Today in History: 15 October
1520 – King Henry VIII of England orders bowling lanes at Whitehall
1581 – Commissioned by Catherine de Medici, the first ballet “Ballet Comique de la Reine” is staged in Paris
1582 – Gregorian calendar is introduced in Spain, Portugal, and the Papal States, after skipping 10 days from October 4 to sync the calendar to the solar year and compensate for the drift that had occurred due to the Julian calendar having too many leap days
1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on island of St. Helena to begin his exile
1827 – Charles Darwin admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge
1886 – Modest Mussorgsky’s musical fantasy “Night on Bald Mountain” premieres at Kononov Hall, in St. Petersburg, Russia
1897 – King Leopold II takes Belgian crown
1905 – Claude Debussy’s symphonic sketch “La Mer” premieres in Paris
1924 – US President Calvin Coolidge declares Statue of Liberty a national monument
1928 – German dirigible “Graf Zeppelin” lands in Lakehurst, New Jersey
1933 – Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1st Piano Concerto premieres in Leningrad, with Shostakovich at the piano
1951 – “I Love Lucy”, starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, debuts on CBS television
1952 – “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams is published by Harper & Brothers
1955 – Buddy Haley opens for Bill Haley & His Comets in Lubbock, Texas, and impresses Nashville scout Eddie Crandall, leading to a recording contract with a misspelling that creates “Buddy Holly”
1973 – American country singer-songwriter Dolly Parton releases her single “Jolene”, the title track of her forthcoming album; it tops the country charts in US and Canada
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70 BC – Virgil, Roman poet of the Augustan period
1265 – Temur Khan, Second Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty
1844 – Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher and philologist
1908 – John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-American economist and writer
1917 – Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., American Pulitzer Prize winning historian
1920 – Mario Puzo, American novelist
1929 – Hubert Dreyfus, American philosopher
1943 – Penny Marshall, American actress, director, and producer
Unrecoverable Error –
1917 – Mata Hari, Dutch exotic dancer, courtesan, and convicted German WWI spy
1930 – Herbert Henry Dow, American chemical industrialist
1945 – Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of France and Head of Vichy France
1964 – Cole Porter, American composer and lyricist
1976 – Carlo Gambino, Italian-born American mafioso
2018 – Paul Allen, American business magnate
The Funnies:
Quote of the Day
YouTube Song of the Day
Comic of the Day
Mouseover: It’s a real accomplishment to mess up a ravioli recipe badly enough that the resulting incident touches all four quadrants of the NFPA hazard diamond.
Explain XKCD 2998: Ravioli-Shaped Objects - explain xkcd
Image Credit: xkcd: Ravioli-Shaped Objects
Inspirobot Sometimes Controversial Inspirational Quote of the Day:
In case you missed it, you can find yesterday’s conquering Spark by @steve6343 over here….
