Today in History: August 26

55 B.C.: The long story of British interaction with the Roman civil law begins with Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain.

1498: Michelangelo gets a contract from Cardinal Jean de Billheres to design statuary for the latter’s funeral chapel.  He comes up with something called the Pietà.

1789: The French National Constituent Assembly adopts the “Declaration of the Rights of Man.”  It’s one thing to declare them, as they will find, and another to achieve them.

1839: Officers of the U.S.S. Washington seize the Spanish brig La Amistad off the coast of Long Island, New York.  They will take it to Connecticut to file a libel claiming salvage rights in the ship and its cargo, escaped slaves.

1935: Geraldine Ann Ferraro (Fordham Law 1960) is born at Newburgh, New York.  She’ll work her way through law school at night by working as a public school teacher.

1935: Johnny Mercer is topping the charts with On the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe.

1950: Gertrude Moran, who shocked the tennis world a year earlier the year by wearing ruffled lace-trimmed knickers under a short skirt at Wimbleton, is signed to a $75,000-a-year contract by tennis promoter Bobby Riggs.

1957: The first of Ford Motor Co.’s widely publicized new model rolls of the assembly line.  They call it the “Edsel.”

1987: The Fuller Brush Co., which had sold products strictly door-to-door for 80 years, announces plans to open its first two retail stores, in Dallas, Texas.