Today in History

• John Wesley charters the Methodist Church (1784)
• The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is incorporated, the first American railroad transporting both people and freight (1827)
• Regular steamboat service begins from the west coast to the east coast of the United States (1849)
• The first vaudeville theater opens (1883)
• AT&T is incorporated (1885)
• Nylon is invented (1935)
• Basketball is televised for the first time (1940)
• Watson and Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA (1953)
• The first color TV sets are offered to the general public (1954)
• The First Gulf War ends (1991)
• ATF agents raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, starting a 51-day standoff (1993)
• Pope Benedict XVI formally retires from the papacy, the first to do so in nearly 600 years.

Birthdays

• John Tenniel, Alice in Wonderland illustrator (1820)*
• Ben Hecht, playwright (1894)
• Linus Pauling, Vitamin C advocate (1901)
• Vincente Minnelli, musical director (1903)
• Bugsy Siegel, gangster (1906)
• Milton Caniff, Steve Canyon cartoonist (1907)
• Zero Mostel, actor (1915)
• Charles Durning, actor (1923)
• Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter (1926)
• Gavin McLeod, Love Boat captain (1931)
• Tommy Tune, dancer (1939)
• Mario Andretti, racer (1940)
• Bubba Smith, football player (1945)
• Bernadette Peters, actress (1948)
• Paul Krugman, economist (1953)
• Gilbert Gottfried, comic (1955)
• Dorothy Stratten, murdered playmate (1960)
• Fefe Dobson, singer (1985)

Deaths

• Pope Hilarius, pontiff with a great name (468)
• Henry James, writer (1916)
• Henry Luce, Time publisher (1967)
• Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Benny sidekick (1977)
• Eric Frank Russell, science fiction writer (1978)
• Ruby Keeler, dancer (1993)
• Daniel J. Boorstin, librarian of Congress (2004)
• Arthur Schlesinger Jr., historian (2007)
• Paul Harvey, radio commentator (2009)
• Jane Russell, actress (2011)

Holidays