Epic Idiot's what happened
On This Day

February 11

2006
Vice-President Dick Cheney accidentally shoots his hunting partner while on a quail hunting trip in Texas.

1993
First woman U.S. Attorney General: Janet Reno is nominated by Pres. Bill Clinton. She was confirmed in March.

1990
Nelson Mandela: The civil-rights leader is released from a South African prison after serving 27½ years.

1990
First Soviet commercial satellite mission is launched. Its purpose was to use zero-gravity to produce industrial crystals for a profit.

1970
First satellite launched by Japan.

1963
The Beatles record their first album Please Please Me.

1960
Jack Paar bids farewell to The Tonight Show audience. He was upset after a water closet joke, told the night before, had been censored. He returned a month later.

1929
Vatican City becomes the world's smallest country, with the signing of the Lateran Treaty. This 108.7 acres of land in Rome would be ruled by the Pope.

1836
First U.S. women's college: Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, South Hadley, Massachusetts, is chartered. It admitted its first class in 1838.

1976
Brice Beckham, American actor. TV: Mr. Belvedere (Wesley).

1961
Carey Lowell, actress. Film: License to Kill (CIA agent Pam Bouvier).

1941
Sergio Mendes, Brazilian bossa nova musician.

1940
Bobby "Boris" Pickett, singer. Music: Monster Mash (1962, #1).

1936
Burt Reynolds, American actor. Film: The Longest Yard (1974) and Smokey and the Bandit (1977). TV: Evening Shade (Wood Newton). He was featured as a nude male centerfold in the April, 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

1934
Tina Louise (Tina Blacker), American actress. TV: Gilligan's Island (Ginger).

1926
Leslie Nielsen, Canadian-born actor. Film: Forbidden Planet (1956), Airplane! (1980), and The Naked Gun (1988, Lt. Frank Drebin).

1925
Virginia Eshelman Johnson, American psychologist, author of Human Sexual Response (1966).

1921
Eva Gabor, Hungarian actress. TV: Green Acres (Lisa Douglas).

1917
Sidney Sheldon, American Oscar-Tony-winning author, screenwriter. Film: The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947, Oscar). TV: The Patty Duke Show (creator) and I Dream of Jeannie (creator).

1909     d. 1993
Joseph L. Mankiewicz, American Oscar-winning screenwriter, director. Film: A Letter to Three Wives (1949, Oscar) and All About Eve (1950, Oscar). He coined the phrases "my little chickadee" for W.C. Fields and "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night!" for Bette Davis.

1900     d. 1944
Thomas Hitchcock Jr., American polo player, the greatest in the history of the sport. He received a 10-goal rating (the highest possible) for 18 of the 19 seasons he played (1922-40). He was killed in an air crash during World War II.

1889     d. 1935
John Mills, American guitarist, with the Mills Brothers, the most popular vocal group of all time.

1863     d. 1923
Jimmy Ryan (James Edward Ryan), American baseball player. He was the first major-league baseball player to punch a sports writer (George Bechel, 1892).

1847     d. 1931
Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor of the microphone (1876), the first practical phonograph (1877), the incandescent light (1879) and motion pictures (1891).

1847     d. 1956
Albert Woolson, American Civil War soldier, last surviving member of the Union Army. He served as a drummer (1865-66).

1802     d. 1880
Lydia Maria Francis Child, American abolitionist, published the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1840-44).

2006     b. 1940
Peter Bradford Benchley, American author, journalist, Jaws (1974).

1994     b. 1920
William Conrad, American actor. Radio: Gunsmoke (Matt Dillon). TV: The Fugitive (narrator), The Bullwinkle Show (narrator), Cannon (title role), and Jake and the Fatman (the Fatman).

1994     b. 1930
Sorrell Booke, American actor. TV: Dukes of Hazzard (Boss Hogg).

1986     b. 1920
Frank Patrick Herbert, American science-fiction author, Dune (1965).

1976     b. 1911
Lee J. Cobb, American actor. TV: The Virginian (Judge Garth). He is famous for his portrayal of Willy Loman in stage and TV productions of  [Death of a Salesman]].

1931     b. 1854
Sir Charles Parsons, British engineer, invented (1889) the steam turbine.

1868     b. 1819
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, French physicist, one of the first to measure the speed of light (1850), demonstrated the rotation of the Earth with a pendulum (1851), and invented the gyroscope (1852).

1650     b. 1596
Rene Descartes, French scientist, philosopher, "Father of Modern Philosophy." He is remembered for his famous proposition "I think, therefore I am."

824     b. ????
Saint Paschal I, Italian religious leader, 98th Pope (817-824).

731     b. ????
Saint Gregory II, Italian religious leader, 89th Pope (715-731).

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