Day: June 23, 2011

Did You Know………..

Did you know…

From Wikipedia’s newest content:

Old Dominion Bank Building, now museum of fine arts

  • … that the Athenaeum (pictured) museum of fine arts in Alexandria, Virginia, was built in 1851 as a bank, where Robert E. Lee had an account?
  • … that when he was an educator, Texas State Representative Dan Kubiak published Ten Tall Texans, biographical sketches of, among others, Stephen F. Austin, Jim Bowie, and Sam Houston?
  • … that Kitty Carlisle, H. V. Kaltenborn, Boris Karloff, June Lockhart, and Robert Trout were among the participants in Who Said That?, the 1948–55 television game show based on quotations in the news?
  • … that with support from the Iraqi government, magazines and audio cassettes produced by the exiled Libyan National Movement were smuggled into Libya during the 1980s?
  • … that Oklahoma football coach Robert “Doc” Erskine traveled more than 15,000 miles as a scout during one season?
  • … that after an unexploded bomb burst through her bedroom wall, a resident of Hillingdon Court told staff it was time she went to the air-raid shelter?
  • … that Iran is currently the only country in the world that legally allows a person to trade their kidney for monetary compensation?

On This Day……

On this day…

June 23: Corpus Christi (various Western Christian churches, 2011); Victory Day in Estonia; Jāņi in Latvia; Grand Duke’s Official Birthday in Luxembourg

Gamal Abdel Nasser

  • 1757 – Seven Years’ War: British forces under Robert Clive defeated troops under Siraj ud-Daulah at the Battle of Plassey, allowing the British East India Company to annex Bengal.
  • 1887 – The Parliament of Canada passed the Rocky Mountains Park Act, creating Banff National Park as Canada’s first national park.
  • 1919 – Estonian War of Independence: Estonian troops engaged the forces of the Pro-German Government of Latvia near Cēsis, Latvia, recapturing the area four days later.
  • 1956 – Gamal Abdel Nasser (pictured) became President of Egypt, a post he would hold until his death in 1970.
  • 1982 – Chinese American Vincent Chin died after being beaten into a coma in Highland Park, Michigan, US, by two automotive workers who had mistaken him for Japanese and who were angry about the success of Japanese auto companies.

In The News……..

In the news

Ai Weiwei

  • Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei (pictured) is released from detention.
  • Ban Ki-moon is re-elected for a second term as the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
  • Former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is sentenced in absentia to 35 years in jail.
  • RusAir Flight 9605 crashes in Petrozavodsk, Russia, killing 44 people.
  • ICANN votes for an expansion of the available generic top-level domains, allowing owners to choose a suffix for the address of a website.
  • Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo resigns from his position as Prime Minister of Somalia.