On This Day: Saturday July 22, 2006

This is the 203rd day of the year, with 162 days remaining in 2006.

Fact of the Day: Pied Piper

The legend of the Pied Piper dates back to 1284. The German town of Hamelin had a rat problem and hired a rat-catcher to get rid of the rats. The rat-catcher used a pipe to lure the rats out of town with music, leading them into the Weser River where they drowned. The townspeople refused to pay the Pied Piper, so he came back into town several weeks later and lured the town's children away with music into a cave, never to be seen again. According to historians, the story probably got its roots when young men of Hamelin, Germany, left the city on colonizing adventures in Eastern Europe.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Mary Magdalen, St. Joseph of Palestine, St. Philip Evans, St. Vandrille or Wandregesilus, and St. John Lloyd.

Events

1587 - A second English colony, also ill-fated, was established on Roanoke Island off North Carolina.
1793 - Sir Alexander Mackenzie arrived at Canada's Pacific coast.
1796 - Cleveland, Ohio, was founded by General Moses Cleveland.
1894 - The first automobile race took place between Paris and Rouen, France.
1933 - American aviator Wiley Post completed the first solo flight around the world in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes.
1934 - Notorious criminal John Dillinger, America's "Public Enemy No. 1," was shot and killed outside a Chicago theater by federal agents.
1943 - American forces led by General George S. Patton captured Palermo, Sicily.
1944 - The Bretton Woods Conference, (in New Hampshire), created the International Monetary Fund.
2003 - Saddam Hussein's sons Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein were killed when American forces stormed a villa in Mosul, Iraq.

Births

1784 - Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, German astronomer and mathematician.
1822 - Gregor Mendel, Austrian monk and botanist.
1881 - Margery Williams Bianco, British-born American author.
1890 - Rose Kennedy, mother of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy.
1893 - Karl Menninger, American psychiatrist.
1898 - Stephen Vincent Benet, American author, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
1899 - Alexander Calder, American sculptor.
1908 - Amy Vanderbilt, American journalist and authority on etiquette.

Deaths

1934 - John Dillinger, American bank robber.
1976 - Mortimer Wheeler, British archaeologist.

enh...hadn't done one'a these in a while