HAPPY NEW YEAR!
1919: Author, J.D. Salinger born
1942: Joseph Stalin named "Time" magazine's "Man of the Year"
1962: The Beatles fail their audition at Decca Records
1888: Marvin Stone patents drinking straw
1905: IWW formed
1933: U.S. Marines Corps withdraw from Nicaragua
1974: (U.S.) Nixon imposes 55 MPH speed limit
1924: Mummy of Tutankhamen discovered
1961: Nuclear reactor explodes in Idaho
1964: 450,000 public school kids strike in NYC, NY, USA
1968: New Jersey: Airport Police confiscate 30,000 copies of Lennon/Ono
album
1983: Times Beach, Missouri, declared disaster area (dioxin contamination)
1887: First bicycle trip around the world completed
1932: (India) Gandhi arrested
1936: First day Billboard Magazine ever published their music chart
1953: Gary Sanders born
1781: Benedict Arnold burns Richmond, Virginia
1896: Austrian newspaper reports discovery of X-rays
1933: Work begins on the Golden Gate Bridge
1972: (US) Nixon orders development of space shuttle
1838: Sam Morse demonstrates telegraph
1610: Galileo discovers Jupiter's moons
1714: (England) Typewriter patented
1927: Beginning of the Harlem Globetrotters
1979: Cambodian leader Pol Pot overthrown
1944: First US jet fighter plane flown (prototype Lockheed XP-80)
1992: US President George Bush throws up on Japanese prime minister
1905: (Russia) Bloody Sunday revolution
1969: Concorde jetliner makes first test flight at Bristol, England
1972: Luxury liner Queen Elizabeth gutted by fire in Hong Kong
1901: Oil discovered in Texas, beginning of Southwest oil boom
1920: League of Nations comes into being
49 BC: Caesar crosses the Rubicon
1935: Amelia Earhart is first woman (2nd person) to fly solo from Honolulu to Oakland, CA
1773: (U.S.) First public museum est. (Charleston, S.C)
1896: First x-ray taken
1928: First woman to die in electric chair
1932: First woman elected to U.S. Senate
1966: Batman (Adam West) premieres
1968: Doors' "Strange Days" album goes gold
1971: First toilet flush on TV ("All in the Family" CBS)
1995: Led Zeppelin inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
1998: Tripp gives Lewinsky tapes to Starr
1874: (New York) Tompkins Square Riot
1942: Henry Ford
patents plastic automobile body
1957: Frisbee invented (with a different name)
1964: B-52 with 2 nuclear weapons crashes in Maryland
1952: The Today Show premieres on NBC
1967: First Be-In at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco
1990: The Simpsons airs as a regular TV series on Fox
1943: Pentagon building completed
1547: Ivan IV crowned as first Russian Czar
1939: First edition of Superman comic book published
1979: Shah
flees Iran
1871: Cable streetcar patented
1929: First appearance of Popeye the Sailor Man
1778: Captain Cook visits Hawaii
1788: First European settlers (prisoners) land at Botany Bay,
Australia
1932: Catalonia, Spain goes anarchist
1951: Volcanic eruption of Mt. Lamington in New Guinea
1951: Polygraph (lie
detector) used for first time in Netherlands
1967: Timothy Leary speaks at UCLA and Eartha Kitt meets with LBJ
1989: Rolling Stones inducted into Rock&Roll Hall of Fame
1809: Edgar Allan Poe born
1825: First US patent for
tin can for storing food (Beginning of canning industry)
1915: Neon Tube sign patented
1793: French King Louis XVI executed by guillotine in Paris
1976: Regular commercial service begins on the Concorde SST
aircraft
1968: Terry Weatherford born
1968: Rowan
& Martin's Laugh-In (US, NBC) debutes
1973: Ruling in Roe
vs. Wade making abortion legal
1719: Imperial Principality of Liechtenstein formed
41: Roman emperor Caligula assassinated
1848: (US)Gold rush to California begins (gold nugget found at Sutter's
sawmill)
1972: Japanese soldier Shoichi
Yokoi discovered in Guam (hid in jungle 28 years, thought WWII still
going on)
1787: Shays Rebellion
1915: First
transcontinental telephone service
1961: First presidential (Kennedy) news conference broadcast live over
radio and TV
1788: First European settlers land in Australia
1905: World's largestdiamond (the Cullinan at 3106 carats/1.37 lb.)
