December 9, 2023
QUOTE
When I played pro football, I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately – unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.
--Dick Butkus
BIRTHDAYS
1608 – John Milton, English poet and philosopher
1887 – Tim Moore, Actor
1902 – Margaret Hamilton, Schoolteacher, actress and voice artist
1916 – Kirk Douglas, Actor, singer, and producer
1930 – Buck Henry, Actor, director, and screenwriter
1942 – Dick Butkus, Football player, sportscaster, and actor
1953 – John Malkovich, Actor and producer
IN MEMORY
1998 – Archie Moore, Boxer and actor
2012 – Norman Joseph Woodland, Inventor, co-created the bar code
2013 – Eleanor Parker, Actress
2014 – Mary Ann Mobley, Model and actress, Miss America 1959
IN ON THIS DAY
1775 – British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength, lose the Battle of Great Bridge, ending British rule in Virginia.
1835 – The Texian Army captures San Antonio following the Siege of Béxar.
1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
1953 – General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (with Rinderpest being the other).