Birthdays: George Herriman the creator of Krazy Kat, Dorothy Parker, Ray Bradbury is 87, Claude DeBussy, Johnny Lee Hooker, Denis Papin 1647 inventor of the Pressure Cooker, Gen Stormin’Norman Schwarzkopf, Paul Molitor, Bill Parcells, Max Vilander, Carl “Big Yaz”Yazstremski, Dyanna Nyad, Deng Xiao Ping, Henry Cartier Bresson, Valerie Harper, Cindy Williams, Tori Amos

In Britain it is National Slacker Day: Stand Up for your Right to Sit Back Down!

565AD - St Columba reported seeing a monster in Loch Ness.

1558- When Antonio Carafa became Pope Paul IV he blamed the loss of half of Europe to Protestantism to the corruption of the Catholic Church. He attacked the dry rot with zeal. He started with a warning to all monks away from their monasteries without permission to return at once. This day he ordered the gates of Rome closed and all deadbeat monks still remaining be rounded up and sentenced to be galley slaves. He’s the Pope who ordered Vasari to paint pantaloons on Michelangelo’s nude of Christ in the Last Judgement.

1611- Galileo made a group of Venetian senators and noblemen climb to the top of Saint Marks Basilica in Venice to demonstrate his telescope.

1715 – Handel’s "Watermusic" premiered on the Thames River to mark celebrations of the Peace ending the War of Spanish Succession.

1806- elderly French painter Jean Fragonard died of a cerebral seizure after eating a large fruit ice on a hot day.

1849-The first aerial bomb attack. Austrian General Von Wintzingerode was at a loss at how to get at the besieged Italian city of Venice. The Venetian lagoon was too deep to wade across but was too shallow for battleships. Finally a Swiss mercenary suggested filling hot air balloons with troops and flying them over the city to drop explosives. Those little round black bombs with lit fuses you see in cartoons. A dozen balloons filled with grenadiers were launched aloft, but before they could do anything a stiff breeze blew them all to Yugoslavia. Doh! The first bombing by ariplane would be in 1912.

1882- American showman P.T. Barnum bought the largest elephant in the London Zoo. He created a new name for the beast- he called it a JUMBO. It was the highlight of his circus for years and after it was hit by a freight train and killed Barnum had it’s bones bleached and charged people admission to come look at it’s skeleton.

1901-The Cadillac Automobile Company formed. Named for the French explorer who founded Detroit, William De La Mothe-Cadillac.

1906 - 1st Victor Victrola manufactured, using Emile Berliners flat record turntable system. The Victrola was so cheap and easy to use it became standard in many homes and finished off any competition from Thomas Edison’s rival talking cylinder system.

1914- The Battle of Mons. British forces stop the German advance towards Paris and in so doing allow the main French army to win at the Marne. In a proclamation to his generals Kaiser Wilhelm bomabastically stated “Roll over this contemptible little British Army!” The term appealed to the Tommies and they nicknamed themselves “The Old Contemptibles” Also the German field general was General Von Kluck, who’s name rhymed with the Brit’s favorite expletive. As the marched through Belgian streets they sang “We don’t give a F*CK about old Von Kluck and all is F*CKING ARMY!”

1922- After World War One Lawrence of Arabia wrote home from Baghdad about the Postwar British occupation of Iraq:” The Public had been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady with-holding of information. The Baghdad comunique’s have been belated, insincere and incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told.”Aren't we glad things like that don't happen today, boys & girls?

1927- 200,000 people protest in Hyde Park London and around the world for clemency for convicted Italian immigrants Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vancetti. They were socialists who were convicted of murdering a store clerk in Massachusetts and became a radical cause-celebre. Letters demanding mercy came in from George Bernard Shaw, Helen Keller, Picasso, the Pope and more. Woody Guthrie wrote folk songs in praise of Sacco & Vancetti. The next day the State of Massachusetts electrocuted them anyway.

1939- The first aerosol spray can.

1953-The French government closed the Devil's Island prison colony.

1976- The protest at the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in New Hampshire. The birth of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement.

1984 - The Last Volkswagen Rabbit produced.