A King Features comic strip called Thimble Theatre was in its eleventh year when a new character was introduced in the strip on this date in 1929: Popeye. Popeye, at first a secondary character, quickly became the most popular figure in the comic and after a few years, his adventures were the focus of the strip.

Popeye’s first appearance in the strip, from 88 years ago today, is at top. He is hired as a deck hand.

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Betty White is 95 today.
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Citizens from twenty-eight communities located in the “New Hampshire Grants”—land across the Connecticut River to the west of the colony of New Hampshire—declared independence 240 years ago today. The land was in a dispute between New York and New Hampshire; the citizens wrote a constitution in which the land is referred to (in different places) as the “State of Vermont” and the “Commonwealth of Vermont.” Eventually, it became the fourteenth state.

Between 1777 and statehood in 1791, Vermont was the Republic of Vermont, a sovereign entity that did not much want to be a republic (historians refer to it as the “reluctant republic”) but had a population that was only interested in joining a nation on its terms. It issued currency and had a flag, the “Green Mountain Boys Flag” seen at top.

After negotiations failed to unite Vermont with Quebec, it joined the colonies in the fight for independence from Great Britain. Most of its citizens fought on behalf of independence in the Revolutionary War.
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The “Miracle on the Hudson,” in which the crew of a US Airways passenger jet, Flight 1549, safely glided the plane to a water landing in the Hudson River after it lost power from its engines after striking geese during takeoff, took place seven years ago today. All passengers and crew survived.

The crash has since been memorialized in a film Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood, and the airplane itself is now on exhibit at the Carolinas Aviation Museum.
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