They include English novelist Emily Bronte in 1818; auto pioneer Henry Ford in 1863; baseball player/manager Casey Stengel in 1890; English sculptor Henry Moore in 1898; Baseball Commissioner Allan "Bud" Selig in 1934 (age 74); film director Peter Bogdanovich in 1939 (age 69); singer Paul Anka in 1941 (age 67); California governor/actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1947 (age 61); and actors Ken Olin in 1954 (age 54), Delta Burke in 1956 (age 52), Laurence Fishburne in 1961 (age 47), Lisa Kudrow in 1963 (age 45) and Hilary Swank in 1974 (age 34).
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On this date in history:
In 1619, in Jamestown, Va., the first elected legislative assembly in the New World -- the House of Burgesses -- convened in the choir loft of the town's church.
In 1932, Walt Disney released his first color cartoon, "Flowers and Trees," made in three-color Technicolor.
In 1936, author Margaret Mitchell sold the film rights for "Gone With the Wind" to MGM for $50,000, most ever for a first novel.
In 1974, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 21-17, approved a third article of impeachment against U.S. President Richard Nixon, charging him with ignoring congressional subpoenas. Nixon resigned before the issue went to trial.
In 1975, former Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa was last seen outside a suburban Detroit restaurant. He was declared dead in 1982.
In 1976, Kate Smith made her last public appearance on this date, singing her signature number "God Bless America" on a TV program honoring the U.S. Bicentennial.
In 1991, a special U.N. commission to Iraq announced it had found 46,000 chemical shells and warheads and 3,000 tons of raw materials for weapons.
In 1994, the United States, Germany, Britain, France and Russia decided to tighten sanctions on the Serb-dominated government in what remained of Yugoslavia.
In 1995, negotiators for Russia and the breakaway republic of Chechnya agreed to stop fighting.
In 1997, suicide bombers detonated two bombs in an outdoor market in West Jerusalem, killing themselves and 13 other people.
In 1999, a Maryland grand jury indicted Linda Tripp for illegally taping her phone conversations with Monica Lewinsky.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II was present for the canonization of Pedro de San Jose Betanur of Guatemala, Central America's first saint, and Juan Diego of Mexico City, first American Indian saint.
In 2003, U.S. President George Bush indicated he would favor a law or constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages. The Vatican also condemned gay unions.
In 2004, the U.N. Security Council adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution demanding Sudan disarm within 30 days and prosecute those responsible for thousands of deaths in Darfur.
In 2005, British police said they arrested six men and one woman in the failed July 21 London subway bombings. That brought to 13 the number of suspects in custody in the apparent, unsuccessful attempt to match the July 7 attack that killed 56.
In 2006, an Israeli air raid leveled a building housing civilians in the Lebanese village of Qana, reportedly killing at least 65 people, mostly women and children. Israeli officials said the wrong building was hit.
In 2007, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts was reported hospitalized after suffering a seizure. A Supreme Court spokesman said Roberts had "fully recovered" by the next day.
Also in 2007, federal lawmen swept across the Alaska home of seven-term Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, allegedly looking for evidence in an ongoing bribery investigation involving a convicted oil field contractor.
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A thought for the day: U.S. President U.S. Grant said, "Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately you occasionally find men disgrace labor."
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Today is Thursday, July 31, the 213th day of 2008 with 153 to follow.
The moon is waning. The morning stars are Neptune and Uranus. The evening stars are Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Leo. They include author and jurist James Kent in 1763; Confederate Army guerrilla leader William Quantrill, in 1837; pollster Elmo Burns Roper Jr., in 1900; economist Milton Friedman and former TV talk-show host and columnist Irv Kupcinet, both in 1912; actor Don Murray in 1929 (age 79); actress France Nuyen in 1939 (age 69) and Geraldine Chaplin in 1944 (age 64); singer Gary Lewis in 1945 (age 63); Australian tennis player Evonne Goolagong in 1951 (age 57); and actors Wesley Snipes in 1962 (age 46) and Dean Cain ("Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman") in 1966 (age 42).
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On this date in history:
In 1498, on his third voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus discovered the island of Trinidad.
In 1556 Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic missionaries and educators, died in Rome.
In 1792, director David Rittenhouse laid the cornerstone in Philadelphia for the U.S. Mint, the first building of the federal government.
In 1964, Ranger 7, an unmanned U.S. lunar probe, took the first close-up images of the moon.
In 1974, Watergate figure John Ehrlichman was sentenced to 20 months in prison for his role in the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Ellsberg was the Pentagon consultant who leaked the "Pentagon Papers," documents about the war in Vietnam.
In 1991, the U.S. Senate overturned a 43-year-old law and voted to allow women to fly military warplanes in combat.
In 1992, all aboard were killed when a Thai Airways jetliner carrying more than 100 people crashed in bad weather in Nepal.
In 1995, the Walt Disney Co. announced it was buying Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion.
In 2002, Alimzan Tokhtakhounov, a reputed Russian crime figure, was arrested at his resort in Italy on charges he tried to fix two ice skating events at the Salt Lake City Olympic Games.
In 2003, North Korea reversed its long-standing opposition to multilateral talks on its nuclear weapons program.
In 2004, Pakistani investigators blamed al-Qaida for an assassination attempt on Prime Minister-designate Shaukat Aziz. Eight people died in the suicide bombing attack.
In 2006, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, two weeks before his 80th birthday, formally transferred power temporarily to his brother Raul in preparation for intestinal surgery.
In 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed, in a 411-8 vote, a bill overhauling ethics rules focused on large donations and gifts to lawmakers.
Also in 2007, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to deploy as many as 26,000 peacekeepers to end the violence in Sudan's Darfur region that reportedly killed about 200,000 people since 2003.
And, media mogul Rupert Murdoch won approval to buy the Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
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A thought for the day: Alexander Dumas the Younger said, "Business? It's quite simple. It's other people's money."
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Today is Friday, Aug. 1, the 214th day of 2006 with 152 to follow.
The moon is new. The morning stars are Neptune and Uranus. The evening stars are Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Leo. They include Claudius I, born in 10 B.C.; French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck, known for his theory of evolution, in 1744; explorer William Clark in 1770; Francis Scott Key, composer of "The Star-Spangled Banner," in 1779; lawyer and writer Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of "Two Years Before the Mast," in 1815; author Herman Melville ("Moby Dick") in 1819; actors Arthur Hill in 1922 and Geoffrey Holder in 1930 (age 78); comic actor Dom DeLuise in 1933 (age 75); French fashion designer Yves St. Laurent in 1936; Jerry Garcia, co-founder of the Grateful Dead rock group, in 1942; and actress Tempestt Bledsoe in 1973 (age 35).
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On this date in history:
In 1498, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set foot on the American mainland for the first time, at the Paria Peninsula in present-day Venezuela.
In 1790, the first U.S. census showed a population of 3,929,214 people in 17 states.
In 1907, an Aeronautical Division was added to the Army Signals Corps, and this forerunner of the U.S. Air Force bought its first airplane, a craft built by the Wright brothers.
In 1977, Francis Gary Powers, pilot of a U-2 pilot spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was killed when his weather helicopter crashed in Los Angeles.
In 1981, MTV premiered with the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star."
In 1990, Muslim rebels surrendered in Trinidad and Tobago, five days after a coup in which Prime Minister Arthur Robinson and dozens of others were taken hostage.
In 1993, the rain-bloated Mississippi River crested in St. Louis at 49.4 feet, 2.5 feet below the top of the floodwall protecting the central part of the city.
In 1994, Lisa Marie Presley confirmed rumors that she had married pop star Michael Jackson May 26 in the Dominican Republic.
