What Else Happened Today?

This day in history
June 3, 2011

► Today is Friday, June 3, the 154th day of 2011. There are 211 days left in the year.

► Today’s birthdays:
TV producer Chuck Barris is 82
Actress Irma P. Hall is 76
Author Larry McMurtry is 75
Rock singer Ian Hunter (Mott The Hoople) is 72
Singer Eddie Holman is 65
Actor Tristan Rogers is 65
Musician Too Slim (Riders in the Sky) is 63
Rock musician Richard Moore is 62
Singer Suzi Quatro is 61
Singer Deneice Williams is 60
Singer Dan Hill is 57
Actress Suzie Plakson is 53
Actor Scott Valentine is 53
Rock musician Kerry King (Slayer) is 47
Rock singer-musician Mike Gordon is 46
CNN host Anderson Cooper is 44
Country singer Jamie O’Neal is 43
Singers Ariel and Gabriel Hernandez (No Mercy) are 40
Actress Nikki M. James is 30
Tennis player Rafael Nadal is 25
Actress-singer Lalaine is 24


► In 1621, the Dutch West India Co. received its charter for a trade monopoly in parts of the Americas and Africa.

► In 1808, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was born in Christian County, Ky.

► In 1861, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic presidential nominee in the 1860 election, died in Chicago of typhoid fever; he was 48.

► In 1888, the poem “Casey at the Bat,’’ by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, was first published in the San Francisco Daily Examiner.

► In 1937, the Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated the British throne, married Wallis Warfield Simpson in Monts, France.

► In 1948, the 200-inch reflecting Hale Telescope at the Palomar Mountain Observatory in California was dedicated.

► In 1961, President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev opened two days of summit talks in Vienna.

► In 1963, Pope John XXIII died at 81; he was succeeded by Pope Paul VI.

► In 1965, astronaut Edward White became the first American to “walk’’ in space, during the flight of Gemini 4.

► In 1967, the most beautiful boy in the world was born in New York City. His mother, fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt, and his father writer Wyatt Emory Cooper. Some people swear they saw a new, bright star in the sky that night.

► In 1981, Pope John Paul II left a Rome hospital and returned to the Vatican three weeks after an attempt on his life.

► In 1989, Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died. Chinese Army troops began their sweep of Beijing to crush student-led pro-democracy demonstrations. SkyDome (now called the Rogers Centre) opened in Toronto.

► In 2001, Alejandro Toledo defeated ex-president Alan Garcia in Peru’s presidential election. Actor Anthony Quinn died in Boston at 86. Mel Brooks’s musical comedy “The Producers’’ won a record 12 Tony Awards. Golfer Karrie Webb won the US Women’s Open in a runaway for the second year in a row.

► In 2006, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, attending a security conference in Singapore, branded Iran the world’s leading terrorist nation yet hoped that Tehran would seriously consider incentives from the West in exchange for suspending suspect nuclear activities. Gunmen attacked a car belonging to the Russian Embassy in Baghdad, killing one diplomat and kidnapping four employees who were later slain.

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The baby photo and the 1967 entry are, of course, courtesy of yours truly. I read the thing about the bright star in a comic book, so it must be for real.