Birthdays: King Ludwig II the Mad of Bavaria, Leonard Bernstein, Brette Hart, Lola Montez (flamenco dancing mistress of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria), Alan Pinkerton, Elvis Costello, Clara Bow, Ruby Keeler, Monty Hall, Van Johnson, Willis Reed, Frederick Forsythe, Wayne Shorter, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dr. Bruno Bettleheim, Rolly Fingers, Gene Simmons of KISS, Anne Archer, Tim Burton, Sean Connery is 78, Claudia Schiffer is 37

1830- This is the day of the legendary race between the locomotive the Tom Thumb and a horse and buggy outside of Baltimore. The Tom Thumb weighing in at about a ton and developing a whopping one horse power. The boiler driven fan broke down near the end, The horse won. Still, the train’s performance was so impressive that the first U.S. railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, shifted from horse drawn to steam railroad.

1835- The New York Sun newspaper ran the amazing story that British astronomer Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of Neptune, had observed little men living on the surface of the Moon! The story proved false but it boosted the sales of the paper.

1900- Is God dead? No, just Frederich Neitszche,this day

1944- PARIS LIBERATED. Adolf Hitler had ordered the Germans to dynamite all the major landmarks: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame etc, But when the time came, the German commander Gen. Deitrich von Choltitz refused to do it. There was street fighting but the heavier German tank units had voluntarily evacuated the city. Free French General LeClerc led the allied column into the City of Lights. Ernest Hemingway and a few paratroops liberated the Ritz Hotel's wine cellar and Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were discovered by CBS correspondent Eric Severaid living quietly unharmed outside of town.

1967 – In Mississippi George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of American Nazi Party, was blown off the speakers platform with a double barreled shotgun. Although not as significant as the Martin Luther King or the Kennedy’s assassinations, it was another incident in the violent 1960’s. George Lincoln Rockwell was also a distant cousin of artist Norman Rockwell, although the artist was embarrassed to admit it.

1970- A young British singer named Elton John did his first US tour, opening at the Troubadour in LA.

1980- The premiere of the Broadway musical version of the classic movie 42nd Street. In a moment of Broadway melodrama producer David Merrick came out on stage and startled the cast and audience by announcing that the director of the play Gower Champion had died that very day. 42nd Street went on to be a smash hit. The play itself is about a Broadway director who works himself to death creating a hit musical.

1989- Congressman Barney Frank confirmed that he had paid for the services of a gay male prostitute Stephan Gobie. The unrepentant and refreshingly frank-Frank continues to serve in Congress to this day.

1989- The Voyager 2 probe left Neptune and shoots off into deep space after completing it reconnaissance of the outer planets of our solar system. It discovered the rings of Jupiter and Neptune, the additional moons of these planets, and the volcanoes of the Jovian moon Io, and the ice of Europa. Today you have ten times more computing power in your laptop than in the Voyager spacecraft, yet for years later it continued to transmit signals back to Earth.

2001-Beautiful 22 year old R&B singer Allieya was killed, when her charter plane crashed on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas.