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July 23, 1885 –One of the most famous residents of West 122th Street and Riverside Drive made a most fateful decision on this date. He decided to give up the ghost. In 1881, Ulysses S. Grant, American general, the eighteenth President of the United States and famous horseback riding drunk, purchased a house in NewContinue reading “The person actually buried in Grant’s tomb”

July 23, 1962 –Telstar relayed the first publicly transmitted, live, trans-Atlantic television program, featuring CBS’s Walter Cronkite and NBC’s Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby in Brussels. The first broadcast was intended to have been remarks by President John F. Kennedy, but the signal was acquired before the president was ready,Continue reading “The first public trans-Atlantic program transmitted”

July 22, 1951 –It’s the first episode of Dogs In Space – Two Russian dogs, Dezik and Tsygan, were the first canines to make a sub-orbital flight in history on this date. The Russian space program used dogs quite often to determine whether a particular space mission would be safe for humans. Little know fact:Continue reading “First dogs into orbit”

July 22, 1934 –John Dillinger was shot dead outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, on this date in history. And one of the most bizarre urban legends was born. According to the rumor, J Edgar Hoover, pug ugly head of the FBI and notorious transvestite, rushes to Chicago to see the corpse, Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1,Continue reading “John Dillinger shot dead”

July 22, 1959 –Either considered the worst or greatest film ever made, Ed Wood Jr’s sci-fi classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, starring Bela Lugosi, Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson, Vampira and narrated by Criswell, opened in the US on this date. Bela Lugosi appears in footage shot just before his death, but withContinue reading “Plan 9 from Outer Space premiered”

July 21, 2011 –NASA’s Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on this date. After 135 flights in 30 years, the space shuttles were now history. NASA estimated with the landing of the Atlantis‘ flight over, the five shuttle orbiters would together haveContinue reading “The Last Space Shuttle”

July 21, 1969 – Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin blast off from the Moon after twenty-one and a half hours on the surface and return to the command module piloted by Michael Collins on this date. The lunar module’s lower section, left behind, has a plaque mounted upon it, reading, “HereContinue reading “We Came In Peace For All Mankind.”

July 21, 1899 –Ernest Hemingway was born on this date. He was young at the time of his birth. It was fine to be young. He drove an ambulance in the first world war. It wasn’t called the first world war then. It was called the war. It was one of those times when peopleContinue reading “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

July 21, 1977 –Despite protests, The Sex Pistols made their first appearance on the UK music show Top Of The Pops where they lip-synched to their third single, Pretty Vacant (which was released three weeks prior); The performance helped push the song up the charts to No.7. The Sex Pistols would probably not have beenContinue reading “The Sex Pistols appear on TOTP for the first time”

July 21, 1990 –Broadcasted worldwide, Roger Waters staged an over-sized version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall near the Berlin Wall, on this date, to celebrate the actual wall’s fall several months earlier. Shot on Potsdamer Platz, the no man’s land between East and West Germany, the producers didn’t know if the area would be filledContinue reading “The Wall Live in Berlin”