Here's your Today in History:
July 31, 1945 -
Wearing a stolen army uniform, prisoner John Giles attempts to escape from Alcatraz island by boarding an outbound cargo boat. But instead of San Francisco, the vessel heads for Angel Island, where Giles is promptly captured. Always check your schedules before boarding your escape craft.
It was on this day in 1954 that human feet first stood upon the summit of Pakistan's K2 mountain, the second-tallest mountain in the world.
K2 was known to the Chinese as "Great Mountain" and to Indian and Pakistani locals as "That Big Thing Over There." It was not until 1856, when T.G. Montgomerie of Britain's Survey of India was logging the mountains of the Karakorum range, that it was dubbed K2. This helped distinguish it from K1, to its left, and K3, to its right.
(K1 was later named Mount Masherbrum. K3 moved to New Mexico, where it is believed to be running a New Age bookstore under an assumed name.)
It was an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio that first succeeded in ascending to the peak of K2. Team members Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni achieved that distinction on July 31, 1954.
The summit wasn't reached again until 1977, when a Japanese team with more than 1500 porters found their way to the top.
The first American expedition reached the top in 1978 without the aid of any stinking porters.
July 31, 1966 -
Beatles records are burned in Birmingham, Alabama -- only because John Lennon innocently declared that the band happens to be "more popular than Jesus." The record burning of course has the opposite effect, as sales of Beatles records dramatically increase (in part to burn them.)
July 31, 1971 -
One of the most expensive car rides occured on this date, when James B. Irwin and David R. Scott took the Lunar Roving Vehicle or "Moon Buggy" on it's premiere jaunt on the surface of the moon.
July 31, 1998 -
Diminutive actor Gary Coleman, former child star of the ABC television sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, is arrested in Hawthorne, California for allegedly battering an autograph seeker in a uniform shop. Coleman, then a security guard at Fox Hills Mall, was shopping for a bulletproof vest. Who knew they made bulletproof vest in children's sizes.
July 31, 1999 -
Police arrest James Donald Ray for 'violent intimate relations' with two sheep at El Capitan High School in Lakeside, California. A previous sexual attack against one of the sheep prompted the police stakeout, which nabs the 38-year-old in flagrante delicto cum ewe. What were the sheep doing at school - did Mary's little lambs matriculate?
And so it goes.
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