1579 Francis Drake claimed Nova Albion for the crown in what is now San Francisco Harbor where his party stayed for about a month. Been to San Francisco several times but did not see any sign of Drake, but then I was not looking for it.
1885 New York City. Two hundred crates containing three hundred and fifty individual pieces arrived in the Harbor. When assembled over the following weeks, they made the Statue of Liberty. Lady Liberty was modelled after sculptor Frederic Bartholdi’s mother. Gustav Eiffel provided the structural engineering.
1928 Amelia Earhart of Atchison Kansas flew across the Atlantic in twenty plus hours to land in Wales. She did it again in 1932. She had flown an even greater distance from Oakland to Honolulu in 1925. Then she flew off into eternity far too soon.
1950 Chicago, Medicine. Dr Richard Lawler performed the first kidney transplant operation. There were more than 16,000 in the United States in 2015.
1961 Paris. About to return to Moscow Rudolf Nureyev at Le Bourget Airport sought political asylum by wrestling with the Soviet guards accompanying the Kirov troupe and vaulting a barrier. Only in 1993 did he return to Russia at the invitation of Mikhail Gorachev to appear on the stage at the Bolshoi Theatre in an emotional homecoming. There are videos of the leaping Rudi on You Tube.
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