Birthdays: Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Scatman Crowthers, Rosemary Clooney, Artie Shaw, Joan Collins, Alicia de Larrocha, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Dr. Robert Moog –inventor of the first Music Synthesizer, Drew Carey

Today in ancient Rome was the feast of Vulcan.

1498- Mystic monk and religious reformer Savonarola was hanged and his body burned for defying the Pope and Church. Artists Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Sandro Botticelli and Luigi Della Robbia were admirers of his.

1701 -Captain Kidd was hanged in London for piracy, robbery and killing a sailor with a bucket. His last letter was written to try to bribe the judge with his buried treasure. His body was coated with tar for preservation and displayed in a gage suspended over Execution Wharf on the Thames for years afterwards as a warning for pirates.

1785- Ben Franklin invented bifocal glasses.

1873- The first Preakness horse race. The winner's name was Survivor.

1903- MOTHER JONES 'CHILDRENS CRUSADE- Seventy three year old activist and union organizer Mary "Mother Jones" Harris led a strike of 16,000 Philadelphia mill workers, all children under 12 years old, to demand a 55 hour workweek down from 60 hours a week. On this day she led a march of thousands of working children to President Teddy Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay New York to demand the repeal of child labor.

1941-Hollywood union boss George Brown and assistant Willard Bioff (also a Frank Nitti bagman) were indicted on federal racketeering charges. Brown had been a Chicago operative and it was said 'he could drink 100 bottles of beer in one day". Their main contact among the Hollywood studio heads was Nicholas Schenck, the chairman of Loews Theaters and a head of MGM. Willie Bioff had tried to help Louis B. Mayer defeat the screen actor's guild and hijack the Disney animator's union. After their jail time Bioff blew up in his car after turning government witness and Brown 'disappeared...' Schenck meanwhile was pardoned by President Truman.

1969- The Who release their rock opera Tommy.