By Michelle Dumas
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
William Warren Bradley (born July 28, 1943) is an American politician and former professional basketball player. He served three terms as a Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey (1979–1997). He ran for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in the 2000 election, which he lost to Vice President Al Gore.
Bradley was born and raised in Crystal City, Missouri, a small town 45 miles (72 km) south of St. Louis. He excelled at basketball from an early age. He did well academically and was an all-county and all-state basketball player in high school. He was offered 75 college scholarships, but declined them all to attend Princeton University. He won a gold medal as a member of the 1964 Olympic basketball team and was the Most Outstanding Player of the 1965 NCAA Tournament, when Princeton finished third. After graduating in 1965, he attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship where he was a member of Worcester College, delaying a decision for two years on whether or not to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
While at Oxford, Bradley played one season of professional basketball in Europe and eventually decided to join the New York Knicks in the 1967–68 season, after serving six months in the Air Force Reserve. He spent his entire ten-year professional basketball career playing for the Knicks, winning NBA titles in 1970 and 1973. Retiring in 1977, he ran for a seat in the United States Senate the following year, from his adopted home state of New Jersey. He was re-elected in 1984 and 1990, left the Senate in 1997, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination.
Bradley is the author of seven non-fiction books, most recently We Can All Do Better, and hosts a weekly radio show, American Voices, on Sirius Satellite Radio. He is a corporate director of Starbucks and a partner at investment bank Allen & Company in New York City. Bradley is a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One. He also serves on that group’s advisory board.
Bradley is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In 2008 Bradley was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Question of the Day
Are there plants that can repel ants?
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Filibuster
Puzzle of the Day
They kept on the (Blank) so as to (Blank) their position when required. (The two 5-letter words to fill the blanks share the same letters.)
Died
- Johann Sebastian Bach (composer) –
- Marie Dressler (actress) –
- Roger Tory Peterson (American artist & ornithologist) –
- Francis Crick (Nobel Prize-winning scientist who co-discovered the spiral, double-helix structure of DNA) –
- Eileen Brennan (actress) –
Born
- Beatrix Potter (author) –
- Marcel Duchamp (painter) –
- Earl S. Tupper (inventor of Tupperware) –
- Malcolm Lowry (author) –
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (U.S. First Lady) –
- Bill Bradley (basketball player & politician) –
- Jim Davis (cartoonist) –
- Terrance Stanley Fox (cross-country runner, Canadian hero) –
Events
- Great fire in Moscow–
- Thomas Cromwell was executed on order from King Henry VIII on charges of treason–
- Henry VIII married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard–
- Maximilien Robespierre was guillotined, ending the Reign of Terror (French Revolution)–
- The metric system became legal in the United States–
- U.S. occupation of Haiti began–
- NFL added a fourth official, the field judge–
- WWII coffee rationing in the United States ended–
- A U.S. bomber flying through thick fog at about 200 mph crashed into the 79th floor of New York’s Empire State Building, killing 14 people–
- President Lyndon B. Johnson requested that 50,000 additional soldiers be sent to Vietnam–
- Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett were married–
- First oil through the Alaskan Pipeline reached Valdez Marine Terminal in Alaska–
- 255-pound 4-ounce Atlantic halibut caught near Gloucester, Massachusetts–
- The remains of a prehistoric man were discovered near Kennewick, Washington–
- Nine coal miners rescued after being trapped 77 hours in flooded Quecreek Mine, Somerset, Pennsylvania–
Weather
- Southern Mississippi was hit by the Bay St. Louis Hurricane, in which the U.S. ship Cutter sank and 39 crew members died–
- An enterprising citizen successfully fried an egg on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on this hot July day–
- Due to thick fog, a U.S. B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City, killing 14 people.–
COURTESY www.almanac.com
