June 7th – This Day in History

Notable Quotes, Events, Deaths & Births

Notable Events
1494 - Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, agreeing to divide the New World between
them.

1498 - Christopher Columbus left on his third voyage of exploration.

1769 - Frontiersman Daniel Boone began his explorations and sighted Kentucky.

1775 - The United Colonies changed their name to the United States.

1776 - Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a

resolution calling for a Declaration of Independence.

1893 - Mohandas K. Gandhi, a young Indian lawyer working in South Africa,

refused to comply with racial segregation rules on a South African train, his
first act of civil disobedience.

1914 - The first vessel passed through the Panama Canal.

1929 - The sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence.

1939 - King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, arrived at Niagara Falls, New York, from Canada,
the first visit to the United States by a reigning British monarch.

1955 - "The $64,000 Question," a summer replacement show, premiered.

1965 - The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Connecticut law banning contraception.

1975 - Sony Corporation unveiled the Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR).

1991 - Mount Pinatubo explodes, making it the second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century.

2002 - Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel was convicted in Norwalk, Connecticut, of beating Greenwich
neighbor Martha Moxley to death when both were 15 years old in 1975. He was later sentenced to 20
years to life in prison.

2006 - The British Houses of Parliament are temporarily closed due to an anthrax scare.
Notable Births
1848 - Paul Gauguin, French post-Impressionist painter.

 Art is either plagiarism or revolution. 

 Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art.
Otherwise, what would become of beauty? 
 Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at
least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are
nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order
to build something with them; they do not win their true
meaning until one knows how to apply them.

1917 - Gwendolyn Brooks, African-American poet.

1917 - Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti), American singer, film actor, and comedian.

 I once shook hands with Pat Boone and my whole right side sobered up.
 I feel sorry for people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's the
best they're going to feel all day.
 I've got seven kids. The three words you hear most around my house are 'hello,'
'goodbye,' and 'I'm pregnant'.
 There's a statue of Jimmy Stewart in the Hollywood Wax
Museum, and the statue talks better than he does.

1929 - John Turner, English-born Canadian prime minister.

1940 - Tom Jones (born Sir Thomas Jones Woodward), Welsh singer.

1953 - Johnny Clegg, English-born South African musician.

1958 - Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson), American musician.

1967 - Dave Navarro, American musician.

1981 - Anna Kournikova, Russian tennis player and model.

Notable Deaths
1866 - Chief Seattle (also called Sealth, See-ahth, and Seathl), leader of the Suquamish and
Duwamish Native American tribes.

“Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the
web, he does to himself.”

1937 - Jean Harlow, American actress.

1971 - Leo Burnett, advertising executive born in St. Johns, Michigan.

1980 - Henry Miller, American novelist.

 And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human?
Divine, in other words?
 Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
 Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

1996 - Max Factor, Jr., American businessman.

2006 - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Jordanian-born terrorist.

Fact of the Day: Drive-In Movie

The first drive-in movie theatre was opened in 1933 in Camden, New Jersey by Richard M. Hollingshead,
Jr. Hollingshead designed it for his mother, who complained about the uncomfortable seats at theatres.
A drive-in would allow her to enjoy the comfortable, plush bench seats of a vehicle of that era. Then
known as an "automobile theater," the drive-in had room for 500 vehicles and charged a rate of 25¢ per
person or $1 a car. The sound was provided by a public-address system with a single large speaker
mounted on the projection booth. After the locals complained about the noise, Hollingshead tried other
solutions before deciding to install smaller speakers mounted on poles at each parking spot. At the
height of their popularity (1958), there were more than 4000 drive-in movies in the U.S. Now, only a few
hundred still exist.