0305 - Emperor Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Jovius of Rome abdicates
1006 - Supernova observed by Chinese & Egyptians in constellation Lupus
1394 - Ekiho exorcised the Zen temple & it's surroundings from an old badger
1628 - May Fest in Quincy Mass degenerates into orgy with Indian women
1704 - Boston Newsletter publishes 1st newspaper ad
1707 - England, Wales & Scotland form UK of Great Britain
1759 - British fleet occupies Guadeloupe, West-Indies, on France
1776 - Adam Weishaupt founds secret society of Illuminati
1777 - RB Sheridan's "School for Scandal," premieres in London
1781 - Emperor Josef II decrees protection of population
1786 - Mozart's opera "Marriage of Figaro" premieres in Vienna
1840 - 1st adhesive postage stamps (English "Penny Blacks") issued.
1841 - 1st emigrant wagon train leaves Independence, Missouri for California
1844 - Samuel Morse sends 1st telegraphic message
1844 - Whig convention nominates Henry Clay as presidential candidate
1850 - John Geary becomes 1st mayor of City of San Francisco.
1851 - Great Exhibition opens in Crystal Palace London
1855 - Nationally known feminist Lucy Stone married Henry Blackwell. The word obey was omitted from their wedding vows.
1857 - William Walker, conqueror of Nicaragua, surrenders to US Navy
1860 - 1st school for the deaf founded.
1862 - Union captain David Farragut conquers New Orleans
1863 - Battle of Chancellorsville begins near Fredericksburg, Virginia VA (29,000 injured or died)
1863 - Battle of Port Gibson, Mississippi
1863 - Confederate "National Flag" replaces "Stars & Bars"
1863 - Confederate congress passes resolution to kill black soldiers
1864 - -8] Battle at Alexandria, Louisiana (Red River Campaign)
1864 - Atlanta campaign, GA
1864 - Wilderness campaign
1867 - Reconstruction of South begins, black voter registration
1869 - Folies-Bergere opens in Paris.
1875 - 238 members of "Whiskey Ring" accused of anti-US activities
1883 - "Buffalo Bill" Cody puts on his 1st Wild West Show
1884 - Construction begins on the world's first skyscraper,the 10-story Home Insurance Company
building in Chicago.
1886 - A national coalition of labor groups started a strike in favor of the eight-hour work day.
1889 - Bayer introduces aspirin in powder form (Germany)
1892 - US Quarantine Station opens on Angel Island, SF Bay
1893 - President Grover Cleveland opened the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
1898 - Commodore George Dewey gave the command, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley," as an American naval force destroyed a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.
[H]
1914 - China's 1st president Yuan Shikai wins dictatorial qualification
1915 - British luxury liner Lusitania leaves NY for Liverpool (despite warnings by German government in NYC newspapers that it regarded the refurbished liner a battle target)
1915 - German submarine sinks US ship Gulflight
1919 - Mount Kelud (Indonesia) erupts, boiling crater lake which broke through crater wall killing 5,000 people in 104 small villages
1920 - Belgian-Luxembourg toll tunnel opens
1925 - Cyprus becomes a British Crown Colony
1926 - Satchel Paige makes pitching debut in Negro Southern League
1928 - Lei Day begun (a Hawaiian celebration)
1928 - Pitcairn Airlines (later Eastern) begins service
1929 - Police kill 19 Mayday demonstrators in Berlin
1931 - Singer Kate Smith begins her long-running radio program on CBS
1931 - New York's 102-story Empire State Building was dedicated.
