Volume 13 , Issue 23

This Day In History (June 6)

On Jan. 6, 1882, Sam Rayburn, who served for more than 48 years in the U.S. House of Representatives (1913-61), was born. Following Rayburns death on November 16, 1961, his obituary appeared in The Times. Go to obituary. [Photo on the left was taken back in the early 1960's and was scanned and placed on NWOkie's Picasa Albums back in 2006. We can identify at least two: Gene McGill (frontrow, 2nd from left) and Sam Rayburn (frontrow, 3rd from left, standing to Gene's left.]

Sam Rayburn's Boyhood Ambitions -- The Article states this about Rayburn's Boyhood Ambitions, "As a boy, working in the fields of his father's forty-acre cotton farm in North Texas, Sam Rayburn made up his mind to enter politics when he grew up and eventually to become Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Then, perhaps even more than now, the Speakership was widely regarded as second only to the Presidency among the country's elective offices. Mr. Rayburn achieved his goal on Sept. 16, 1940, when the House elected him to succeed William B. Bankhead of Alabama, who had died the previous day. From then until his death, he served as Speaker in every Congress except the Republican-controlled Eightieth (1947 to 1949) and the Eighty-third (1953 to 1955)."

On this day, June 6, 1919, the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60. READ Times Article. The headlines read: "Theodore Roosevelt Dies Suddenly at Oyster Bay Home; Nation Shocked, pays Tribute to Former President; Out Flag on All Seas and in All Lands at Half Mast."

"Oyster Bay, L.I., Jan. 6. -- Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States, died this morning between 4 and 4:15 o'clock while asleep in his bed at his home on Sagamore Hill, in this place. His physicians said that the immediate cause of death was a clot of blood which detached itself from a vein and entered the lungs."

On This Date (January 6)

• 1412 - According to tradition, Joan of Arc was born in Domremy, France.
• 1540 - England's King Henry VIII married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves.
• 1759 - George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis were married.
• 1838 - Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J.
• 1912 - New Mexico became the 47th state.
• 1919 - Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.
• 1945 - George H.W. Bush married Barbara Pierce in Rye, N.Y.
• 1993 - Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie died at age 75.
• 1994 - Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the right leg in an assault planned by the ex-husband of her rival, Tonya Harding.
• 2001 - With the vanquished Vice President Al Gore presiding, Congress certified Republican George W. Bush the winner of the close and bitterly contested 2000 presidential election.
• 2005 - Former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was arrested 41 years after three civil rights workers were slain in Mississippi. (Killen was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison.)

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