MOMENTS IN TIME - July 8, 2010

The History Channel

* On July 15, 1606, the great Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn is born in Leiden. Rembrandt completed more than 600 paintings, many of them portraits or self-portraits. By the age of 22, he was accomplished enough to take on his own students.

* On July 12, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signs into law a measure calling for the awarding of a U.S. Army Medal of Honor. The first U.S. Army soldiers to receive the honor were six members of a Union raiding party who in penetrated deep into Tennessee and Georgia to destroy bridges and railroad tracks.

* On July 14, 1881, Sheriff Pat Garrett kills Henry McCarty, known as Billy the Kid. Garrett had been tracking the Kid for three months after the gunslinger had escaped from prison only days before his scheduled execution. At the trial, the judge had sentenced Billy the Kid to hang until “you are dead, dead, dead.” Billy reportedly responded, “And you can go to hell, hell, hell.”

* On July 17, 1938, glory-seeking flier Douglas Corrigan takes off from New York headed for California. Twenty-eight hours later, Corrigan landed his plane in Dublin, Ireland and exclaimed, “Just got in from New York. Where am I?” By the time “Wrong Way” Corrigan and his crated plane returned to New York by ship, he was a national celebrity.

* On July 18, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt would eventually be elected to a record four terms, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

* On July 16, 1967, actor and comedian Will Ferrell is born in Irvine, Calif. After rising to fame on TV’s “Saturday Night Live,” Ferrell starred in a string of big-screen comedies, including “Anchorman,” “Old School” and “Talladega Nights.”

* On July 13, 1990, the romantic-thriller “Ghost,” starring Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg, opens in theaters across the United States. The film, about a woman who communicates with her murdered husband through a psychic, received multiple Academy Award nominations.(c) 2010 King Features Synd., Inc.