This Day In History: August 11, 1965 On Wednesday, August 11, 1965, a routine traffic stop resulted in a drunk-driving arrest sparking six days of rioting in the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. When it was all over, 34 people were dead, more than 1,000 had been injured, and nearly 4000 arrested. It all started when Los Angeles Highway Patrolman […]

This Day In History: August 10, 991 On August 10, 991, one of the best known battles between the Saxons and the Vikings took place in Essex, England near the small town of Maldon by the River Blackwater. It heralded the era of the Danegeld – the practice of paying off the Vikings to avoid future attacks. Aside from government-sanctioned […]

This Day In History: August 6, 1911 Lucille Ball, one of the greatest comedic forces in entertainment history and the embodiment of a classic rags-to-riches tale, was born on August 6, 1911, in Jamestown, New York. Her father died of typhoid when she was three, so her mother DeDe found factory work and a new husband, but this didn’t improve […]

This Day In History: August 4, 1693 Legend has it that Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon stated, “I am drinking the stars!” after tasting the result of a botched batch of wine on August 4, 1693, thus “inventing” champagne. Of course, the story is certainly false, with the first documented mention of that line appearing in an advertisement in the late 19th […]

This Day In History August 3, 1529 Back in 1525, the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s forces had defeated France at Pavia in Italy. King Francis I of France was taken prisoner and was forced to sign the Treaty of Madrid. He ceded lands in Italy, Flanders, Artois, and Tournai, as well as parts of France, to the Emperor. […]

This Day In History: July 30, 1976 The road to Bruce Jenner’s record-breaking gold medal in 1976 began at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, where he placed tenth in the decathlon. After the event, he reportedly approached the champion Nikolay Avilov of the Soviet Union, looked him straight in the eye and told him, “Next time, I’m going to […]

This Day In History: July 29, 1862 Confederate spy Marie Isabella “Belle” Boyd, often called the “Cleopatra of the Secession”, was arrested by Union troops on July 29, 1862, and incarcerated in Old Capital Prison in Washington D.C. It was the first of three arrests for this teenage espionage agent from Martinsburg, Virginia. Belle’s town was one of the first […]

This Day In History: July 28, 1750 Regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time, Johann Sebastian Bach was from a family of seven generations of musicians. Beethoven considered Bach the “original father of harmony.” His influence was so encompassing that his death on July 28, 1750 marks the end of the Baroque period in music. Born in […]

This Day In History: July 27, 1940 On July 27, 1940, a legendary, world-renowned rabbit was born in Brooklyn, New York. (Actually, he was born in Hollywood, but you’d never know it from the accent.) He’s the wise-cracking, street-smart, self-assured star of the screen, Bugs Bunny. But he didn’t just appear out of nowhere. The bunny that became Bugs was […]

This Day In History: July 24, 1911 On the drizzly, damp morning of July 24, 1911, Yale professor Hiram Bingham was leading an expedition through the jungles of the Andes Mountains in Peru. He was searching for the last two capitals of the Inca Empire, Vitcos and Vilcabamba. Instead, with a young local boy leading the way, Bingham happened upon […]

This Day In History: July 23, 1948 “To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man.” – James Agee David […]

This Day In History: July 22, 1893 On July 22, 1893, a young professor of English literature from Wellesley, Massachusetts named Katharine Lee Bates wrote a poem that morphed into one of the most iconic songs in American history. She was traveling cross-country by train to lecture at Colorado College that summer. What she saw along the way inspired her […]

This Day In History: July 21, 365 CE The impact of a catastrophic earthquake and mega-tsunami on July 21, 365 CE devastated Peloponnesus, the Greek Islands, Sicily, Cyprus, Libya, Palestine and Egypt. It completely leveled major cities and killed thousands of people. It also changed the topography of the Mediterranean region and, to some extent, the course of history. The […]

This Day In History: July 20, 1704 The first baby born in the Americas to those who traveled over on the Mayflower was the second child of William and Susanna White, who are thought to have been part of a London merchant group, rather than the Leiden Holland religious movement. The couple boarded the Mayflower in England with their young […]

This Day In History: July 17, 1968 On July 17, 1968, the world premiere of the Beatles third feature film, the animated “Yellow Submarine”, took place at the London Pavilion on Piccadilly Circus. The Beatles hadn’t been seen in public much recently at this point. They spent most of the year in India with the Marhareshi and recording the White […]