Milestones: Thursday, July 6, 2023

July 6, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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THE ART OF HAPPINESS — The 14th Dalai Lama, born Lhamo Dondrub on July 6, 1935 on a farm in a place now known as Taktser, in China, is the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Although he and his family could not have guessed that he was the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama (as this was not known to happen within the same family), he began in his childhood exhibiting leadership traits. An unsuccessful Tibetan nationalist uprising in 1959 resulted in China’s crackdown on Tibet. The Dalai Lama fled to Punjab, India, where he established his democratic government in exile. In 1989, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his commitment to the nonviolent liberation of Tibet.

In 1998, the Dalai Lama’s book, “The Art of Happiness,” written along with psychiatrist Howard Cutler, became a 1998 bestseller. The next year, his book, Ethics for the New Millennium made the top ten bestseller lists, so two of his titles were listed simultaneously. cracked the bestseller lists in August 1999, giving him two titles in the Top 10.

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BROKE COLOR BARRIER IN TENNIS — ALTHEA GIBSON became the first Black player to win a Wimbledon tennis title on July 6, 1957 when she defeated fellow American Darlene Hard in the women’s singles final. New York City celebrated Gibson’s win five days later with a ticker-tape parade on July 11. The previous year, Gibson became the first African American to win a Grand Slam title (the French Championships). The year she won Wimbledon, she also won the U.S. Nationals and won both again in 1958.

The Associated Press voted Gibson voted Female Athlete of the Year in both 1957 and 1958.

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GEORGE WALKER BUSH — born on July 6, 1946, is one of only two U.S. Presidents to also be a son of a President. The first father-son set was John Adams (1796-1801) and John Quincy Adams (1825-29). George Herbert Walker Bush was the 41st President and George Walker Bush the 43rd, whose first campaign was so tight that it was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against allowing a recount of Florida’s votes that might have resulted in a win for his opponent, Al Gore, who was the sitting vice president. Both Presidents Bush had to deal with military conflicts involving Iraq: in 1990, the U.S. and a multi-national coalition waged a military campaign against Iraq, which had invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait. In 2003, the 43rd President — convinced that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had amassed weapons of mass destruction — invaded Iraq, but with much less international approval. This campaign was also part of the broader War on Terror, which Bush ordered after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams were one-term Presidents and were defeated in their re-election campaigns. So was George W. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, who served from 1989-1993. However, George Walker Bush was re-elected to a second term; and served from 2001-2009.

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MARTYR FOR REFORM — The Czech theologian and reformer JAN HUS (also spelled as John Hus)( was burned at the stake on July 6, 1415, after being condemned as a heretic. Hus lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries in what was then called Bohemia. Alexander V, who had just been named Pope and who issued a papal bull against, and later excommunicated Hus, who continued to denounce the Roman Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences to bolster its wealth. Hus did so a good century before Martin Luther, a German monk, and also criticized the sale of indulgences, a way of both reducing the temporal punishment for sins and increasing the Church’s treasury.

Today, Jan Hus’s death anniversary is observed as a national holiday in the Czech Republic.

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EARTH’S APHELION — During the summer, the days are longer, but the earth also reaches its farthest point from the sun during this season. The EARTH will be at APHELION on July 6, 2023 at about 4:06 p.m. EST., the point in its orbit when it is farthest from the sun.

It may seem counterintuitive to some that the earth is farthest from the sun during the Northern Hemisphere summer, at about 94,510,000 miles).

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FIRST NONSTOP AIRSHIP CROSSING OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN was completed on July 6, 1919 when a British dirigible completed its journey at New York’s Roosevelt Field in Westbury, Long Island. A dirigible is a lighter-than-air aircraft capable of airborne navigation on its own power after they rise on a lifting gas less dense than the surrounding air. The crew, from the Royal Air Force, were flying His Majesty’s Airship R34. The British Sovereign at the time was King Edward VII.

The news was not immediately public due to wartime censorship, especially because this dirigible was a careful copy of a Zeppelin, the LZ 33, which three years earlier had made a forced landing.

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RABIES VACCINE — FIRST SUCCESSFUL ANTIRABIES INOCULATION was administered to a nine-year-old boy on July 6, 1885. The French chemist Louis Pasteur gave the first rabies immunoglobin to 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been badly mauled by an infected dog. It was the first in a series of shots that Pasteur gave the boy and one which had been tested on more than 50 dogs before being tested in a human trial. Emile Roux, a colleague of Pasteur and a doctor, had originally created the vaccine.

Pasteur took risks with this action; as he himself was not a licensed physician he could have faced prosecution. However, he did first consult with other physicians.

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COMPOSED THE JEOPARDY THEME TUNE — MERV GRIFFIN, born on July 6, 1925 as Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr., started his entertainment career as a nightclub singer who, serendipitously landed a film role. He switched to the increasingly-popular television in 1958 as a game show host; NBC gave him his own daytime talk show, The Merv Griffin Show, which ran for more than two decades in syndication. Griffin then went on to produce two highly successful game shows that broadcast today, “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune,” and he also composed the iconic “Jeopardy!” theme music.

A real estate mogul as well, Griffin was worth an estimated $1.6 billion when he died in 2007.

See previous milestones, here.