Friday! History, 9/11 Tribute, Music, Cinema, Sports, Quotes, More!

On This Date In 1620 The Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists-half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs-had been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the “Pilgrims” reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.

On This Date In 1776 The Battle of Harlem Heights was fought during the New York and New Jersey campaign of the American Revolutionary War. The action took place in what is now the Morningside Heights and west Harlem neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City on September 16, 1776.

On This Date In 1779 The Siege of Savannah was an encounter of the American Revolutionary War in 1779. The year before, the city of Savannah, Georgia had been captured by a British expeditionary corps under Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell. The siege itself consisted of a joint Franco-American attempt, and failure, to retake Savannah from September 16 to October 18, 1779.

On This Date In 1810 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Catholic priest, launched the Mexican War of Independence with the issuing of his Grito de Dolores, or “Cry of Dolores.” The revolutionary tract, so-named because it was publicly read by Hidalgo in the town of Dolores, called for the end of 300 years of Spanish rule in Mexico, redistribution of land, and racial equality.

On This Date In 1893 The largest land run in history began with more than 100,000 people pouring into the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma to claim valuable land that had once belonged to Native Americans. With a single shot from a pistol the mad dash began, and land-hungry pioneers on horseback and in carriages raced forward to stake their claims to the best acres.

On This Date In 1908 Buick Motor Company head William Crapo Durant spent $2,000 to incorporate General Motors in New Jersey. Durant, a high-school dropout, had made his fortune building horse-drawn carriages, and in fact hated cars - he thought they were noisy, smelly, and dangerous. Nevertheless, the giant company he built would dominate the American auto industry for decades.

On This Date In 1920 The Wall Street bombing occurred in the Financial District of New York City. The blast killed 38 and seriously injured 143. It was more deadly than the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910, and was the deadliest bomb attack on U.S. soil until the Bath School bombings in Michigan seven years later.

On This Date In 1916 One month after succeeding Erich von Falkenhayn as chief of the German army’s general staff during World War I, General Paul von Hindenburg orders the construction of a heavily fortified zone running several miles behind the active front between the north coast of France and Verdun, near the border between France and Belgium. The “semi-permanent” defensive Hindenburg Line would not be breached by Allied Forces until the last days of September 1918, barely one month before the armistice.

On This Date In 1932 In his cell at Yerovda Jail near Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s decision to separate India’s electoral system by caste.

On This Date In 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Service and Training Act, which requires all male citizens between the ages of 26 and 35 to register for the military draft, beginning on October 16. The first peacetime draft in the history of the United States had been passed by Congress 10 days earlier.

On This Date In 1942 “The Major and the Minor”, an American comedy film starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland, was released. It was the first American film directed by Billy Wilder, and launched his “incomparable” directing career. The screenplay by Wilder and Charles Brackett is based on the play Connie Goes Home by Edward Childs Carpenter.

On This Date In 1943 James Alan McPherson, American short story writer and essayist, and the first black man to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was born.

On This Date In 1953 “The Robe”, a Biblical epic film that tells the story of a Roman military tribune who commands the unit that crucifies Jesus, was released. The film was made by 20th Century Fox and is notable for being the first film released in CinemaScope. It was directed by Henry Koster, the music score was composed by Alfred Newman and the cinematography was by Leon Shamroy. It stars Richard Burton, Jean Simmons, Victor Mature and Michael Rennie, with Dean Jagger, Jay Robinson, Richard Boone, and Jeff Morrow.

On This Date In 1960 College football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg (1862-1965), then ninety-eight years old, announced his retirement after seventy years on the field. Stagg’s career coincided with the evolution of the game from an amalgam of soccer and rugby into American football as we know it. Stagg also coached track, baseball, and basketball. Born and raised in West Orange, New Jersey, Stagg played football and baseball for Yale University. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/sep16.html

On This Date In 1960 In a cable to Secretary of State Christian A. Herter, U.S. Ambassador in Saigon, Elbridge Durbrow analyzed two separate but related threats to the Ngo Dinh Diem regime, danger from demonstration or coup, predominantly “non-Communist” in origin; and the danger of a gradual Viet Cong extension of control over the countryside.

On This Date In 1964 “Goldfinger”, the third spy film in the James Bond series, and the third to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, was released. It is based on the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming.

On This Date In 1968 “Electric Ladyland”, the third and final album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was released on Reprise Records. Produced and mainly written by Jimi Hendrix, the album is seen as the peak of Hendrix’s mastery of the electric guitar, and is frequently described as one of the finest albums ever recorded by him.

On This Date In 1969 President Richard Nixon announced the second round of U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam. This was part of the dual program that he had announced at the Midway conference on June 8 that called for “Vietnamization” of the war and U.S. troop withdrawals, as the South Vietnamese forces assumed more responsibility for the fighting. The first round of withdrawals was completed in August and totaled 25,000 troops (including two brigades of the 9th Infantry Division). There would be 15 announced withdrawals in total, leaving only 27,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by November 1972.

On This Date In 1976 The Episcopal Church first allowed the ordination of women.

On This Date In 1977 Maria Callas (December 2, 1923 - September 16, 1977), American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century, died in Paris at the age of 53 from a heart attack.

On This Date In 1978 The Tabas earthquake was a huge earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale which struck in central Iran. The death toll was approximately 26,000 and the worst damage was to the town Tabas, which was at the epicentre of the quake and completely flattened.

On This Date In 1981 Welterweight boxer “Sugar” Ray Leonard knocked out Thomas Hearns in the 13th round to unify boxing’s middleweight title (WBC, WBA). Leonard was behind on all three judges’ scorecards and fighting with one eye closed when he delivered a right hand to his opponent’s head that sent Hearns crashing to the canvas.

