On this day, Britain announces that all travel between Ireland and the United Kingdom is suspended, the result of the Irish governments refusal to expel Axis-power diplomats within its borders. In 1922, an independent Irish republic was established after generations of conflict between Ireland and Britain. One of the conditions of…
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Senate hears impeachment charges against Andrew Johnson
On this day in 1969, The Love Bug, a Walt Disney movie about the adventures of a Volkswagen Beetle named Herbie, opens in theaters across the United States. The film, which was based on a 1961 book called Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford, centered around down-on-his-luck auto racer Jim (played by Dean Jones) who goes on a winning streak after teaming up with Herbie. Other characters in the film include the evil Peter Thorndyke (David Tomlinson), Jims rival on the racetrack;TennesseeSteinmetz (Buddy Hackett), Jims friend who makes art from used auto parts and Jims girlfriend Carole (Michele Lee). The Love Bug was a box-office success and spawned the cinematic spinoffs Herbie Rides Again (1974), Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977), Herbie Goes Bananas (1980) and Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), starring Lindsay Lohan.
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The Love Bug was released just as VW Beetles, whose history dates back to 1930s Germany, were gaining widespread popularity in the United States. In 1933,Adolf Hitlerbecame chancellor of Germany and announced he wanted to build new roads and cars for the German people. At that time, Austrian-born engineer Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was already working on creating a small car for the masses; thus, he was charged with designing the inexpensive, mass-produced peoples car. Work began in 1938 on the Volkswagenwerk factory, located in present-day Wolfsburg, Germany; however, car making halted duringWorld War II.
Houston retreats from Santa Annas army
On this day in 2005, the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company officially announces that Robert Iger, Disneys president and chief operating officer, will succeed Michael Eisner as the companys chief executive officer (CEO). As Disneys chief executive since 1984, Eisner was credited with expanding the companys reach into…
On this day in 1868, the U.S. Senate continues to hear impeachment charges against President Andrew Johnson. The trial, convened by the Senate on March 5, focused on issues surrounding Johnsons post-Civil War Reconstruction policy and, more specifically, his firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson became…
The Love Bug opens in theaters
Cult leader Adolpho de Jesus Constanzo sacrifices another human victim at his remote Mexican desert compound Rancho Santa Elena. When the victim didnt beg for mercy before dying, Constanzo sent his people out to find another subject for torture and death. When they abducted American college student Mark Kilroy outside…
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On this day in 1979, power pitcher Johan Santana is born in Tovar Merida, Venezuela. He went on to become the dominant left-handed pitcher in baseball from 2003 to 2006 and won the coveted Cy Young Award as the American Leagues top pitcher following the 2004 season and again in…
The German-born English astronomer William Hershel discovers Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. Herschels discovery of a new planet was the first to be made in modern times, and also the first to be made by use of a telescope, which allowed Herschel to distinguish Uranus as a planet,…
Black magic, voodoo, and murder occurs at Rancho Santa Elena
London suspends travel between Ireland and Britain
A 6.8-magnitude earthquake near Erzincan, Turkey, and an unusually powerful aftershock two days later kill at least 500 people and leave 50,000 people homeless. Erzincan was a provincial capital city of 90,000 people 600 miles east of Istanbul in Central Turkey. The people of the area were…
The Love Bug opens in theaters
Confederacy approves black soldiers
For the first time in U.S. history, the impeachment trial of an American president gets underway in the U.S. Senate. President Andrew Johnson, reviled by the Republican-dominated Congress for his views on Reconstruction, stood accused of having violated the controversial Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress over his veto…
Impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson begins
According to Bug by Phil Patton, the movie was a hit due in large part to its PG rating and the fact that the great baby boom had peaked in 1960, providing Disney with a bumper crop of nine-year-olds. Patton also notes that the The Love Bug offered an escape: The day the film opened, the news was full of the costs of Vietnam: 432 Americans had died in the most recent Vietcong offensive and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird was asking for increased spending on the war.
On this day in 1942, the Quartermaster Corps (QMC) of the United States Army begins training dogs for the newly established War Dog Program, or K-9 Corps. Well over a million dogs served on both sides during World War I, carrying messages along the complex network of trenches and providing some…
Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, is killed in the streets of St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary Peoples Will group. The Peoples Will, organized in 1879, employed terrorism and assassination in their attempt to overthrow Russias czarist autocracy. They murdered…
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen had written his play Ghosts in 1881. The play, which dealt with syphilis, was swiftly and universally reviled by conventionally minded critics. However, Ibsens works had caught on with progressive theater companies across Europe. A decade after it was written, the play opens in London, where…
Kennedy proposes Alliance for Progress
Ban Me Thuot, capital of Darlac Province in the Central Highlands, falls to North Vietnamese troops. In late January 1975, just two years after the cease-fire established by the Paris Peace Accords, the North Vietnamese launched Campaign 275. The objective of this campaign was to capture Ban Me Thuot in the…
Disney names Robert Iger as new chief executive
At Dunblane, a 13th-century village on the edge of the Scottish Highlands, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton bursts into the gymnasium of the Dunblane Primary School with four guns and opens fire on a kindergarten class. Sixteen children and their teacher, Gwenne Mayor, were fatally shot before Hamilton turned the gun on…
The Love Bug opens in theaters
On this day in 1865, with the main Rebel armies facing long odds against must larger Union armies,the Confederacy, in a desperate measure,reluctantly approves the use of black troops. The situation was bleak for the Confederates in the spring of 1865. The Yankees had captured large swaths of Southern territory,…
After the war, production eventually resumed and by the 1950s Volkswagen was exporting Beetles (as the car, with its sloped nose and curved rear body, became widely known) to the U.S. After an initial tepid reception, sales took off and on February 17, 1972, the VW Beetle surpassed the FordModel Tto become the worlds biggest selling car of all time, with more than 15 million sold.
Unitarian Joseph Priestley is born in Yorkshire
On this day in 1915, British forces end their three-day assault on the German trenches near the village of Neuve Chapelle in northern France, the first offensive launched by the British in the spring of 1915. The Battle of Neuve Chapelle began on March 10, 1915, at 8:05 a.m., when British…
Less than a week after the disastrous defeat of Texas rebels at the Alamo, the newly commissioned Texan General Sam Houston begins a series of strategic retreats to buy time to train his ill-prepared army. Revolutionary Texans had only formally announced their independence from Mexico 11 days earlier. On March…
In and of itself, one man leaving one band in the middle of the 1960s might warrant little more than a historical footnote. But what makes the departure of Eric Clapton from the Yardbirds on March 13, 1965, more significant is the long and complicated game of musical chairs it…
The Love Bug opens in theatersAuthor
Henrik Ibsens play Ghosts opens in London
A force of 40,000 Viet Minh with heavy artillery surround 15,000 French troops at Dien Bien Phu. French General Henri Navarre had positioned these forces 200 miles behind enemy lines in a remote area adjacent to the Laotian border. He hoped to draw the communists into a set-piece battle in…
President John F. Kennedy proposes a 10-year, multibillion-dollar aid program for Latin America. The program came to be known as the Alliance for Progress and was designed to improve U.S. relations with Latin America, which had been severely damaged in recent years.When Kennedy became president in 1961, U.S. relations with…
On this day in 1733, Joseph Priestley, supporter of the American Revolution and leader of the Unitarian Church in Britain and America, is born in Birstall, Yorkshire, England. Joseph Priestley shared the liberal religious and political philosophy of many of Americas revolutionary leaders, including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,…