On this day in...

On this day in...
1789 – The United States Department of State is established.
1812 – The French army under Napoleon reaches the Kremlin in Moscow.
1835 – HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galápagos Islands.
1916 – World War I: Tanks are used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme.
1935 – Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag with the swastika.
1959 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States.
2004 – National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.
2008 – Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. History.

Births
1254 – Marco Polo, Italian explorer (d. 1324)
1857 – William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States (d. 1930)
1940 – Merlin Olsen, American football player and actor
1946 – Tommy Lee Jones, American actor
1946 – Oliver Stone, American film director
1951 – Pete Carroll, American football coach
1961 – Dan Marino, American football player
1977 – Jason Terry, American basketball player

Pretty good b-day date with the highlights being several great athletes and Oliver Stone and Tommy Lee Jones on the same day. I wonder if they got drunk together on their birthday while they were filming 'JFK'. Even if they did I'm sure they didn't have as much fun as Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise had on 'Cannonball Run.'