This Day…

1858 – First use of fingerprints as a means of identification is made by Sir William James Herschel of the Indian Civil Service.

1946 – At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.

1934 – Outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, “Public Enemy No. 1” John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.

1817 – The English novelist Jane Austen, who wrote such classics as Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), died in Winchester, Hampshire, at age 41.

July 12, 1916 — Many called her Lady Death. To Adolf Hitler‘s men, she was “the Russian bitch from hell.” Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who was born on this day, is the most successful female sniper in history, having killed 309 German soldiers during the Second World War.

1900 – Charlotte Cooper beats Hélène Prévost to become the 1st female Olympic tennis champion and the 1st individual female Olympic champion in any sport.

1942 – British born actor “His Girl Friday” Cary Grant (38) weds American heiress and socialite Barbara Hutton (29).

1911 – “Anne of Green Gables” author Lucy Maud Montgomery (36) weds Ewen MacDonald in Prince Edward Island, Canada.

1936 – The novel “Gone with the Wind” is published Margaret Mitchell’s story set in the American South during the American Civil War became one of the United States’ biggest best-sellers. The 1939 movie version starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable was similarly successful.

June 25, 1876 – A dawn, Lt. Varnum and his Indian scouts, who are located on a high promontory called the “Crow’s Nest,” observe the Sioux camp and its large horse herds 15 miles to the west of the Little Bighorn.  They report this discovery to Custer, and note that several Sioux had been observing the cavalry column.