On this day in 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first explorer to reach the South Pole, beating his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott. Amundsen had planned to be the first man to the North Pole, however when he heard that Robert Peary already reached the North Pole, he decided to pursue the South Pole. Amundsen arrived at the South Pole five weeks ahead of a British party led by Robert Falcon Scott. While Amundsen and his team returned home to a hero's welcome, Scott and his team died on their way back from the pole, frozen in their sleeping bags.
Jaguar’s business was founded as the Swallow Sidecar Company in 1922, originally making motorcycle sidecars before developing automobiles. Under the ownership of S. S. Cars Limited, the business extended to complete cars made in association with Standard Motor Co. many bearing Jaguar as a model name. Its first use of the name Jaguar was on a 1936 model called the S.S. Jaguar - the S.S. was for Swallow Sidecar. After the Second World War, due to the unfavorable connotations of the SS initials, the company was renamed Jaguar Cars Ltd in 1945.
After spending nine months on the run, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured on this day in 2003. U.S. soldiers found Saddam Hussein hiding in a six foot deep hole, nine miles outside his hometown of Tikrit. Inside the small, six-foot bunker sat a dirty, scruffy Saddam Hussein, holding a Glock pistol. Along with the pistol, Hussein had two pairs of boxer shorts, a package of socks, some candy bars, and a briefcase containing $750,000 in one-hundred dollar bills. He did not resist and was uninjured during the arrest. Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging on December 30, 2006.
Barry Goldwater was an American politician best known as a senator from Arizona and the Republican candidate for president in 1964. Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign looked to the Periodic Table of elements for the now iconic campaign graphic (AU = gold and H2O = water). The campaign against Goldwater produced the "Daisy ad," one of the most famous political advertisements in American history, which presented nuclear war as a clear consequence of voting Republican in 1964. Goldwater lost the 1964 campaign for the presidency to Lyndon B. Johnson in unprecedented landslide.
Orville Redenbacher is most often associated with the brand of popcorn that bears his name. The New York Times described him as "the agricultural visionary who all but single-handedly revolutionized the American popcorn industry." Redenbacher attended Purdue University, where he studied agronomy. Students at Purdue University are eligible to apply for Orville Redenbacher’s “Top of the Crop” Scholarship. The scholarship is open to juniors and seniors in the departments of agronomy, food science, agricultural/ biological engineering or agricultural economics.
Tommy Lee Jones was placed in a dorm known as Mower B-12 as a freshmen in college. As a matter of sheer coincidence future Vice President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore was housed right across the hall from Jones. The two young men struck up a friendship that would go on to last a lifetime. As upperclassmen at Harvard the two close friends chose to live together as roommates. Jones presented the nominating speech for Al Gore, the Democratic Party’s U.S. presidential nominee, at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.
The ending of Casablanca might be the most quotable few minutes of all cinema. As Rick (Humphrey Bogart) prepares to say goodbye to Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), we get to experience "You'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life"; "We'll always have Paris"; and, finally, "Here's looking at you, kid". Amazingly, this line was originally in the script as "Here's good luck to you, kid." Supposedly, Bogart changed the line during the filming of the movie. "Here's looking at you, kid" was voted the fifth most memorable line in cinema according to the American Film Institute.
The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and completed in 1931, the building has a roof height of 1,250 feet (380 m) and stands a total of 1,454 feet (443.2 m) tall, including its antenna. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of New York, which is of unknown origin. As of 2017 the building is the 5th-tallest completed skyscraper in the United States and the 28th-tallest in the world. It is also the 6th-tallest freestanding structure in the Americas.
The site of the Empire State Building, located on the west side of Fifth Avenue between West 33rd and 34th Streets, was originally part of an early 18th century farm. In the late 1820s, it came into the possession of the prominent Astor family, with John Jacob Astor's descendants building the Waldorf–Astoria Hotel on the site in the 1890s. The hotel remained in operation until the late 1920s, when it was sold to the Bethlehem Engineering Corporation in 1928 for an estimated $20m. Following this sale, the property changed hands once more, coming under the ownership of Empire State Inc., a business venture that included famous businessman and former General Motors executive, John J. Raskob, members of the du Pont family, and former New York governor Al Smith, who was tasked with heading the corporation.[15] The original design of the Empire State Building was for a 50-story office building. However, after fifteen revisions, the final design was for an 86-story 1,250-foot building, with an airship mast on top. This ensured it would be the world's tallest building, beating the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street, two other Manhattan skyscrapers under construction at the time that were also vying for that distinction.
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