Feast day of St Adrian, bishop of St Andrew's, and his Companions
According to Saint Bede, Adrian was born in Africa and was made Abbot of Nerida near Naples. He travelled to England with Saint Theodore of Tarsus when the latter was made Archbishop of Canterbury. He became abbot of St Peter and Paul monastery in Canterbury in Kent, and remained there until his death.

Feast day of St Basil and Companions
Basil (c. 330 - January 1, 379), also called Basil the Great, was bishop of Caesarea, a leading churchman in the 4^th century. The Eastern Orthodox Church considers him a saint and one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, together with Gregory Nazianzus and John Chrysostom. Basil, Gregory Nazianzus, and Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa are called the Cappadocian Fathers. The Roman Catholic Church considers him a saint and a Doctor of the Church. In Greek tradition, his name was given to Father Christmas and is supposed to visit children and give presents every January 1 (when Basil's memory is celebrated; read more), unlike other traditions where this person is Saint Nicolas and comes every Christmas.

He should not be confused with Saint Basil the Confessor, who lived about 400 years later. He also should not be confused with Basil Fool for Christ, a Russian Orthodox saint, after whom St Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow is named. Nor should he be confused with St Basil of Ostrog, who is a Serbian Orthodox saint, who built the Ostrog Monastery which is caved in and stands on a very high hill between Danilovgrad and Niksic.

Feast day of St Basinus

Feast day of St Giovanni Antonio Farina

Feast day of St Humbert III

Feast day of St Lucius I, pope and martyr

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Maha Shivaratree, Mauritius

Charter Day (1681), Pennsylvania

Constitution Day, US (1789)

Admission Day (1791), Vermont, USA

Admission Day (1803), Ohio, USA

1188 Blanche of Castile (d. November 26, 1252), wife of Louis VIII of France, mother of Louis IX

1678 Antonio Vivaldi (d. 1741), Italian composer (The Four Seasons)

1702 Jack Sheppard (d. November 16, 1724), notorious English criminal and serial escapee, executed with an audience of 200,000 people at Tyburn, the principal location in London for public executions by hanging. He was born in 1702, becoming a workhouse child who abandoned his apprenticeship and took up robbery, running with numerous accomplices including bad girls –  a woman named Maggot (or Poll Maggot) and another named Bess Edgworth, or Edgeworth (an alias of Elizabeth Lyon), his lover. He escaped from prison many times, most notably escaping from the condemned cell in Newgate in 1724.

Highwaymen, outlaws, bushrangers, pirates, gangsters, etc in the Book of Days    More

1756 Sir Henry Raeburn, Scottish portrait painter

1778 Robert Emmet (Gaelic – Roibéard Eimeíd; d. September 20, 1803), Irish nationalist rebel leader

1793 Karl Lachmann (d. 1851), philologist

1856 John Dwyer (d. February 1, 1934), English-born Australian labor activist, who immigrated to Australia in 1888. From the early 1890s, he was a leader of Sydney's Active Service Brigade (with JA Andrews, Arthur Desmond, et al). Dwyer was imprisoned after the Sydney Anarchy Trial of June, 1894.

"Leaving his London employment on his 'own accord', Dwyer embarked upon a quest for recognition – recognition of his rights as a worker and his identity as an individual. Dwyer and his family arrived in New South Wales to be greeted by the economic depression of the 1890s, and state and employer mobilisation against organised labour and working class radicals. Dwyer was soon reduced to scraping together a living as a boarding house manager in Sydney's poorest districts, as he helped organise the Active Service Brigade, which agitated on behalf of the unemployed … a working class political radical and autodidact who embraced temperance, and who was fascinated by new ideas in religion and science – Darwinism, Theosophy and occult spiritualism.

