MA. patented the first shoe-sole machine. His invention revolutionized the shoe industry and helped establish Plymouth County as the nation's shoe manufacturing capital.

     1865- Louis Pasteur perfomed the first anti-rabies inoculation of a human being.  The 9 year-old boy, Joseph Meister, had been bitten by a rabid dog grew up to became director of the Pasteur Institute and enjoyed a daily “milk bone” break in addition to a bizarre attraction to fire hydrants.

            1886- Horlick's of Wisconsin offered the first malted milk to the public. Invented by brothers James and William Horlick as a nutritional supplement for infants and people with bad digestion, malted milk was made at a large plant in Racine for decades until it closed in 1975.  The product was initially called "Diastoid".

            1920- A radio compass was used for first time for aircraft navigation. The radio compass replaced the “two fingers to the left of the Sun” system of aeronautical navigation. It was finally perfected by William Lear in the 1940s.  Lear also invented the car radio – he called it “Motorola” and formed the Learjet company.

            1928- The first all talking motion picture, Lights of New York, was previewed. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 is regarded as the first “talking film” but it was only a partially talking film…there were silent sequences with subtitles…. The perfectly awful Lights of New York was produced for a paltry $23,000 and released as a “B” movie.  But to everyone's surprise, the film went on to gross over a million dollars in its first run, proving once and for all that talkies had come to stay.

            1933 - Baseball's first All-Star game, the brainchild of writer Arch Ward,  was held at Chicago's Comiskey Park. The American League beat the National League 4-2.  Yes, Babe Ruth (the greatest player ever) hit a home run

            1937 – Happy Birthday, American singer, Gene Chandler. A medley of his hit is Duke of Earl which he has probably sung 300 times a year since it was released in 1962.

            1942 - 13 year-old Anne Frank's family in Nazi-occupied Holland, took refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. The day before, Anne's older sister, Margot, had received a call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi "work camp."  They remained hidden until August 4, 1944, just two months after the successful Allied landing
at Normandy, the Nazi Gestapo discovered the Frank's "Secret Annex." The Franks were sent to the Nazi death camps along with two of the Christians who had helped shelter them, and another Jewish family and a single Jewish man with whom they had shared the hiding place. Anne and most of the others ended up at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.  In 1945 with Poland being liberated, Anne and her sister were moved to the  Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. The two sisters caught typhus and died in early March.  Germany surrendered in April.  Anne's diary was left behind, undiscovered by the Nazis.

            1944 – One day after the 134^th birthday of P.T Barnum, In Hartford, Connecticut, a fire of unknown origin broke out under the big top of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, killing 167 people and injuring 682. Two-thirds of those who perished were children.

            1946 – Happy Birthday George W. Bush, 43^rd President of the United States, born in Midland, Texas.

            1957 - 15-year-old Paul McCartney attended a church picnic in the village of Woolton, near Liverpool, where he met 16-year-old John Lennon. Lennon had formed a band called the Quarrymen, which was playing at the picnic. Between sets, McCartney played a few songs on guitar for the band, and a few days later Lennon invited him to join.  They became a bit more famous when George Harrison joined and they changed their name to the Beatles.  Of course Beatles came after “Johnny and the Moondogs”, and then the “Silver Beetles” but they finally got it right.

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7.   1843-  Happy Birthday, Camillo Golgi,  Italian physician and cytologist who, in 1873, published his key discovery, the use of silver salts to stain samples for microscope slides. Thus new details of cellular structure components were revealed, still known by such names as Golgi bodies and Golgi complex....and, not to mention Golgi locks and the Three Bears.

       1861- Happy Birthday, Nettie M. Stevens, one of the first American women to achieve recognition for her contributions to scientific research. As a cell biologist and geneticist, she was one of the first scientists to find that sex is determined by a single difference between two classes of sperm - the presence or absence of an X chromosome.

        1891- A patent was granted for the travelers check.

        1907- Happy Birthday, novelist Robert A. Heinlein who helped develop science fiction.  Stranger in a Strange Land is a must read.

     1920-  A radio compass was first installed in a naval airplane, a Curtis F-5-L.  The plane flew from Norfolk VA. to the battleship Ohio and back, guided entirely by radio signals.

      1936- Several U.S. patents were issued for the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver to its inventor, Henry F. Phillips. Remarks about being "screwed" are too easy and Professor Sy Yentz chooses to ignore them.

      1981 - President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, an Arizona court of appeals judge, to be the first woman Supreme Court justice in U.S. history.

     2005 - Islamic Terrorists attacked the London transit system during the morning rush hour. The bombs were detonated in three crowded London subways and one bus. The synchronized suicide bombings, killed 56 people including the bombers (happily) and injured another 700.

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8.  1776- In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell rang  from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, by Colonel John Nixon.

      1831 Happy Birthday,  John Styth Pemberton was a pharmacist, who invented Coca-Cola in 1885.  He later sold the rights to his invention for $1200.

      1862-  Theodore R. Timby patented the revolving gun turret.

      1838- Happy Birthday, Count von Zeppelin, German inventor who invented the dirigible.

