On this date in . . .
1850: Henry Wells and William Fargo formed
Americas first stagecoach freight line. They called it the American Express, but
later changed the name to Wells-Fargo.
1910:
The
first American horror film was patented, a one-reel Edison Studio production of
Frankenstein.
1931: Electric razors were first
manufactured by the Schick Corporation in Stanford, Connecticut.
1960: The Everly Brothers recorded
"Cathys Clown." It would become their fifth million seller single.
1961:
Poppin Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy
was born.
1965: Farouk-I of Egypt died in Rome at age 45. The
300-pound deposed king had just eaten a dozen oysters, a leg of lamb, two oranges, beans,
fried potatoes, and two Cokes, and smoked a Havana cigar.
1970: The NFL adopted a rule that required all
players names to appear on the back of their jerseys. The rule had been borrowed from the
merging AFL.
1982: Singer Teddy Pendergrass was paralyzed from
the waist down after his Rolls Royce crashed into a tree in Philadelphia.
1985: Denver and Houston of the USFL set a pro
football record with 112 passes in a game: Denver lofted 43 passes, Houston
69.
1989: Researchers in Giza, Egypt, discovered a
4,400-year-old mummy at the Pyramid of Cheops.
1994: Kenner, Louisiana, honored a native son by
naming a street Lloyd Price Avenue. His hits included "Lawdy Miss Clawdy,"
"Stagger Lee," "Personality," and "Im Gonna Get
Married."
1996:
Author
John Young published The Good Code Book, the first book to list every telephone dialing
code in the world from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. It was not a best-seller.
2001: Workers
equipped with a bulldozer, face masks and a court order have removed 154 tons of garbage
from a man's home outside Madrid, Spain. The job took two weeks, with 30 truckloads of
trash hauled away from the house and surrounding lot. Police said the 58-year-old
resident, who repeatedly refused requests to clean up the place, lived in a tiny
compartment in the back and reached it through a tunnel carved out of the garbage.
2002:
The Sun Valley Mall in Concord,
California, was closed temporarily due to popularity when 1,500 teenagers swarmed a music
store to get autographs from the band B2K.
2005:
Doctors removed the feeding
tube keeping Terri Schiavo alive after an wide-ranging fight over the
brain-damaged Florida woman's care that involved Congressional leaders. She
died 13 days later.
Birthdays: