Birthdays: George De La Tour, Wyatt Earp, Dr. David Livingston, William Jennings Bryan, Sir Richard Burton (The African explorer, not Liz Taylor's ex), Charles M. Russell, Jacky Moms Mabley, Leonard Nimoy, Adolf Eichman, Richard Williams, Phillip Roth, Adolf Galland, Ursula Andress, Patrick McGoohan, Ornette Coleman, Harvey Weinstein, Bruce Willis is 52, Glenn Close is 60

Roman Festival ANCILIA when the Salii, the Leaping Priests of Mars, take down the Sacred Shields of Mars the Avenger that dropped down from Heaven on Romulus (Ouch! OOch!) and do the leaping dance of Mars! Ceremony to mark the beginning of campaigning season.

Today is Saint Joseph.’s Day, when the swallows come back to Capistrano.

1330- Edmund the Earl of Kent is beheaded by order of his mother. who's a naughty boy...!

1611- Moscow Burns- again. During the period called the Time of Troubles a Polish army had captured the Kremlin and tried to get the son of the Polish King Wladyswav IV or Ladislas made Czar. The Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow Hermogenes forbade any good Russian from swearing allegiance to the Roman Catholic Ladislas. So the Poles threw the Patriarch in a dungeon where he soon died. This day a rebel army organized by a Prince Troubetskoy and peasant butcher Kosma Minin attacked the foreign occupiers and in the ensuing conflict the city caught fire. Four hundred years later Prince Troubetskoy’s descendant was a producer on the Fox animated feature "Ice Age".

1875- Mark Twain admits in a letter that he now likes to use a typewriter, a new technology accused of ruining the art of writing.

1914- A fire in the negative vaults of the Eclair Studios in New Jersey destroyed forever all the American work of pioneer French animator Emile Cohl. He had come to the U.S. to animate the first cartoon series, George McManus’ "The Newlyweds" later to be renamed in comic strip form "Life With Father".

1928- the Amos & Andy radio show debuted. NBC Blue Network, WMAQ in Chicago.

1931- Nevada legalized gambling.

1953- First T.V. broadcast of the Oscar ceremony. That utterly memorable circus film
"The Greatest Show on Earth" won top honors. Ironically it was Cecil B. DeMille’s only oscar of his career. Before t.v. the Oscars ceremony included a dinner and an hour of dancing before the awards were presented.

1954- Singer Sammy Davis Jr. lost an eye in an auto accident in the California desert. He was left lying bleeding unattended in a hallway in Riverside County Hospital. This was because he was black and it was a segregated facility. Finally actor Jeff Chandler found him and forced the doctors to treat him. Friend Frank Sinatra urged Davis out of his depression and got him out on stage again. That first night at Ciro’s nightclub the entire Ratpack- Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford each preformed on stage wearing a black eye patch similar to Davis’.

1957- Elvis Presley purchased an estate outside Memphis Tennessee called Graceland from Ruth Moore for $100,000.

1962- The first Pillsbury Doughboy comercial.

1964- IBM gives the greenlight to plans for the 360 series. The first compatible computers.

1974- The band Jefferson Airplane changed its name to Jefferson Starship.

1979- C-Span cable channel started broadcasting live from the floor of Congress. The first Congressman to speak on camera was Al Gore.

1982- Randy Rhoads, the lead guitarist for Ozzy Ozbourne died when he playfully flew his plane buzzing the bands travelling bus and smacked into a farmhouse.

1984- I’LL BE BACK- James Cameron began shooting the film the Terminator. He first considered casting O.J. Simpson for the cyborg killer before settling on Austrian weightlifter Arnold Swarzenegger.

1987- Reverend Jim Baker resigned as head of the PTL Ministries. The Televangelist had been accused of hanky-panky with secretary Jessica Hahn and defrauding his parishioners of millions to put air conditioning in his dog’s house and on a Christian Theme Park named Heritage USA. Evangelist turned comedian Sam Kinison joked:" Up in Heaven Jesus must be flipping through the New Testament saying "Hey, where did I say anything about a Water Slide?!"

1993- Monkey-cam debuted on the David Letterman Show.

2003- GULF WAR II- SHOCK & AWE- The United States and Britain invaded Saddam Husseins’ Iraq with overwhelming firepower. This was the United States first "preventative war" breaking fifty five years of discouraging other nations for resorting to unilateral military actions and the 200 year old American tradition of never firing first. Although Iraq had not bothered the US directly Washington and Downing St. declared they had solid evidence that Saddam had the ability to attack the west with nuclear weapons in 45 minutes. The George W. Bush White House encouraged the belief that Saddam had a tie to Osama Ben Laden’s 9-11 attack. All these claims turned out to be fictions. That summer the movie Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones came out. Wags called this war Gulf Wars Episode II Clone of the Attack.

2004- Brian Maxwell, the inventor of the Power Bar nutrition snack, died of a heart attack at age 51.