      1857.- Happy Birthday Alfred Binet, French psychologist who was a pioneer in the field of intelligence testing  of the normal mind. He took a different approach than most psychologists of his day: he was interested in the workings of the normal mind rather than the pathology of mental illness. He wanted to find a way to measure the ability to think and reason, apart from education in any particular field.  From Binet's work, "IQ" (intelligence quotient), entered the vocabulary. The IQ is the ratio of "mental age" to chronological age, with 100 being average. This leaves Professor Sy Yentz a bit puzzled as his ratio came out in Base 10.

       1881- Acustomer came into Edward Berner's drug store in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and sat down at the soda-fountain counter. Since it was Sunday, the customer couldn't have soda water. Berner compromised by putting ice cream in a dish and poured over it the chocolate syrup that was previously only served as flavoring in ice-cream sodas. That was an ice cream Sunday! The name became "sundae", after the day on which Berner served

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9.   1819- Happy Birthday, Elias Howe of Spencer, MA., inventor of the sewing machine. Actually, it was Walter Hunt, in 1834, who built America's first sewing machine, but then he thought about it as a destroyer of home stitchers' jobs, and didn't pursue it. Howe did. Howe was granted a patent on his own machine on Sept.10 1846.

      1846 -An American naval captain occupied the small settlement of Yerba Buena, a site that would later be renamed San Francisco.

      1850- And so we got Millard Fillore. Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, died suddenly from an attack of cholera . He was succeeded by Vice-President Millard Fillmore of NY.

      1856-  Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla, (another with a large family including; Spelling Tesla, Urine Tesla, Pregnancy Tesla and I.Q Testla)  Serbian-American inventor and researcher  who designed and built the first alternating current induction motor in 1883. He emigrated to the United States in 1884.

      1877- the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club originated its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon

      1894 - Happy Birthday Percy Le Baron Spencer inventor of the microwave oven

      1941 - The Enigma Code was broken by  British cryptologists.  This was the secret code used by the German army to direct ground-to-air operations on the Eastern front (Russia). Breaking the code played an important role in the allied victory in WW II.

      1979- The Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter.

      1993 - The czar Nicholas Romanov and family remains were identified. British forensic scientists announced that they had positively identified the remains of Russia's last czar, Nicholas II; his wife, Czarina Alexandra; and three of their daughters. Missing were the Czar's son, Alexei and Princess Anastasia. The scientists used mitochondria DNA fingerprinting to identify the bones, which had been excavated from a mass grave near Yekaterinburg in 1991.

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10.  1875- Happy Birthday, Mary McLeod Bethune, the first African-American woman to be awarded an honorary degree by a southern white college ) 1949) - Rollins College in Winter Park, FL.

       1882; Happy Birthday, Ima Hogg Scientist, Philanthropist, art collector; founded the Houston Symphony but mostly here because it  gives the Gnus an opportunity to mention his large family; Yora Hogg, Heesa Hogg, Sheesa Hogg, Hedge Hogg............Contributions welcome: syyentz@ptd.net

       1920- Happy Birthday, Edmund H. Lowe, American inventor and the inventor of of Kitty Litter.

      1925- The "Scopes monkey trial" began in Dayton, Tennessee and ran for 12 days. A local school teacher, John Scopes, was prosecuted under the state's Butler Act. This law, passed a few months earlier (Mar. 21 1925) prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools. The trial was a platform to challenge the legality of the statute. Local town leaders, eager to participate in the set-up and wishing for the town to benefit from the publicity of the trial had actually recruited Scopes to stand trial. He was convicted (July 25) and fined $100. On appeal, the state supreme court upheld the constitutionality of the law but acquitted Scopes on the technicality that he had been fined excessively.

      1935- Laura Ingalls left Brooklyn, NY on the first nonstop east-west flight by a woman.  She arrived at Burbank, CA 18 hours and 19.5 minutes later.

       1962- Telstar 1, the world's first geosynchronous communications satellite, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to relay TV and telephone signals between the United States and Europe. 

       1997-  Scientists in London said  that DNA from a Neanderthal skeleton discovered 2 years previously, supported a theory that all humanity descended from an "African Eve" 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.  Curiously, according to Bill Bryson in The Mother Tongue, Neanderthals could not choke to death.  They did not have a larynx, hence they could not speak other than uttering guttural sounds.  Cro-Magnon man, appearing several thousand years later DID have a larynx and was probably the first in the evolutionary chain to be able to speak......not to mention being able to choke to death.

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11.       1804 - Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shot Alexander Hamilton during a due in Weehawken, NJ.  Hamilton, acting with honor, fired into the ground, Burr, one of the sleaziest characters in American history, fired into Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America's political economy, died the following day.

             1914 - A nineteen year old lefthanded pitcher named Babe Ruth made his major league baseball debut for the Boston Red Sox.  Young Ruth won the game but struck out in his first major leage at-bat.

             1936- The Triborough Bridge linking Manhattan, Bronx & Queens opened.

              1975, Chinese archeologists announce the uncovering of a 3-acre burial mound concealing 6000 clay statues of warriors and their regalia dating from 221 to 206 BC. The "Terracotta Army" was uncovered near the ancient capital of Xian. The 7,000 life-size clay soldiers and horses were buried in pits in battle formation facing east to guard the tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. The figures were modeled after the emperor’s real army, and each face is different. The buried wonder was found in 1974 in the course of digging a well. 

             1979- Skylab kaput.  The, now unmanned,  Skylab space station reentered Earth's atmosphere and shattered into pieces over the Indian Ocean and Australia.  No one was injured

       1991-One of the longest total eclipses