Thank you lads and best wishes to my chronological compatriots

On this day in History:

1831 Belgium became independent as Leopold I was proclaimed King of the Belgians.

1861 The first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Va., resulting in a Confederate victory.

1899 Author Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Ill.

1899 Poet Hart Crane was born in Garrettsville, Ohio.

1944 American forces landed on Guam during World War II.

1944 The Democratic National Convention in Chicago nominated Sen. Harry S. Truman to be vice president.

1949 The U.S. Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty.

1954 France surrendered North Vietnam to the Communists.

1955 During the Geneva summit, President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented his "open skies" proposal under which the United States and the Soviet Union would trade information on each other's military facilities.

1961 Capt. Virgil "Gus" Grissom became the second American to rocket into a sub-orbital pattern around the Earth, flying on the Liberty Bell 7.

1969 Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the lunar module.

1980 Draft registration began in the United States for 19- and 20-year-old men.

1988 Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis accepted the Democratic presidential nomination at the party's convention in Atlanta.

1998 Astronaut Alan Shepard died at age 74.

2000 Special Counsel John C. Danforth concluded "with 100 percent certainty" that the federal government was innocent of wrongdoing in the siege that killed 80 members of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1993.

2002 Telecommunications giant WorldCom Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection after disclosing it had inflated profits by nearly $4 billion through deceptive accounting.

2007 Doctors removed five small growths from President Bush's colon after he temporarily transferred the powers of his office to Vice President Dick Cheney.

2007 "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final volume of the wizard series by J.K. Rowling, went on sale.

2008 Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, one of the world's top war crimes fugitives, was arrested in a Belgrade suburb by Serbian security forces.


A few famous birthdays today (other than ours of course)

Ernest Hemingway

John Lovitz

Robin Williams