discovered in South Africa
1925: Paul Newman born
1926: Television demonstrated publicly for the first time (London)
1950: India becomes a republic
1962: The Twist (dance) banned in Buffalo, NY
1998: Clinton denies affair with Lewinsky
1756: Mozart born
1880: Edison patents electric incandescent lamp
1888: National Geographic
Society founded
1945: Soviet Army frees surviving Auschwitz prisoners
1951: First US nuclear weapons test conducted near Las Vegas
1973: Vietnam Peace Treaty signed
1977: Carter pardons thousands of Vietnam draft resisters
1977: Vatican bars women from priesthood
1984: Michael Jackson's hair catches fire
1915: U.S. Coast Guard created
1986: U.S. shuttle Challenger explodes
1613: Galileo spots Neptune
1845: Poe's "The Raven"
published
1876: US government orders all Native Americans to move to reservations
or be declared hostile
1928: Scotch Tape is first sold
1929: Soviet Union expells Leon Trotsky
1940: US: First social security check issued
1945: U.S. Army Pvt. Eddie Slovik executed by firing squad for
desertion
1950: President Truman announces order for development of hydrogen
bomb
1958: Explorer-1, first successful U.S. satellite, launched from Cape
Canaveral
1968: Tet Offensive (Vietnam War)
1990: First McDonald's opens in Moscow
1793: Alexander Selkirk, the model for "Robinson Crusoe," rescued
1884: First Oxford
English Dictionary published
1920: First armored car introduced
1923: Yokohama and most of Tokyo, Japan destroyed by fire (earthquake)
1949: RCA issues first 45 rpm record
1960: Refused service at a whites-only Woolworth's (Greensboro, NC) lunch
counter, four black college students stage
first "sit-in"
1964: Gov. Welsh (IN) says Kingsmen song "Louie Louie" makes ears tingle,
wants it banned
1967: 1,000th gang murder in Chicago (since 1919)
1974: First victim of serial killer Ted Bundy abducted
1996: (US) Telecommunications Act
Groundhog Day
1848: US war with Mexico ends
1876: National Baseball League forms
1959: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens & the Big Bopper make last onstage
appearances
1690: First paper money printed in America issued
1959: The Day the Music Died:
Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens & the Big Bopper plane crash into an Iowa cornfield
1861: Confederate States of America formed
1861: Cochise arrested; Apache
Wars begin
1974: Patricia Hearst kidnapped by Symbionese Liberation Army
1861: Peep show machine patented
1917: Mexico's Constitution adopted
1958: Bomber and jet collide, dropping hydrogen bomb (never found) into
ocean off Georgia coast
1994: Byron De La Beckwith sentenced to life for murder of Medgar Evers
in 1963 in Jackson, MS
MID-WINTER'S DAY
1778: US & France sign Treaty of Alliance
1918: (England) Women over 30 allowed to vote
1935: Game of "Monopoly" hits stores
1945: Bob Marley born in
Jamaica
1971: Alan
Shepard hits three golf balls on the moon
1978: Record snowfall, 27.1 inches over 32 hours, begins in Boston
1867: Laura Ingalls born
1904: Entire business section of Baltimore destroyed by fire
1964: The Beatles come
to the US
1965: US Air force begins regular saturation bombing & strafing of North
Vietnam
1971: Swiss women get the vote
1984: Bruce
McCandless takes first untethered "space walk"
1986: Baby Doc Duvalier flees Haiti
1987: Darla Kay & Terry marry
1587: Mary, Queen of Scots, executed
1887: US Congress passes Dawes Act (concerning the Sioux Reservation)
1910: Boy Scouts of America incorporated
1924: First gas chamber execution
1931: James Dean born
1942: House Un-American Activities Committee recommends removing
Japanese from West Coast states for the duration of WWII
1860: Jefferson Davis elected President of the Confederate States
1870: U.S. Weather Bureau established
1942: (US) Daylight-saving time begins
1943: WWII battle of Guadalcanal ends
1950: US Sen. Joe McCarthy goes after the Communists
1958: Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" top-ranked daytime television
program
1964: First live Amer.
