Thursday, October 18, 2007, #199 (1466)

Today in history

1356 - Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps destroyed the town of Basel, Switzerland
1851 - Herman Melville's Moby Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London
1867 - United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day
1922 - The British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) is founded by a consortium, to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service
1977 - German Autumn: a set of events revolving around the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of a Lufthansa flight by the Red Army Faction (RAF) comes to an end when Schleyer is executed and various RAF members allegedly commit suicide. The West German government states that it would never again negotiate with terrorists
1991 - Azerbaijan declares independence from USSR

Birthdays

1634 - Luca Giordano, Italian artist (d. 1705)
1926 - Chuck Berry, American musician
1926 - Klaus Kinski, German actor (d. 1991)
1939 - Lee Harvey Oswald, purported American assassin of John F. Kennedy (d. 1963)
1956 - Martina Navratilova, Czech-born tennis player

Georgian words of the day

coffee - qava
sugar - shakari
milk - rdze
cup - chika

One cup of coffee please, with sugar.
tu sheidzleba momitanet erti qava shakrit.



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