July 30: Johnson signs Social Security Act, Schwarzenegger is born

Maine Fast Fact: The Pemaquid Point Lighthouse was the first Maine lighthouse to become fully automated.

Births:

• 1818: Emily Brontë, English novelist, known for her novel Wuthering Heights
• 1863: Henry Ford, American industrialist, founder of the Ford Motor Company
• 1916: Dick Wilson, American actor, played Mr. George Whipple in over 500 Charmin toilet paper television commercials throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s
• 1922: Henry W. Bloch, American co-founder of H&R Block
• 1947: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-born American actor, bodybuilder and 38th Governor of California
• 1961: Laurence Fishburne, American actor
• 1963: Lisa Kudrow, American actress
• 1964: Vivica A. Fox, American actress
• 1971: Christine Taylor, American actress; Tom Green, Canadian comedian and actor
• 1974: Hilary Swank, American actress
• 1977: Jaime Pressly, American actress

Deaths:

• 1718: William Penn, English founder of the Province of Pennsylvania
• 1875: George Pickett, American Confederate General
• 1998: Buffalo Bob Smith, American television host of the children’s show Howdy Doody

History:

• 762: Baghdad is founded.
• 1619: The first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time in Jamestown, Virginia.
• 1629: An earthquake occurs in Naples, Italy, killing 10,000 people.
• 1729: Baltimore, Maryland is founded.
• 1871: The boiler explodes on the Staten Island Ferry Westfield, killing over 85 people.
• 1932: Walt Disney’s Flower and Trees premieres, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and is the first cartoon short to win an Academy Award.
• 1945: The Japanese submarine I-58 torpedoes and sinks the USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered parts of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the island of Tinian in the Pacific Ocean, killing 883 men.
• 1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress authorizing In God We Trust as the United States national motto.
• 1965: The Social Security Act of 1965 is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.
• 1971: On the Apollo 15 mission, astronauts David Scott and James Irwin land on the moon in the Apollo lunar module, Falcon, with the first lunar rover.
• 1974: U.S. President Richard Nixon releases the subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to by the U.S. Supreme Court.
• 1975: Jimmy Hoffa, an American trade unionist, disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and is never heard from again.
• 1978: Okinawa, Japan changes its traffic from the right hand side of the road to the left hand side.
• 2002: Lisa Leslie, WNBA player for the Los Angeles Sparks, becomes the first woman to dunk in a professional game during the team’s game against the Miami Sol.

[photo: The USS Indianapolis, www.arizonaskiesmeteorites.com]