Thursday - September 23, 2004

The Daily Dose

Quote Of The Day

“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.” —Mark Twain

On This Day In History
September 23rd

1779 John Paul Jones victorious

During the American Revolution, the U.S. ship Bonhomme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones, wins a hard-fought engagement against the British ships of war Serapis and Countess of Scarborough off the east coast of England.
Scottish-born John Paul Jones first sailed to America as a cabin boy and lived for a time in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where his brother had a business. He later served on slave and merchant ships and proved an able seaman. After he killed a sailor while suppressing a mutiny, he went to the American colonies to escape possible British prosecution. With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, he traveled to Philadelphia and was commissioned a senior lieutenant in the new Continental Navy. He soon distinguished himself in actions against British ships in the Bahamas, the Atlantic, and the English Channel.

Jones was hailed as a great hero in France, but recognition in the United States was somewhat belated. He continued to serve the United States until 1787 and then served briefly in the Russian navy before moving to France, where he died in 1792 amid the chaos of the French Revolution. He was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1905, his remains were located under the direction of the U.S. ambassador to France and then escorted back to America by U.S. warships. His body was later enshrined in a crypt at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

1806 Lewis and Clark return

Amid much public excitement, American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return to St. Louis, Missouri, from the first recorded overland journey from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast and back. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had set off more than two years before to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase.

On September 23, 1806, after two and a half years, the expedition returned to the city, bringing back a wealth of information about the largely unexplored region, as well as valuable U.S. claims to Oregon Territory.

1846 Eighth planet discovered

German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle discovers the planet Neptune at the Berlin Observatory.
Neptune, generally the eighth planet from the sun, was postulated by the French astronomer Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier, who calculated the approximate location of the planet by studying gravity-induced disturbances in the motions of Uranus. On September 23, 1846, Le Verrier informed Galle of his findings, and the same night Galle and his assistant Heinrich Louis d’Arrest identified Neptune at their observatory in Berlin. Noting its movement relative to background stars over 24 hours confirmed that it was a planet.

The blue gas giant, which has a diameter four times that of Earth, was named for the Roman god of the sea. It has eight known moons, of which Triton is the largest, and a ring system containing three bright and two dim rings. It completes an orbit of the sun once every 165 years. In 1989, the U.S. planetary spacecraft Voyager 2 was the first human spacecraft to visit Neptune.

Today’s Birthdays

Euripides (as in “you rippa dese pants an’ I’m- a gonna kill ‘ya!") 480 or 485—406 B.C, dramatist
Mickey Rooney, 1920-- , Actor
John Coltrane, 1926-- , jazz musician
Ray Charles, 1930-- , Musician

_{Thanks to The Quotations Page - The History Channel - The Biography Channel.}

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 09/23/2004 at 05:39 AM   
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