On This Day: Tuesday July 12, 2005 This is the 193rd day of the year, with 172 days remaining in 2005.
Fact of the Day: grand slam
In 1930, Bobby Jones won the U.S. Open Championship in golf by two strokes. Having already won the British Open, the British Amateur, and the U.S. Amateur, Jones became the only golfer to win the Grand Slam (the four major tournaments in one calendar year) - a term that had to be adopted by sportswriters since no one had achieved that feat before in golf.
Holidays Northern Ireland: Orangeman's Day.
Feast day of St John the Iberian, St Jason, Saints Hermagoras and Fortunatus, St John Gualbert, St John Jones, St Veronica, and St Felix.
Kiribati: Independence Day.
Sao Tome and Principe: Independence Day.
Events 1690 - Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic army of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.
1862 - The US Congress authorized the Medal of Honor.
1912 - The first foreign-made film premiered in America, "Queen Elizabeth", starring Sarah Bernhardt and Lon Tellegen.
1960 - The first Etch-A-Sketch toy went on sale.
1970 - "Evening at Pops" premiered on PBS.
1976 - The game show "Family Feud" had its TV premiere.
1984 - Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale announced his choice of US Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York to be his running mate; Ferraro was the first woman to run for vice president on a major-party ticket.
1990 - Russian republic president Boris Yeltsin shocked the Soviet Communist Party by announcing he was resigning his party membership.
1990 - "Northern Exposure" premiered on television.
1997 - A computer employee at Network Solutions Inc in Hemdon, Virginia, ignored malfunction warnings and caused seven of the world's nine root servers to corrupt all the data sent to them, causing the Internet to break down.
Births 100 B.C.E. - Julius Caesar, Roman dictator.
1730 - Josiah Wedgewood, pottery designer and manufacturer.
1817 - Henry David Thoreau, author, philosopher, naturalist.
1854 - George Eastman, inventor of Kodak camera.
1861 - George Washington Carver, botanist, scientist.
1895 - Oscar Hammerstein II, lyricist, songwriter with Richard Rodgers.
1904 - Pablo Neruda, Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet (1971) and politician.