On This Date In 1982 The Sabra and Shatila massacre was a massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians carried out between September 16 and 18, 1982 by the Lebanese Forces Christian militia group. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF), in control of Beirut, surrounded Beirut’s Palestinian refugee camps immediately after the assassination of Phalangist leader and president-elect Bachir Gemayel two days before, then allowed Lebanese Phalangist militiamen to enter two of these refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, in search of terrorists. The exact number killed is disputed, with estimates ranging from 328 to 3,500.

On This Date In 1984 “Perfect Strangers”, the eleventh studio album by Deep Purple, was released. It represents the first album recorded by the reformed, the most successful and popular, ‘Mark II’ line-up.

On This Date In 1985 “Asylum”, the 13th studio album by the American band Kiss, was released. It features the debut of lead guitarist Bruce Kulick, who played with the band on their Animalize tour and officially replaced Mark St. John in September 1984. He was the band’s third lead guitarist since the departure of Ace Frehley in late 1982. This new lineup of Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Eric Carr, and Kulick would last for six years until Carr’s death in November 1991.

On This Date In 1985 Steve Jobs quits Apple following his removal from managerial duties by Apple’s Board. In 1985, a power struggle developed between Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired two years prior. Apple’s board of directors sided with Sculley and Jobs was removed from his managerial duties. Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.

On This Date In 1988 Thomas Leo Browning made baseball history by becoming the first Red (and just the 12th pitcher ever) to throw a perfect game. In that 1-0 victory over the Dodgers at Riverfront Stadium, Browning threw 72 of his 102 pitches for strikes and didn’t run the count to three balls on a single batter. Browning remains the only Red to throw a perfect game.

On This Date In 1992 In British politics and economics, Black Wednesday refers to the events of September 16, 1992 when the Conservative government was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after they were unable to keep sterling above its agreed lower limit. George Soros, the most high profile of the currency market investors, made over US$1 billion profit by short selling sterling.

On This Date In 1993 “Frasier”, a spin-off of the long-running mega-hit sitcom Cheers, made its debut on NBC; it will go on to air for 11 seasons and win multiple Emmy Awards.

On This Date In 1997 “(Always Be My) Sunshine”, the second single from rapper Jay-Z’s second album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, was released. It features vocals from Foxy Brown and Babyface as well as production from Daven “Prestige” Vanderpool.

On This Date In 1997 Apple announced that Steve Jobs had officially been named interim CEO, or - as the company cleverly put it – iCEO. In December 1996, Apple paid $377 million for NeXT, a small, $50-million-in-sales company founded and led by Steve Jobs. Concurrent with the acquisition, then CEO Gil Amelio hired Jobs as his special advisor, marking the return of Apple’s visionary 12 years after he had left.

On This Date In 2003 “Reality”, an album by British singer-songwriter David Bowie, was released. The album was well received by fans and critics and was one of Bowie’s most critically acclaimed albums since Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), alongside Heathen. It is his latest album to date.

On This Date In 2005 “Fahrenheit” (also known as Indigo Prophecy in North America), a video game developed by Quantic Dream and published by Atari, was released.

On This Date In 2009 “The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights” is the tenth installment of the Ultimate Fighting
Championship (UFC)-produced reality television series The Ultimate Fighter. In a press conference following UFC 98, Dana White announced that filming for the season would begin on June 1, 2009. The season debuted on Spike TV on September16, 2009, following UFC Fight Night 19.

Hat tip to any included contributing sources, along with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history , http://timelines.com/

Happy Birthday Janis Paige (1922), Lee Kuan Yew (1923), Lauren Bacall (1924), Robert Schuller (1926), George Chakiris (1934), Mickey Rourke (1952), Janet Ellis (1955), Jennifer Tilly (1958), Orel Hershiser (1958), Jayne Brook (1960), Lori Stokes (1962), Kimberly McArthur (1962), Marc Anthony (1968), Amy Poehler (1971), Laverne Jones (1981), Alexis Bledel (1981), Katie Melua (1984), Madeline Zima (1985), Kyla Pratt (1986), and Nick Jonas (1992).

RIP Isabel Jeans (1891 - 1985), Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893 - 1986), Jack Churchill (1906 - 1996), Allen Funt (1914 - 1999), Peter Falk (1927 - 2011), and Anne Francis (1930 - 2011).

Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, ALWAYS. Mathatma Ghandi

Without music, life would be a mistake.... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance. Friedrich Nietzsche

What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind. It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives. John Berger

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime. Babe Ruth

Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. Thomas Paine

Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work. William Arthur Ward

Two channels, streaming eight hours of live footage directly from Zilker Park every day. Stay tuned for the 2011 ACL Festival Webcast happening September 16-18, 2011. Song: "Weekend" by Smith Westerns http://www.smithwesternsmusic.com/

From EsoCast in 1080p, comes the announcement of a rash of new planet discoveries. Astronomers using ESO's leading exoplanet hunter HARPS have today announced more than fifty newly discovered planets around other
stars. Among these are many rocky planets not much heavier than the Earth. One of them in particular orbits within the habitable zone around its star. …Thanks to HARPS, the search for another Earth elsewhere in the galaxy is picking up pace!

3 Architects, 3 Buildings, 1 Vision.

Sceduled to be completed in 2013.

It was a tragedy that claimed the lives of thousands in an instant, and later brought two wars with an even more devastating death toll. The United States is marking a decade since the 9/11 attacks. Terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the twin towers of the World Trade centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. A forth plane came down in the state of Pennsylvania. Remembrance ceremonies are being held at Ground Zero in New York,
and all across America.