"... Driven to the metropolis, Dwyer joined a group called the Active Service Brigade, which agitated for the rights of the unemployed during the 1890s. The Brigade also ran a doss house, or what its leaders called a 'barracks', for unemployed men. Dwyer became the manager of these barracks, where the unemployed could be educated and drilled into a disciplined force of political agitation. In 1894 the Brigade split as a result of a criminal libel charge brought against its leaders by NSW Justice Minister Thomas Slattery; they were convicted and Dwyer served a six month term in Maitland Gaol. In 1895 Dwyer revived the Brigade under his own control, as an expression of his iconoclastic politics. By the turn of the century, the barracks idea had been reduced to simple boarding houses, a pragmatic residue of the Brigade's theatrical radicalism. The boarding houses providing Dwyer with a threadbare income for the next twenty years, as his family shifted about inner-Sydney's poorest districts, renting cheap premises. In the late 1890s Dwyer's interest in social change also manifested in membership of the Independent Order of Good Templars and the Theosophical Society. The IOGT explicitly sought working class support by linking drink to class issues; theosophy allowed him to express the personal and spiritual dimensions of his ideology. Like his political radicalism, these interests had their roots in his London life, and were fitfully pursued as he strove to improve the family income. Dwyer variously tried his hand at business schemes – sometimes to make money for himself, sometimes co-operative ventures for the unemployed; these schemes invariably failed. He repeatedly tried to find a way out of his circumstances, but success eluded him throughout his Australian experience. From 1921 he lived in working class obscurity in the western Sydney home of one of his children."
MG Hearn, doctoral thesis

Sydney Anarchy Trial of February, 1894

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1864 Daniel Mannix (d. November 2, 1963), Irish-born Australian Catholic clergyman, Archbishop of Melbourne for 46 years, one of the most influential public figures in 20^th-Century Australia, and certainly the most powerful cleric in Australian history. 

In 1914, Australia entered World War I on the side of Britain, and when Mannix denounced the war as "just a sordid trade war", he was widely denounced as a traitor. When the Australian Labor Party government of Billy Hughes tried to introduce conscription for the war, Mannix campaigned against it. Although he only spoke out against conscription twice in the period leading up to the 1916 referendum, he was scapegoated by Hughes, and blamed for its defeat in its aftermath. His input was almost certainly too small to have made any real difference. He spoke out more frequently about the 1917 referendum, and might have contributed to its defeat; the extent to which Mannix was influential in the debates surrounding the conscription referenda has been the subject of debate among historians.

Source: Wikipedia

1877 Garrett Morgan (d. 1963), inventor

1878 PD Ouspensky (Peter D Ouspensky; Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii, also Uspenskii or Uspensky; d. October 2, 1947), Russian philosopher who invoked geometry in his discussions of psychology and higher dimensions of existence; best known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian mystic and spiritual teacher, GI Gurdjieff

1879 Josip Murn Aleksandrov (d. 1901), Slovene poet

1901 Charles Goren, contract bridge expert

1903 Luis Carrero Blanco (d. 1973), Spanish statesman

1909 Harry Helmsley (d. 1997), real estate entrepreneur

1913 John Garfield (d. 1952), actor

1916 Hans Eysenck (d. 1997), psychologist

1925 Paul Mauriat, musician

1926 Iñigo Sanz, professor of law

1928 Alan Sillitoe, British author and playwright (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner)

1932 Miriam Makeba ('Mama Afrika'), Grammy Award-winning South African singer

1934 Dame Jane Goodall, conservationist and author. She was named a Dame of the British Empire (DBE) in a ceremony held in Buckingham Palace in 2004.

"Jane Goodall is the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees, having closely observed their behavior for the past quarter century in the jungles of the Gombe Game Reserve in Africa, living in the chimps' environment and gaining their confidence … Dr Goodall has expanded her global outreach with the founding of the Jane Goodall Institute based in Ridgefield, CT. She now teaches and encourages young people to appreciate the conversation of chimpanzees and all creatures great and small. She lectures, writes, teaches and continues her mission in many inventive ways, including the Chimpanzee Guardian Project."  Source

1934 Janez Strnad, Slovene physicist

1942 Charles C Krulak, 31^st Commandant of the US Marine Corps

1947 Jan Garbarek, Norwegian musician

1948 Lindy Chamberlain, New Zealand-born Australian woman who was mistakenly jailed for the August 17, 1980, so-called murder of her baby, Azaria, who was devoured at the mythic Uluru (Ayer's Rock) by a dingo, an Australian wild dog. The story involved some very poorly conducted forensic blood tests – on a substance that later proved to be not blood at all, but a spray-on material used in the normal manufacture of a car. 

