“If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.”
~Isaac Asimov
1916 – National parks and national monuments in the United States were originally individually managed under the auspices of the Department of the Interior. The movement for an independent agency to oversee these federal lands was spearheaded by conservationist Stephen Mather. The campaign resulted in the creation of the National Park Service.
One hundred years ago today, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill that mandated the agency “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
1944 – After more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris was liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris’ landmarks and burn the city to the ground before its liberation, and instead signed a formal surrender.
1950 – In anticipation of a crippling strike by railroad workers, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order putting America’s railroads under the control of the U.S. Army. In a public statement, Truman insisted that “governmental seizure [of the railroads] is imperative” for the protection of American citizens as well as “essential to the national defense and security of the Nation.”
1965 – Archibald Wright “Moonlight” Graham died in Chisholm, MN at the age of 85. An American professional baseball player who appeared as a right fielder in a single major league game for the New York Giants in 1905, he completed his medical degree that same year and subsequently left baseball and became the beloved “Doc Graham” in Chisholm for 50 years.
His story was popularized by Shoeless Joe, a novel by W. P. Kinsella, and the subsequent 1989 film Field Of Dreams (albeit with some historical discrepancies), starring Kevin Costner, and featuring Burt Lancaster and Frank Whaley, respectively, as older and younger incarnations of Graham.
1967 – George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, was murdered by John Patler, a former member of his own group. Patler had been a captain in the American Nazi Party and the editor and cartoonist for the party’s magazine, Stormtrooper. However, he was expelled from the Party in March 1967 for alleged “Bolshevik leanings” after disagreeing with Rockwell about some of the party’s policies.
Federal officials had approved a military burial at Culpeper National Cemetery because Rockwell had been an honorably discharged veteran. The cemetery specified that no Nazi insignia could be displayed, and when the fifty mourners violated these conditions the entrance to the cemetery was blocked in a five-hour standoff, during which the hearse (which had been stopped on railroad tracks near the cemetery) was nearly struck by an approaching train. The next day Rockwell’s body was cremated.
1984 – Truman Capote, the author of the pioneering true-crime novel In Cold Blood died at the age of 59. Capote, a flamboyant figure who first achieved literary fame at age 23 with his novel Other Voices, Other Rooms and also wrote the 1958 novella Breakfast At Tiffany’s, died of liver disease in Los Angeles.
2000 – Jack Nitzsche died of cardiac arrest at the age of 63. He was a songwriter (co-wrote Needles And Pins with Sonny Bono, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for co-writing Up Where We Belong for the film An Officer And A Gentleman), musician (played piano on the Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black and Let’s Spend The Night Together) and producer (co-produced Neil Young’s Crazy Horse and Harvest albums).
2009 – Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, D-Mass., died at the age of 77. He was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and was the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history, having served there for almost 47 years.
The Chappaquiddick incident on July 18, 1969, resulted in the death of his automobile passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. The incident and its aftermath hindered his chances of ever becoming President of the United States. His one attempt, in the 1980 presidential election, resulted in a Democratic primary campaign loss to incumbent President Jimmy Carter.
2012 – Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the surface of the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, died at the age of 82, after complications from coronary artery bypass surgery.
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