Today in history–June 5

1723: Philosopher and economist Adam Smith is baptized at Kilkaldy, in Fife, Scotland.

1817: The first steamship on the Great Lakes, the Frontenac, is launched.

1837: Future home to three law schools, Houston, Texas, receives a city charter from the Congress of the Republic of Texas.

1850: Frontier lawman Patrick Floyd “Pat” Garrett is born at Chambers County, Alabama.

1851: The National Era newspaper publishes the first episode of a serial novel, written by the wife of a Bowdoin professor, that will run for ten months.  It’s called Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly.

1883: Economist John Maynard Keynes is born at Cambridge, England.

1913: Christian Friedrich Wilhelm von der Ahe, the German-born baseball entrepreneur who owned the St. Louis Browns and, among other things, invented the World Series and the ballpark hot dog, dies broke and working as a bartender in St. Louis, Missouri.

1916: Louis Dembitz Brandeis is sworn in as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  He had been, perhaps, best known for his famous brief in support of workplace discrimination against women in Muller v. Oregon.

1933: The United States goes off the gold standard.

1956: Elvis “The Pelvis” Presley causes consternation with his wiggling hips when he appears on the Milton Berle television program to push his new single, Hound Dog.

1977: The first practical personal computer, the Apple II, goes on sale.

1985:  President Reagan appoints Alex Kozinski to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

1993: Singer Conway Twitty dies at Branson, Missouri.  He had more Number 1 hits (55) than anyone in history.

1998: A seven-week strike that shuts down General Motors begins with a job action in Flint, Michigan.  Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and other non-union shops happily sell a great many more cars.

2004: Ronald Wilson Reagan, the only labor union official ever to become President of the United States, dies at Bel-Air, California.