Remarkably, despite the fact that a lethal attack by a dingo on a baby in a desert camping ground is scarcely an unlikely event, Lindy Chamberlain and her husband Michael survived years of assault by media and the law, and more than a few Australians believed them both guilty. She was not pardoned until June 2, 1987. In 1988, Evil Angels (aka A Cry in the Dark), the movie of John Bryson's book on the extraordinary Chamberlain story, was released starring Meryl Streep.

"A search of the Chamberlain's car produced what appeared to be the blood of an infant on the seats and on a pair of scissors in the vehicle. After that, the Chamberlains were arrested and tried for the murder of their baby daughter.  They insisted they were innocent, but the evidence appeared to say otherwise.  Lindy was convicted of murder and Michael was declared an accessory to the crime. Lindy went to prison."   Source

"Wendy Carlisle, ABC Radio National presenter: After Lindy was released, there was the Royal Commission and the quashing of her conviction, and then something curious started to happen: people started to write to her and say sorry for all that had happened.

"Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton (reading from such a letter): 'Lindy, my name is … I want to apologise to you and ask for your forgiveness in my feelings against you in once and for a long time believing of your guilt of the death of your loved daughter, Azaria.

"'At the time I was a serving police officer in (a certain Australian state) and the feeling there was you were guilty as hell. I even got first-hand knowledge from a Northern Territory policeman that you were "shonky as shit". Please excuse the language. I even disliked you further when a serving policeman got into the court-house one day and said that Michael was looking embarrassed with his head down and you were there doing your fingernails and kept looking at the people in the gallery with a cold, hard face. That made you even more guilty as we dug into his every word.'

"[Lindy, to interviewer] I have to say I did do my fingernails, it gave me something to do when you felt like hitting people. My lawyers used to get upset with me for that, but it was better than jumping up and screaming at people.

"[Lindy reading from letter again] 'And so Lindy, I helped brand you as guilty. And I just knew that you were guilty. I was glad when they jailed you and had no compassion for you.

"'About 12 months ago, I wanted to write to you and ask for your forgiveness for judging you, for I did not have that right. Although I did not know what to believe, but I decided I would not judge you again and when my friends discussed you I would not be involved in the discussion.

"'On Saturday while walking through the ABC Shop, I saw a large stack of your books and I picked it up and decided to buy it. I went home and did not get much of a chance to read it until church on Sunday and from that time on, I have not been sleeping well or concentrating on anything except your book. I knew as I began reading about Azaria's birth that you loved her and that you did not have any thought even to 'do away' with her. From that moment I knew without a shadow of doubt that you were, and are innocent. My knowledge went beyond belief, but I know with every fibre of my being that you are innocent of that terrible frame-up. I was, and am still, terribly ashamed of my former feelings.

"'I wonder what it was at that time that Australians wanted "blood" from you. Hatred is a horrible thing, and I have never seen a nation with so much hatred. I am going to write to the Northern Territory government and suggest they pay you an adequate compensation for the unrighteous things done to you. I also intend to tell them they need to put on Azaria's birth certificate that she died from killing by a dingo.'

"[Lindy, to interviewer] That's an interesting about-face, although what interests me here, and I'm not supposed to say things like this because I'm supposed to say isn't support wonderful, which support is. But it's interesting here that this person who is a police officer went from believing I was guilty from gossip, to believe I was innocent because she read about Azaria's birth. Nowhere in there does she mention looking at any of the facts, so although she's come to the right conclusion in the end, she still did on feelings instead of facts, and this is one thing that Australia needs to learn, they've got to look at the facts."   Source: 'Women Who Transgress', Background Briefing

Azaria Chamberlain disappearance    Lindy Chamberlain's website    More

1948 Shakin' Stevens, British pop singer (Number One hit in UK, 1981: 'This Ole House') who changed his name by deed poll to Clark Kent. According to his website, Stevens has been ranked as the 16^th-highest selling artist in the UK, ever.

1951 Chris Rea, British singer and musician

1954 Irina Georgiyevna Ratushinskaya, Russian lyric poet, essayist, and political dissident in the former Soviet Union. While in prison for her advocacy of human rights, she wrote some 250 poems, first scratching them into bars of soap and then, after memorizing them, washing them away. Stikhi (Poems, 1984) was published while she was imprisoned. Her memoir, Grey is the Color of Hope, chronicles her prison experience. In 1987, she went to the United States, where she received the Religious Freedom Award from the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Ratushinskaya is a member of International PEN, which monitored her situation during her incarceration.

