0311 - Emperor Galerius recognizes Christians legally in the Roman Empire
1349 - Jewish community at Radolszell Germany, exterminated
1396 - Crusaders & earl of Nevers depart from Dijon
1492 - Spain announces it will expels all Jews
1562 - 1st French colonists in US: Jean Ribaut & Hugenots at Parris Is NC
1563 - Jews are expelled from France by order of Charles VI
1695 - William Congreve's "Love for Love," premieres in London
1722 - Game of Billiards is mentioned in New England Courant
1763 - London Journalist John Wilkes confined in the Tower
1789 - George Washington inaugurated, took office in New York as the first
president of the United States. [H]
1798 - Department of the Navy established.
1803 - United States more than doubled its land area with the Louisiana
Purchase. It obtained all French territory
west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. [H]
1808 - 1st practical typewriter finished by Italian Pellegrini Turri
1812 - Louisiana became the 18th state of the Union.
1852 - Anton Rubinsteins opera "Dmitri Donskoi," premieres in St Petersburg
1860 - Navaho indians attack Fort Defiance (Canby)
1861 - New York Yacht Club offers their vessels to the Federal government
1861 - President Lincoln ordered Federal Troops to evacuate Indian Territory
1864 - New York becomes 1st state to charge a hunting license fee
1865 - -5/1] Gen Sherman's "Haines's Bluff" at Snyder's Mill, Virginia
1869 - Hawaiian YMCA organized
1871 - Apaches in Arizona surrender to white & Mexican adventurers; 144 die
1885 - Boston Pops Orchestra forms
1889 - 1st US national holiday, on centennial of Washington's inauguration
1900 - USA annexes Hawaii which was organized as a U.S. territory.
1902 - Debussy's opera "Pelleas et Melissande," premieres in Paris
1904 - Ice cream cone makes its debut
1911 - Portugal approves woman suffrage
1921 - Pope Benedict XV encyclical "On Dante"
1927 - Princess Juliana gets seat in Dutch Council of State
1927 - The Federal Industrial Institute for Women, the first women's federal prison, opens in Alderson, West Virginia
1939 - NBC makes 1st US demo of TV at opening of NY World's Fair. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt attended and became the first U.S. president to appear on
television.
1941 - Spread of Judaism begins in Croatia
1942 - Japanese launch major offensive against Bataan
1943 - Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp forms
1943 - Dutch strike against forced labor in Nazi Germany's war industry
1945 - Lord Haw-Haw calls for crusade against the bolsheviks
1945 - Red Army opens attack on German Reichstag building in Berlin
1945 - As Russian troops approached his Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler committed
suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun. His burned body was found in a bunker in
the ruins of Berlin. [H]
1945 - Russian Army frees Ravensbruck concentration camp
1945 - US troops attack the Elbe
1948 - 21 nations of the Western hemisphere formed the Organization of American
States; charter signed at Bogota , Colombia
1955 - ACLU says it will contest obscenity of HOWL
1955 - West German unions protest for 40-hour work week & more wages
1961 - 1st shuttle flights between Wash DC, Boston & NYC begin (Eastern)
1961 - Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba receives Lenin-Peace Prize
1967 - Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight boxing championship
title when he refused to be drafted into the military.
1970 - President Nixon announced he was sending U.S. troops into Cambodia to
destroy the sanctuaries from which Communist forces from North Vietnam were
sending men and material into South Vietnam, an action that sparked widespread
protest
1973 - Nixon announces the resignations of top aides H.R. Haldeman and John
Ehrlichman, along with Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and White House
counsel John Dean.
1974 - President Nixon hands over partial transcripts of Watergate tape recordings
1975 - South Vietnam unconditionally surrendered to North Vietnam. The
communists occupied Saigon and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City. Last US helicopter leaves US embassy
grounds.
1980 - Beatrix, Wilhelmina Armgard, crowned queen of Netherlands
1980 - Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands, abdicates
1980 - Terrorists seize Iranian Embassy in London taking 20 hostages.
1986 - IBM unveils its first "laptop"
1987 - $240 million Sunshine Skybridge opened in Florida's Tampa Bay
1988 - World Exposition, Expo 88 opens in Brisbane Australia performances
1990 - U.S. educator Frank Reed was freed after a 3 1/2 year ordeal as hostage
of Moslem extremists in Lebanon, becoming the second abducted American freed in
Beirut in just over a week.
1991 - Political talks between Roman Catholic nationalists and Protestant
unionists in Northern Ireland opened.
They were the first such discussions in 15 years.
1991 - An estimated 125,000 people died as a cyclone struck the South Asian
country of Bangladesh.
1991 - Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui ended 43 years of emergency rule,
authorized elections and renounced the use of force to reunify China.
1992 - As rioting in Los Angeles entered its second day, President Bush
condemned the violence, and said the Justice Department would intensify its
investigation of police conduct in the beating of Rodney King.
1992 - A car driven by an elderly man crashed into crowd of schoolchildren on
tour at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, killing one child.
1995 - President Clinton announced the suspension of all U.S. trade with Iran to
protest the latter's funding of
terrorism.
1995 - After 120 years the last 15 A & S dept stores close
1996 - President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister
Shimon Peres signed an accord in Washington extending U.S. help to Israel in
countering terrorism.
1997 - The Senate approved the nomination of Alexis Herman as secretary of
labor. She became the only black woman in the Clinton cabinet.
1997 - Seven armed men were arrested en-route to Fort Davis, Texas, where
a group of separatists were involved in a standoff with authorities.
