Goethe called architecture "frozen music."
Today is Monday, July 17, the 198th day of 2006 with 167 to
follow. The moon is waning. The morning stars are Venus,
Uranus and Neptune. The evening stars are Mercury, Jupiter,
Mars, Saturn and Pluto.
On this date in history:
In 1918, Russian Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their five
children were executed by firing squad in the Ural Mountains
of Siberia.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began with an army revolt
led by Gen. Francisco Franco.
In 1938, Douglas Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field
in New York for a return flight to California but lost his
bearings in the clouds, he said, and flew instead to Ireland.
He became an instant celebrity and was forever after known
as "Wrong Way" Corrigan.
In 1955, Arco, Idaho, a town of 1,300 people, became the
first community in the world to receive all its light and
power from atomic energy.
Also in 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, Calif.
In 1975, three U.S. and two Soviet spacemen linked their
orbiting Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft for historic
handshakes 140 miles above Earth.
In 1981, 111 people were killed and 200 injured when two
suspended walkways collapsed at the Hyatt Regency hotel
in Kansas City, Mo.
In 1986, Dallas-based LTV Corporation, $4 billion in debt,
declared the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at the time.
In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, refused
a pregnant social worker access to the unlicensed French
abortion pill RU-486.
In 1993, the Midwest flood knocked out the Bayview Bridge
connecting Quincy, Ill., with West Quincy, Mo., the last
remaining crossing over the Mississippi River for about
200 miles.
In 1996, TWA Flight 800, New York to Paris, crashed off the
Long Island coast, killing all 230 people aboard.
In 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton became the first
sitting U.S. president to be subpoenaed to appear before
a grand jury as independent counsel Kenneth Starr continued
his investigation into the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Also in 1998, the Dow Jones Industrial average closed at an
all-time high of 9,337.97, its 28th record closing that year.
In 2003, an attack on a convoy in Iraq killed one soldier
and pushed the death toll of U.S. troops in the Iraqi
conflict to 148, one more than died in the 1991 Persian
Gulf War.
In 2005, a reported 59 people were killed and 86 wounded
when a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a gas tanker
in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, in one of the deadliest
attacks since the U.S. invasion.
Afternoon, Ms Feather!