"In 1954, Irina Georgiyevna Ratushinskaya was born in Odessa (Ukraine). She graduated from Odessa University in 1976 with a degree in physics. After she married, she lived in Kiev and began to write poetry. She applied to leave the USSR in 1980, and was arrested during a human right's demonstration in 1981. In 1982, she was arrested again, this time for attempting to publish her poetry. She was sentenced to 7 yrs. hard labor in the woman's section of Barashevo prison called the Small Zone, to be followed by 5 yrs. "internal exile." While in prison, she wrote more than 250 poems, reportedly scratching the verses into a bar of soap. Her 1st published work, "Poems," came out in 1984 while she was still jailed. Outside pressures have been credited with her early release in 1986. Once freed, she emigrated to London where she now lives.

"Ratushinskaya's other works include the following in English translation: "Beyond the Limit" (1987); "Grey is the Color of Hope" (1988); "Pencil Letter" (1989); "In the Beginning" (1991); "Dance with a Shadow" (1992), and "Odessites" (1995)."   Source

 

'No, I'm Not Afraid'

By Irina Ratushinskaya

No, I'm not afraid: after a year
Of breathing these prison nights
I will survive into the sadness
To name which is escape.
The cockerel will weep freedom for me
And here – knee-deep in mire –
My gardens shed their water
And the northern air blows in draughts.
And how am I to carry to an alien planet
What are almost tears, as though towards home ...
It isn't true, I am afraid, my darling!
But make it look as though you haven't noticed.

(Translated by David McDuff)

Shop Irina Ratushinskaya

 

1958 Patricia Heaton, actress (Everybody Loves Raymond)

1960 Mykelti Williamson, actor

1963 Jason Newsted, former bassist of Metallica

1967 Evan Dando, musician

1968 Patsy Kensit, actress

 

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303 or 304 Martyrdom of Saint Adrian of Nicomedia.

1152 Frederick I Barbarossa (1122 - 1190) was elected King of the Germans. Barbarossa is considered a 'King in the Mountain' legendary character (something like Rip van Winkle, or the Seven Sleepers), despite having been a real person. He is said not to be dead, but asleep with his knights in a cave in Kyffhäuser mountain in Thuringia, Germany, and that when ravens should cease to fly around the mountain he would awake and restore Germany to its ancient greatness.

 

1193 Saladin died in Damascus after a short illness.

Saladin (born in Tikrit, Iraq, 1137) ('Salah Ad-din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub) founded the ethnically Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt and Syria. He was also a renowned leader in the Crusades for his military prowess against the invading European Crusaders and his mercy to them.

 

"First Ayyubid sultan, and famous for having recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders. Saladin was of Kurdish heritage, and all through his career he used mainly Kurdish officials as his closest partners.

"Saladin managed to revitalize the economy of Egypt, he reorganized the military forces and with the advice of his father, he stayed away from any conflicts with Nureddin, his formal lord, after he had become the real ruler over Egypt. Instead he waited until Nureddin's death, before he started serious military actions first against smaller Muslim states, before directing it against the Crusaders.

"Saladin is one of very few personages of the time of the Crusades that [sic] has managed to be positively described in both Western and Eastern sources. With his high position among his Western opponents, he has become a figure that have [sic] fascinated Western writers."   Source

1461 Wars of the Roses in England: Lancastrian King Henry VI was deposed by his Yorkist cousin, who then became King Edward IV.

1496 Death of Sigismund of Austria (b. October 26, 1427), Regent of Tyrol and Further Austria.

1619 Death of Anne of Denmark (b. 1574), consort of James I of England.

1665 Start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

1681 Charles II of England granted a land charter to William Penn for the area that would later become Pennsylvania.

 

1712 Hertford trial: In what was probably the last witchcraft trial in England in which a conviction was recorded, Jane Wenham (d. 1730), 'the Witch of Walkern', was tried for talking to her cat and for flying – in other words, for being a 'wise woman' as witches were sometimes called in that country. 

