DAY IN HISTORY

SATURDAY, JUNE 03, 2023

Today is the 154th day of 2023 and the 76th day of spring.

TODAY’S HISTORY:

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the National Defense Act, expanding the size and scope of the U.S. National Guard.

In 1965, Edward H. White II, an astronaut on Gemini IV, became the first American to “walk” in space.

In 1979, the Ixtoc I oil well in the Gulf of Mexico blew out, spilling more than 600,000 tons of oil over an area of 1,100 square miles.

In 2017, eight people were killed and dozens were injured when terrorists crashed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and attacked the crowd with knives.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), president of the Confederate States of America; Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), artist; Tony Curtis (1925-2010), actor; Allen Ginsberg (19261997), poet; Chuck Barris (1929-2017), game show host; Raul Castro (1931- ), president of Cuba; Larry Mcmurtry (1936-2021), author; Curtis Mayfield (1942-1999), singer-songwriter/musician; Anderson Cooper (1967- ), TV journalist; John Hodgman (1971- ), author/actor; Rafael Nadal (1986- ), tennis player; Yordano Ventura (1991-2017), baseball player.

TODAY’S FACT: According to the results of the 1860 census, the slave population outnumbered the free population in two states: Mississippi and South Carolina.

TODAY’S SPORTS: In 1888, the comic baseball poem “Casey at the Bat,” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, was published in the San Francisco Examiner.

TODAY’S QUOTE: “Life makes everybody strange, if you keep living long enough.” -- Larry Mcmurtry, “Lonesome Dove”

TODAY’S NUMBER: 25 -- length, in feet, of the tether attaching Edward H. White II to the Gemini spacecraft during the first U.S. spacewalk.

TODAY’S MOON: Full moon (June 3).