Paradise Driver

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Today is Monday, March 22nd

The 82nd day of 2004.

There are 284 days left in the year.



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Today's Highlight in History:



On March 22, 1765, Britain enacted the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies. (The Act was repealed the following year.)



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On this date:



In 1457, the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed.



In 1621, Massasoit & Pilgrims agree on league of friendship. This treaty is made by Plymouth Colony with the Indians , and is kept, by both sides, for 50 years



In 1622, Powhattan's brother led a massacre of some settlements near Jamestown, Va. It was the first Indian massacre.



In 1638, Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.



In 1673, The first regular mail service between New York and Boston is established.



In 1733, Joseph Priestly invented carbonated water, a basic ingredient in soda pops.



In 1794, Congress bans US vessels from supplying slaves to other countries



In 1820, U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington, D.C.



In 1822, New York Horticultural Society founded.



In 1857, The first department store elevator was installed in N.Y.; the invention is by Elisha Graves Otis.



In 1861, The first U.S. nursing school is chartered.



In 1873, Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico.



In 1882, Congress outlawed polygamy.



In 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiere showed their first movie to an invited audience in Paris.



In 1902, Great Britain and Persia agreed to link Europe and India by telegraph.



In 1903, Due to drought the US side of Niagara Falls runs short of water.



In 1904, The London Daily Illustrated Mirror publishes the first color photograph.



In 1914, The world's first airline starts operation in St. Petersburg, Florida and is called the St. Petersburg Tampa Airboat Line.



In 1929, 75 years ago, A U.S. Coast Guard vessel sank a Canadian-registered schooner, the "I'm Alone," in the Gulf of Mexico. (The schooner was suspected of carrying bootleg liquor.)



In 1933, during Prohibition, President Franklin Roosevelt signed a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal.



In 1941, the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state went into operation.



In 1944, 600+ 8th Air Force bombers attack Berlin.



In 1945, the Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.



In 1946, the first U.S.-built rocket to leave the earth's atmosphere reaches a height of 50 miles.



In 1954, the first shopping mall opened in Southfield, Michigan.



In 1956, Perry Como became the first major TV variety-show host to book a rock and roll act on his program. The act was Carl Perkins.



In 1960, The first patent for lasers is granted to Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes.



In 1963, The Beatles' first album Please Please Me is released in Britain; it is soon number one on the pop charts.



In 1965, The United States confirms that its troops used chemical warfare against the Vietcong.



In 1972, Congress sent the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification. (It fell three states short of the 38 needed for approval.)



In 1977, The John Denver TV special "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" was aired on ABC.



In 1978, Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of The Flying Wallendas high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.



In 1981, First Class Postage was raised from 15 cents to 18 cents.



In 1988, both houses of Congress overrode President Reagan's veto of a sweeping civil rights bill.



In 1989, Oliver North began two days of testimony at his Iran-Contra trial in Washington, DC.



In 1990, Microsoft Windows 3.0 was shipped



In 1990, President Geroge Bush declared "I do not like broccoli and I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it and I'm the President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli".



In 1992, Twenty-seven people were killed and fourteen are injured when a USAir jetliner ran off the runway and into the bay at New York's LaGuardia Airport.



In 1993, a U.S. nuclear submarine collided with a Russian nuclear sub in a Russian training area in the Barents Sea. There were no casualties.



In 1995, Convicted Long Island Rail Road gunman Colin Ferguson was sentenced to life in prison for killing six people.



In 1997, Tara Lipinski, at 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest women's world figure skating champion.



In 1998, Eleven young campers died in a mountain cabin fire in Centre County, Pennsylvania. The fire started after a gas heater exploded inside the cabin on Madisonburg Mountain.



In 2000, Some 1,100 women denied jobs with the now-defunct US Information Agency and its broadcast branch, the Voice of America, won $508 million dollars from the government in the largest-ever settlement of a federal sex discrimination case.



In 2001 The Palestinian Authority closed the Gaza and West Bank offices of the Arabic news agency al-Jazeera. The claim was that the agency's coverage had been insulting to Yasser Arafat.



In 2001, An 18-year-old student opened fire at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California, wounding three classmates and two teachers before he was shot and wounded by a police officer; the suspect, Jason Hoffman, later hanged himself while in jail.



In 2002, The U.S. Postal Rate Commission announced approval of higher postal rates, including a three-cent boost for first-class letters, to 37 cents.



Ten years ago (1994):



The Federal Reserve announced it was raising short-term interest rates from 3.25 percent to 3.5 percent, the second such boost of the year.



"Woody Woodpecker" creator Walter Lantz died in Burbank, Calif., at age 93.



Five years ago (1999):



Acting as his own lawyer, Dr. Jack Kevorkian went on trial on murder charges for the first time, telling a jury in Pontiac, Mich., he was merely carrying out his professional duty in a videotaped assisted death shown on "60 Minutes." (Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder.)



One year ago (2003):



Tens of thousands of people marched in cities around the world or demonstrated outside U.S. military bases, but the demonstrations were far smaller than earlier protests.



U.S. forces reported seizing a large weapons cache in Afghanistan.



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Today's Birthdays:



Actor Karl Malden is 92.



Pantomimist Marcel Marceau is 81.



USA Today founder Allen H. Neuharth is 80.



Composer-lyricist Stephen Joshua Sondheim is 74.



Religious broadcaster and politician Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson is 74



Actor William Shatner is 73.



Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is 70.



Actor M. (Michael) Emmet Walsh is 69.



Singer-guitarist George Benson is 61.



Singer Jeremy Clyde (Chad and Jeremy) is 60.



Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is 56.



Correspondent Wolf Blitzer is 56



Actress Fanny Ardant is 55.



Sportscaster Bob Costas is 52.



Country singer James House is 49.



Actress Lena Olin is 49.



Singer-actress Stephanie Mills is 47.



Actor Matthew Modine is 45.



Actor Cole Hauser is 29.



Actress Kellie Williams is 28.



Actress Reese Witherspoon is 28.



Rock musician John Otto (Limp Bizkit) is 27.



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Thought for Today:

"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." -

- C.S. Lewis, British author (1898-1963).

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