Welcome back Pam.  I missed my daily dose of history.  Hope you had a great time.

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On this day in 1930, construction of the Hoover Dam begins. Over the next five years, a total of 21,000 men would work ceaselessly to produce what would be the largest dam of its time, as well as one of the largest manmade structures in the world.




On this day in 2000--eight weeks to the day after the fourth-generation NASCAR driver Adam Petty was killed during practice at the New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, New Hampshire--the driver Kenny Irwin Jr. dies at the same speedway, near the exact same spot, after his car slams into the wall at 150 mph during a practice run.



Jul 7, 1865:
Mary Surratt is executed by the U.S. government for her role as a conspirator in Abraham Lincoln's assassination.





A gasoline tanker truck crashes into an ice cream parlor in Herborn, Germany, on this day in 1987. The resulting explosion and fire killed 50 people.


Jul 7, 1969
A battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division leaves Saigon in the initial withdrawal of U.S. troops. The 814 soldiers were the first of 25,000 troops that were withdrawn in the first stage of the U.S. disengagement from the war. There would be 14 more increments in the withdrawal, but the last U.S. troops did not leave until after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973.





On this day in 1917, British Army Council Instruction Number 1069 formally establishes the British Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), authorizing female volunteers to serve alongside their male counterparts in France during World War




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On July 9, 1877, the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club begins its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer-suburb of London. Twenty-one amateurs showed up to compete in the Gentlemen's Singles tournament, the only event at the first Wimbledon. The winner was to take home a 25-guinea trophy.




The Fiat 500 Club Italia, an organization formed in appreciation of the iconic 500--"Cinquecento" in Italian--car produced by the automaker Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino), holds what the Guinness Book of World Records will call the world's largest parade of Fiat cars on July 9, 2006, between Villanova d'Albenga and Garlenda, Italy.




Two trains collide outside Nashville, Tennessee, killing 101 people, on this day in 1918. Despite the high death toll, the story was mainly ignored by the national press.





Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, dies suddenly from an attack of cholera morbus. He was succeeded by Millard Fillmore.







In a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, General Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank.




On this day in 1948, 42-year-old Leroy "Satchel" Paige pitches two innings for the Cleveland Indians in his debut with the newly--and barely--integrated American League. The game came 21 years after the great pitcher’s first Negro League appearance.





On this day in 1941, crackerjack British cryptologists break the secret code used by the German army to direct ground-to-air operations on the Eastern front.




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The United States Patent Office issues the Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin a patent for his three-point automobile safety belt "for use in vehicles, especially road vehicles" on this day in 1962.

If the inventor is still alive - he's still raking it in to this day I guess.

Thanks as ever Pam.

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Jul 12, 1984:
Walter Mondale, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, announces that he has chosen Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate. Ferraro, a daughter of Italian immigrants, had previously gained notoriety as a vocal advocate of women's rights in Congress.





The first three-wheeled, multi-directional Dymaxion car--designed by the architect, engineer and philosopher Buckminster Fuller--is manufactured in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on this day in 1933.





On this day in 1995, a heat advisory is issued in Chicago, Illinois, warning of an impending record-breaking heat wave. By the time the heat breaks a week later, nearly 1,000 people are dead in Illinois and Wisconsin.



Jul 12, 1862:
President Abraham Lincoln signs into law a measure calling for the awarding of a U.S. Army Medal of Honor, in the name of Congress, "to such noncommissioned officers and privates as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other soldier-like qualities during the present insurrection." The previous December, Lincoln had approved a provision creating a U.S. Navy Medal of Valor, which was the basis of the Army Medal of Honor created by Congress in July 1862. The first U.S. Army soldiers to receive what would become the nation's highest military honor were six members of a Union raiding party who in 1862 penetrated deep into Confederate territory to destroy bridges and railroad tracks between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia






On this day in 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the first president to ride in the newest advance in aviation technology: the helicopter.
Although experimental military helicopters had been tested since 1947, it was not until 10 years later that a president considered using the new machine for short, official trips to and from the White House. Eisenhower suggested the idea to the Secret Service, which approved of the new mode of transportation, seeing it as safer and more efficient than the traditional limousine motorcade. The HMX-1 "Nighthawks" squadron put into the president s service was initially administered jointly by the Army and the Marine Corps. In 1976, the Marine Corps took over all helicopter operations.