1997 - 42 million watch when ABC TV aired the "coming out" episode of
the situation comedy "Ellen" in which the title character, played by
Ellen DeGeneres, acknowledges her homosexuality.
1997 - President Clinton reopened the newly renovated Thomas Jefferson Building
of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
1998 - A grand jury indicted Webster Hubbell and his wife on tax evasion
charges, Hubbell, a close friend and associate of President Clinton, accused
Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr of having him indicted so he would
lie about the president.
1998 - Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland get approval to join NATO.
1999 - The National Rifle Association held its convention in Denver, despite the
Columbine High School shootings in suburban Littleton, Colo., 10 days earlier.
The group did shorten the gathering from 3 days to 1.
2001 - California businessman Dennis Tito arrived at the international space
station aboard a Russian spacecraft. 2001 - Intern Chandra Levy was last seen at
a health club near her apartment in Washington, D.C., before vanishing.
Birthdays
Today
1309 - Kazimierz III de Great, King of Poland (1333-70)
1602 - William Lilly, England, astrologer/author/almanac compiler
1651 - Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, French priest/theorist/saint
1777 - Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematician of all time.
1898 - Cornelius Vanderbilt (reporter, columnist, author, lecturer; great, great grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, railroad tycoon)
1912 - Eve Arden (Eunice Quedens) (Emmy Award-winning actress: Our Miss Brooks [1953], Anatomy of a Murder, Grease, Stage Door, Tea for Two)
1914 - Vermont Royster (writer)
1916 - Robert Shaw (conductor: Robert Shaw Chorale; music director of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus)
1923 - Percy Heath (jazz musician: bass: founder of Modern Jazz Quartet; group: The Heath Brothers)
1924 - Sheldon Harnick, Chicago, lyricist (Fiorello, Fiddler on the roof)
1930 - Cloris Leachman (Academy Award-winning actress: The Last Picture Show [1971]; Emmy Award-winner: A Brand New Life [1972-73], The Mary Tyler Moore Show [1973-74], Cher [1974-75], Screen Actor's Guild 50th Anniversary Celebration [1983-84]; Phyllis, Backstairs at the Whitehouse, The Facts of Life)
1933 - Willie Nelson (singer: On the Road Again, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Always On My Mind, Good Hearted Woman (with Waylon Jennings), To All the Girls I've Loved Before (with Julio Iglesias); Grammy Living Legend Award [1989]; songwriter: Crazy, Hello Walls; actor: The Electric Horseman, Honeysuckle Rose, Barbarosa; led Farm Aid benefit since its inception)
1938 - Gary Collins (actor: Born Free, The Iron Horse, Roots, The Sixth Sense, The Wackiest Ship in the Army)
1938 - Larry [Van Cott] Niven, US, sci-fi author (5 Hugo, Neutron Star)
1941 - Johnny Farina (musician: rhythm guitar: group: Santo & Johnny: Sleepwalk, Tear Drop)
1943 - Bobby Vee (Velline) (singer: Devil or Angel, Rubber Ball, Take Good Care of My Baby, Run to Him, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Come Back when You Grow Up)
1944 - Jill Clayburgh (actress: An Unmarried Woman, Luna, Portnoy's Complaint, Semi-Tough, The Silver Streak, Terminal Man, Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland, Honor Thy Father and Mother)
1944 - Richard Schoff (singer: group: The Sandpipers: Guantanamera, Come Saturday Morning)
1946 - Don Schollander (Olympic Hall of Famer: 1st swimmer to win 4 gold medals in one Olympics [1964], also won two gold in 1968; International Swimming Hall of Famer: set 8 world records in the 400-meter freestyle and 9 in the 200-meter in his career; Sullivan Award (U.S. outstanding athlete [1964])
1948 - Perry King (actor: A Cry in the Night, Kaleidoscope, The Lord's of Flatbush, Mandingo, Search and Destroy, Switch)
1956 - Richard Farina, folk singer (Reflections in a Crystal Wind)
1988 - Molloko, SD Zoo, 1st Calif condor chick conceived in captivity
Famous
deaths
0313 - Gaius G V Maximus, [Daia], Emperor of Rome, dies
0535 - Amalaswintha, queen of Ostrogoten, murdered
1671 - Peter Zrinyi, Hungarian banished to Croatia, beheaded at 49
1708 - Simon de Vries, book seller/writer (Unequal), dies
1792 - John Montague 4th Earl of Sandwich, English Naval minister, dies at 73
1829 - George Washington Adams, son of John Q Adams, dies on City Is NYC
1900 - John Luther (Casey) Jones, dies in Cannonball Express train wreck
1926 - Bessie Coleman, the world's first internationally licensed female aviator, died in a plane crash during a practice session in Florida.
1943 - Beatrice Potter Webb, British writer (My Apprenticeship), dies at 85
1943 - Etty Hillesum, Dutch diarist, dies in Auschwitz
1945 - Adolf Hitler (56) and the new Mrs. Hitler, Eva Braun, (33), committed suicide in their underground bunker in Berlin.
[H]
1956 - Alben W Barkley, (VP-D-1949-53), dies at 78
1983 - Muddy Waters, US blues singer/guitarist (Mad Love), dies at 68
1984 - Arthur T "Bomber" Harris, bombed nazi-Germany, dies at 68
1988 - James McCracken, US tenor, dies at 61
1989 - Sergio Leone, Italian director (Good, Bad & Ugly), dies at 60
1991 - George Sperti Sperti, inventor (Preparation H), dies at 91