Wenham was accused of bewitching Matthew Gilston and Anne Thorne of Walcorne, in the county of Hereford, was declared guilty and sentenced to death.

According to the mandatory penalty at the time, Judge Powell had no choice but to condemn her to death, but through his influence she was later given a Royal Pardon, provoking a brief pamphlet war. In 1686, Alice Molland actually had the distinction of being the last to be hanged for witchcraft in England. In 1736, the old laws against witchcraft were repealed, but people could be prosecuted  for the pretended exercise of supernatural powers.

The killing times

In 1903, Robert Steele estimated that 70,000 victims were hanged in England, under the reign of James I alone. However, records indicate that between 1566 and 1685 fewer than 1,000 people were hanged. No accurate figures are available as to the carnage throughout Britain and Europe during the era of witch hunting. The Inquisition is often credited with many deaths, and indeed many people were killed for the crimes of witchcraft and sorcery, but the figures are minor compared to those executed by the Inquisition for heresy, which was its main brief. Usually, witches before the inquisitors were dismissed as mentally ill.

The last execution for witchcraft in Scotland, however, took place in 1722 when Janet Horne was killed as the witch hunts wound down all across Europe (though as late as 1782 the last witch to be legally executed met her fate at Glarus in Switzerland). Accusations of witchcraft and sorcery still emerge from time to time in many countries of the world. As recently as 1981, a Mexican woman was stoned for practising witchcraft.

"... according to the extraordinary evidence adduced at her trial she was a witch indeed. Anne Thorn, a girl of sixteen years of age, had dislocated her knee. It was alleged that one day, as she was sitting before the fire by reason of the weakness of her limb, she suddenly bounded out of the house, ran swiftly down the road for about half a mile, jumped a high gate with ease, and returned home after an absence of only six or seven minutes, bringing with her, wrapped in her apron, some sticks which she had gathered by the way! In the eyes of Hertfordshire experts this was in itself ample proof that Anne Thorn had been subjected, at the bidding of some naughty wizard or witch, to the tender mercies of the Evil One or his emissaries. Nor was evidence wanting to prove that the perpetrator of this wickedness was a witch and none other than Jane Wenham of Walkern. For Jane had been vigorously attacked by the infuriated Anne, and her flesh was not as the flesh of womankind, for the sound of Anne's finger-nails against her face was as the sound of 'scratching' against a wainscot.

"Nor was this unaccompanied by other wonders. A 'gentleman' – in point of fact Mr. Arthur Chauncy – kindly made a little experiment for his own satisfaction, and by repeatedly burying a pin to the head in Jane Wenham's arm proved conclusively that she bore pain without flinching, that she shed no blood when wounded, and that she must therefore be a witch. Here was cumulative and circumstantial evidence which none could gainsay, but there was more behind. It was found that poor Jane could not repeat the Lord's Prayer correctly and, most ominous of all this damning evidence, cats were wont to lurk in her presence in a most peculiar manner. What need had an enlightened jury of any further witnesses? Jane Wenham was declared, after full, and of course impartial hearing, to be guilty of personal intercourse with the father of lies, who conversed with her in the likeness of a cat, and the jury considered her worthy of death."   Source

 

The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider'd (read as text or see original pages)

The Decline and End of Witch Trials in Europe

Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection    'Witch' at Wikipedia   Shop witch hunts

 

Main Entry: ¹witch

Pronunciation: 'wich
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English wicche, from Old English wicca, masculine, wizard & wicce, feminine, witch; akin to Middle High German wicken to bewitch, Old English wigle divination, and perhaps to Old High German wIh holy -- more at VICTIM
1 : one that is credited with usually malignant supernatural powers; especially : a woman practicing usually black witchcraft often with the aid of a devil or familiar : SORCERESS -- compare WARLOCK
2 : an ugly old woman : HAG
3 : a charming or alluring girl or woman
4 : a practitioner of Wicca
5 : WITCH OF AGNESI

Source: Merriam-Webster Online

 

 

1774 The first recorded observation of the Orion Nebula (by William Herschel).

1789 In New York City, the first US Congress met and declared the new Constitution of the United States to be in effect.

1790 France was divided into 83 départements, which cut across the former provinces in an attempt to dislodge regional loyalties based on noble ownership of land.