Jul 12, 1965:
Viet Cong ambush Company A of the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, led by U.S.M.C. Lt. Frank Reasoner of Kellogg, Idaho. The Marines had been on a sweep of a suspected Viet Cong area to deter any enemy activity aimed at the nearby airbase at Da Nang.






On this day in 1943, one of the greatest clashes of armor in military history takes place as the German offensive against the Russian fortification at Kursk, a Russian railway and industrial center, is stopped in a devastating battle, marking the turning point in the Eastern front in the Russians' favor.




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Jul 14, 1881:
Sheriff Pat Garrett shoots Henry McCarty, popularly known as Billy the Kid, to death at the Maxwell Ranch in New Mexico. Garrett, who had been tracking the Kid for three months after the gunslinger had escaped from prison only days before his scheduled execution, got a tip that Billy was holed up with friends. While Billy was gone, Garrett waited in the dark in his bedroom. When Billy entered, Garrett shot him to death.





On the night of July 14, 1966, eight student nurses are brutally murdered by Richard Speck at their group residence in Chicago, Illinois. Speck threatened the women with both a gun and a knife, tying each of them up while robbing their townhouse. Over the next several hours, Speck stabbed and strangled each of the young women throughout various rooms of the place. One young woman, Corazon Amurao, managed to escape with her life by hiding under a bed; Speck had lost count of his victims.





Hurricane Claudette gathers strength over the Gulf of Mexico and heads for the Texas coast on this day in 2003. By the time it passes through Texas, it causes major damage, especially in Galveston, where it kills two people.





Representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) were not in attendance at the 1995 christening of the infant technology that would shake their business model to its core just a few years later. Known formally as "MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3," the technology in question was an efficient new format for the encoding of high-quality digital audio using a highly efficient data-compression algorithm. In other words, it was a way to make CD-quality music files small enough to be stored in bulk on the average computer and transferred manageably across the Internet. Released to the pubic one week earlier, the brand-new MP3 format was given its name and its familiar ".mp3" file extension on this day in 1995.





On this day in 1913, Gerald R. Ford is born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska. His biological father left the family when Ford was three years old. His mother's second husband, Gerald Ford, adopted the young boy and gave him his name. The young Ford went on to become the first vice president to assume office after a president resigned, after President Richard M. Nixon stepped down in 1974.






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Jul 15, 1953:
John Christie, one of England's most notorious killers, is executed. Four months earlier, on March 25, the police and a tenant at 10 Rillington Place in West London made an awful discovery: the bodies of four women in an empty apartment, three in a hidden cupboard and one more beneath the floorboards. Christie, who used to live at the house, was apprehended a week later and confessed to the murders.

Seeing this has reminded me that the police are digging up the garden in a couple of houses not too far from me - looking for bodies of murder vicitms.

Totally horrible.

Thanks as ever Pam.

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Disneyland, Walt Disney's metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion.





An ammunition ship explodes while being loaded in Port Chicago, California, killing 332 people on this day in 1944. The United States World War II military campaign in the Pacific was in full swing at the time. Poor procedures and lack of training led to the disaster.





On July 17, 1967, one of the oddest musical pairings in history comes to an end when Jimi Hendrix dropped out as the opening act for teenybopper sensations The Monkees






On this day in 1941, New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio fails to get a hit against the Cleveland Indians, which brings his historic 56-game hitting streak to an end. The record run had captivated the country for two months.







Jul 17, 1793:
Assassin Charlotte Corday is executed by guillotine in Paris, France. The 25-year-old woman had killed leading French politician Jean Paul Marat four days earlier in his home. Blaming him for the revolutionary war that was breaking out in France, Corday confessed to the murder.





On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress learns of General George Washington's refusal to accept a dispatch from British General William Howe and his brother, Admiral Richard Viscount Howe, opening peace negotiations, because it failed to use the title "general." In response, Congress proclaimed that the commander in chief acted "with a dignity becoming his station," and directed all American commanders to receive only letters addressed to them "in the characters they respectively sustain."




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