Daily Chat 07/10/09

George III issued a royal proclamation in 1763, closing the lands north and west of the Allegheny Mountains to white settlement.  KLM was founded in 1919 and is now the oldest airline operating under its original name.  The German Democratic Republic was formed in 1949.  The Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked in 1985.  The Great Flood of 1993 finally subsided after 103 days, as the Mississippi River finally returned to below flood-level in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Born today:  Niels Bohr (1885-1962), Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965), Desmond Tutu (1931), Vladimir Putin (1952), Jayne Torvil (1957), Simon Cowell (1959), Sherman Alexie (1966) and Thom Yorke (1968).

It is Composer Day in Brazil.