1791 Vermont was admitted as the 14^th US state.

1804 Australia's Battle of Vinegar Hill, prelude: More than 300 convicts rioted in the penal station at Castle Hill in the British colony of New South Wales and rose up against the colonial authority, captured weapons and marched upon the administration town Parramatta. Led by Irishmen transported to the colony for their roles in the failed Irish Rebellion of 1798, the rebels were confronted the following day, March 5, by British soldiers and militia near present day Rouse Hill, today a suburb of Sydney. More tomorrow: The Battle of Vinegar Hill.

1837 USA: Chicago, Illinois was granted a city charter by Illinois.

1841 USA: William Henry Harrison caught a fatal cold while standing hatless in the drizzle at his own Presidential inauguration. A month later, he was the first US president to die in office.

1849 David Rice Atchison became President of the United States for one day (it is believed by some) due to a gap between the expiration of James K Polk's term and the swearing-in of Zachary Taylor.

1852 Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol (b. 1809), died in Moscow aged 42, believing himself already damned.

"In his later life Gogol came under influence of a fanatical priest, Father Konstantinovskii, and burned sequels for Dead Souls, just 10 days before he died on the verge of madness on the 4th of March 1852. Gogol had refused to take any food and various remedies were employed to make him eat – spirits were poured over his head, hot loaves applied to his person and leeches attached to his nose. Rumors arise from time to time that Gogol was buried alive, a situation familiar from the story The Premature Burial of the contemporary writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)."   Source

More

 

1853 The Mary Anne became the first steamship on the Murray River, Australia.

1858 Death of Matthew Perry (b. 1794), American commodore who forced the opening of Japan to the West.

1861 The 'Stars and Bars' was adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.

1866 Sydney, Australia: In the evening, the offices of shipbrokers Molison and Black at 17 Bridge Street were destroyed by the accidental explosion of two bottles of nitro-glycerine.

1868 Death of Jesse Chisholm, Old West pioneer.

1873 The New York Daily Graphic became the first illustrated daily newspaper.

1877 Emile Berliner invented the microphone. Berliner also gave us the flat recording disc, on May 16, 1888.

1877 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake debuted.

1881 A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, began.

1882 Britain's first electric trams ran, from Leytonstone, London.

1899 Cooktown, Queensland, Australia and the surrounding area were hit by a cyclone; 307 lives were lost.

1902 In Chicago, Illinois, USA, the American Automobile Association was established.

1904 Russo-Japanese War: Russian troops in Korea retreated towards Manchuria followed by 100,000 Japanese troops.

1913 The United States Department of Commerce and United States Department of Labor were established by splitting the duties of the 10-year-old Dept. of Commerce and Labor.

1917 Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.

1924 The familiar song, 'Happy birthday', was first published. It was written in 1893 by two Kentucky, USA, Sunday school teachers.

1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32^nd President of the United States. In reference to the Great Depression, Roosevelt gave his "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself" inauguration speech.

List of USA Presidential inauguration dates

1933 Frances Perkins became United States Secretary of Labor, first female member of the United States Cabinet.

1939 Lala Har Dayal (Hardayal, or Hardyal; b. 1884) died, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an Indian revolutionary and scholar dedicated to the removal of British influence in India. In March 1914, he was arrested by US immigration authorities for his undesirable activities. Released on bail, he fled to Switzerland and then to Berlin, where he tried to foment an anti-British rising in north-western India.

Source: The Daily Bleed

1941 Great Britain launched Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands, during World War II.

1944 In Ossining, New York, Louis Buchalter, the leader of 1930s crime syndicate Murder, Inc., was executed at Sing Sing.

1947 Beatster Neal Cassady left New York after his first visit.

1954 Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston announced the first successful kidney transplant.

1962 An American nuclear reactor began operating in Antarctica.

1963 In Paris, six people were sentenced to death for conspiring to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle.

1966 John Lennon (1940 - 1980) told a reporter, Maureen Cleave, of London's Evening Standard, that The Beatles were "more popular than Jesus Christ right now", sparking controversy, mainly in the United States. The statement was misinterpreted and caused outrage amongst many people, most especially in the USA, leading EMI to arrange for Lennon to explain his meaning at a media conference. We now know that what the Beatle was in fact saying, was that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ right now.