1935 - Boulder Dam completed
1936 - Emperor Haile Selassie leaves Ethiopia as Italians invades
1936 - FBI's J Edgar Hoover arrests Alvin Karpis
1939 - Batman comics hit street
1940 - The 1940 Olympics are cancelled
1941 - "Citizen Kane," directed & starring Orson Welles, premieres in NY
1941 - General Mills introduces Cheerios
1941 - German assault on Tobruk
1943 - Food rationing begins in US
1943 - German plane sinks boat loaded with Palestinian Jews bound for Malta
1944 - Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel, 1st jet bomber, makes 1st flight
1945 - Admiral Karl Doenitz forms German government ("Weekend Fuhrer")
1945 - Arthur Seys-Inquart, Nazi overlord of Netherlands, flees to Flensburg
1945 - Soviet army reach Rostock
1947 - Radar for coml & private planes 1st demonstrated
1948 - Glenn Taylor, Idaho Senator, arrested in Birmingham Alabama for trying to enter a meeting through a door marked "for Negroes"
1948 - North Korean proclaims itself People's Democratic Republic of Korea
1950 - New marriage laws enforced in People's Republic China
1951 - 600,000 march for peace & freedom in Germany
1951 - Mickey Mantle's 1st HR
1952 - Marines take part in an atomic explosion training in Nevada
1952 - Mr Potato Head introduced
1952 - TWA introduces tourist class
1959 - West Germany introduces 5 day work week
1960 - The Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 high altitude reconnaissance
plane over central Russia near Sverdlovsk and captured its pilot, Francis Gary
Powers. [H]
1960 - India's Bombay state split into Gujarat & Maharashtra states
1961 - Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba
1961 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
1963 - James W. Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, became the first American to reach the summit of Mt. Everest
1964 - 1st BASIC program runs on a computer (Dartmouth)
1965 - USSR launches Luna 5; later lands on Moon
1966 - Last British concert by Beatles (Empire Pool in Wembley)
1967 - Anastasio Somoza Debayle becomes dictator of Nicaragua
1967 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Bernard Malamud (Fixer)
1967 - Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas. (They divorced in 1973.)
1971 - Amtrak, the national passenger rail service that combined the operations of 18 passenger railroads, went into service.
1979 - Elton John becomes 1st pop star to perform in Israel
1979 - Marshall Islands (in Pacific) become self-governing
1980 - Amer Book Award: William Styron (Sophie's Choice)/T Wolfe (Right Stuff)
1981 - Harrison Williams (Sen-D-NJ) convicted on FBI Abscam charges
1981 - Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr., D-N.J., was convicted in New York of charges related to the FBI's Abscam probe.
1983 - "My One & Only" opens at St James Theater NYC for 767 performances
1985 - US president Reagan ends embargo against Nicaragua
1986 - Will Steger's expedition reaches North Pole
1987 - During a visit to West Germany, Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
1989 - 135 acre Disney's MGM studio officially opens to public
1989 - US Supreme Court rules employees have legal burden to prove non- discriminatory reasons for not hiring or promoting
1991 - "Will Rogers Follies" opens at Palace Theater NYC for 983 performances
1991 - The government of Angola and U.S.-backed guerrillas initialed agreements ending their civil war.
1991 - Rickey Henderson of the Oakland A's set a major league record by stealing
his 939th base during a game against the New York Yankees.
1991 - Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers threw his seventh no-hitter, shutting out the Toronto Blue Jays 3-0.
1992 - On the third day of the Los Angeles riots, a visibly shaken Rodney King appeared in public to appeal for calm, asking, "Can we all get along?" President Bush delivered a nationally broadcast address in which he vowed to "use whatever force is necessary" to restore order.
1993 - Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa and others in his entourage were killed in a suicide bomb blast.
1996 - PLO leader Yasser Arafat received a statesman's welcome at the White House, where he met with President Clinton for 45 minutes, then lashed out at Israel for keeping its borders closed to Palestinian workers.
1997 - 18 years of Conservative Party rule in Great Britain ended with a Labor Party victory in elections, which allowed party leader Tony Blair to succeed John Majors as prime minister.
1997 - John and Patsy Ramsey, the parents of slain child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, publicly declared their innocence in the case, and asked for the public's help in finding the killer of their 6-year-old daughter.
1998 - Eldridge Cleaver, the fiery Black Panther leader who later renounced his past and became a Republican, died in Pomona, Calif., at age 62.
1999 - Charismatic, a 31-1 long shot, won the 125th Kentucky Derby in Louisville. It was the third highest payoff in Derby history.
2000 - About 3.5 million Time Warner cable subscribers temporarily lost access to seven Disney-owned ABC stations in a quarrel over transmission rights. Public outrage forced Time Warner to restore the network's signal a day later.
2000 - Joerg Haider, leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, stepped down after 14 years as party leader.
2001 - President Bush committed the United States to building a shield against ballistic missile attack.
2001 - FBI Director Louis Freeh announced his retirement.
2001 - Thomas Blanton Jr. became the second ex-Ku Klux Klansman to be convicted in the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala., that claimed the lives of four black girls. He would be sentenced to four life sentences
Birthdays
Today
1493 - Phillippus Paracelsus, Switzerland, physician/alchemist
1567 - Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, Dutch royal painter
1633 - Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, French fortress architect
1672 - Joseph Addison, England, essayist (Spectator)
1764 - Benjamin Henry Latrobe, engineer/architect (built Capitol)
1764 - Gottfried Rieger, composer
1769 - Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, who made Napoleon very unhappy, (defeated Napoleon at
Waterloo) British PM (C) (1828-30)
1807 - John Bankhead "Prince John" Magruder, Major General (Confederate Army)
1825 - George Inness, US landscape painter (Delaware Water Gap) (Peace and Plenty, Delaware Valley, Spring
Blossoms
1830 - Mary Harris Jones, [Mother Jones], hell-raiser
1852 - Calamity Jane, frontier adventurer/Indian fighter [H]
1858 - Anthony Johnson Showalter, composer
1862 - Marcel Prevost, French publisher/writer (Les demis-vierges)
1872 - Hugo Alfvjen, Stockholm Sweden, composer (Midsommarvaka)
1881 - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, France, philosopher/paleontologist
1892 - Howard Barlow, Plain City Ohio, conductor (Voice of Firestone)
1909 - Kate Smith (singer: God Bless America, When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain; performer: The Kate Smith Show
[see above, 1938])
1913 - Walter Susskind, Praha (Prague) Czechoslovakia, conductor
1915 - Archie Williams (Olympic Gold Medalist: 400 meters in 46.5 seconds [1936], disputing Hitler's theory of Aryan superiority)
1916 - Glen (Gwyliyn) Ford (actor: The Teahouse of the August Moon, Blackboard Jungle, Midway, Don't Go Near the Water, Cimarron, Final Verdict)
1918 - Jack Paar (TV host: The Tonight Show)
1919 - Dan O'Herlihy, Ireland, actor (Fail Safe, Last Starfighter, Robocop)
1922 - Julian Goodman (former president of NBC & NBC News)
1923 - Joseph Heller, Bkln NY, novelist (Catch-22, God Knows' 1963 Arts & Letters Award)
1924 - Terry Southern, writer (Candy, The Magic Christian, Dr Strangelove)
1925 - Malcolm Scott Carpenter, Boulder Colo, astronaut (Mercury 7-Aurora 7)
1927 - Harry Belafonte, calypso singer (Banana Boat Song)
1929 - Sonny James (James Loden) (The Southern Gentleman; singer: Young Love, First Date, First Kiss, First Love; appeared in films: Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar, Nashville Rebel, Las Vegas Hillbillies, Hillbilly In a Haunted House)
1930 - Ollie Matson (football: shares NFL individual career record for kickoff returns for touchdowns [6])
1939 - Judy Collins (singer: Both Sides Now, Amazing Grace, Send In the Clowns)
1945 - Rita Coolidge (singer: Higher and Higher, We're All Alone, You, All Time High)
1947 - Jerry Heard (golfer)
1960 - Steve Cauthen (horse jockey: Triple Crown Winner [1978])
Famous
deaths
1171 - Dermot MacMurrough, last Irish King of Leinster, dies
1471 - Thomas a Kempis, spiritual writer, dies at 91
1572 - Pius V, [Antonio Ghislieri], grand inquisitor/Pope (1566-72), dies
1700 - John Dryden, English poet/playwright (Rival Ladies), dies
1873 - David Livingstone, British physician/explorer (Africa), dies at 60
1896 - Nasr-ed-Din, shah of Persia (184.-96), murdered at 65
1902 - John Glover, English chemist (production sulfuric acid), dies at 85
1904 - Antonin Dvorak, Czech composer (Slavonic Dances, New World Symphony), dies at 62
1945 - Paul Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propoganda, commits suicide with wife and 8 children)
1948 - Christos Ladas, Greek minister of Justice, murdered
1965 - Spike Jones, composer (Spike Jones Show), dies at 53
1969 - George Parker, cricketer (2 Tests for S Afr 1924), dies
1978 - Aram Katchaturian, Russian composer (The Earth), dies at 74
1984 - Gordon Jenkins, orch leader (NBC Comedy Hour), dies at 73
1997 - Bebe, AKA Flipper, dolphin, dies at 40
2000 - Actor Steve Reeves died in Escondido, Calif., at age 74.