TV appearance of the Beatles (Ed Sullivan)
1971: Apollo 14 spacecraft returns to Earth
1971: 6.4 earthquake hits San Fernando Valley
1997: The Simpsons become the longest-running prime-time animated series
1763: The French and Indian War comes to an end
1846: Mormons begin exodus to the west
1863: P. T. Barnum stages wedding for Tom Thumb &
Lavinia Warren with 2,000 guests
1863: Fire extinguisher patented
1933: Singing Telegrams introduced (NYC)
1942: Glenn Miller receives first ever gold record for Chattanooga Choo
Choo
1949: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opens on Broadway
1962: Soviet Union releases captured US pilot Gary Powers
in exchange for Soviet spy
1996: IBM's Deep Blue beats world chess champion, Garry Kasparov
1809: Robert Fulton patents steamboat
1847: Thomas Edison born
1858: Vision of Virgin Mary by Bernadette leads to foundation of the
shrine of Lourdes (France)
1916: Emma
Goldman arrested for distribution of contraception information
1922: Surgeons,
Banting and Best, announce discovery and isolation
of insulin and win Nobel Prize
1963: Sylvia Plath's 3rd suicide attempt
1967: Monkees announce they'll play their own instruments on future
recordings
1972: David Bowie performs as Ziggy Stardust for the first time
1981: Workers contaminated by 100,000 gallons of radioactive coolant
after leak at Sequoyah I plant in Tennessee
1989: Episcopal Church gets first woman bishop
1990: Nelson
Mandela released from prison
1997: Space shuttle Discovery launched to repair Hubble Telescope
1554: Lady Jane Grey, queen of England for 9 days, beheaded
1809:
Charles Darwin born
1809: Abraham Lincoln born
1877: Alexander Graham Bell first publicly demonstrates his telephone
1909: NAACP founded
1947: 60 anti-draft demonstrators burn their draft cards in NYC
1635: Oldest public institution in America, the Boston Latin School,
founded
1945: Allied firebombing of German city of Dresden causes firestorm that
destroys city and kills 135,000 people
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY
270: Valentine executed by Claudius II
1876: Alexander Graham Bell applies for patent for telephone
1886: First trainload of oranges leaves Los Angeles for eastern markets
1898: Battleship USS Maine explodes in Havana Harbor, Cuba
1990: Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry indicted on 8 counts of perjury
and drug possession
1923: (Egypt) King Tutankhamen's burial chamber unsealed
1937: Nylon
patented by Dupont
1953: First artificial diamonds created
1959: Fidel Castro becomes premier of Cuba
1968: Beatles go to India to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
1968: (US) First 911 emergency telephone system inaugurated in Alabama
1994: Earthquake kills 217 on Sumatra island
Egypt: FEAST OF SHESMU, God of the Wine Press
1817: First street (Baltimore) to be lighted with gas
1867: First ship passes through the Suez Canal
1869: Russian chemist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev completes first
version of periodic table of the chemical elements
1909: Apache leader Geronimo dies
1930: First cow to be flown and milked in an airplane
1932: "Baby Face" Nelson escapes from prison
1969: Golda Meir sworn in as Israel's first female prime minister
1972: Nixon goes to China
1859: (U.S.) First use of `Temporary Insanity' plea
1861: Jefferson Davis sworn in as president of Confederate States of
America
1885: Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published
1930: Astronomer
Clyde Tombaugh discovers the planet Pluto
1953: First 3-D movie, Bwana Devil, opens in New York
1979: First (known) snow to fall on the Sahara desert
1878: Thomas Edison patented the phonograph
1913: First prize in a Cracker Jack box
1942: Roosevelt
mandates internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps
1725: First documented case of scalping: British soldiers led by
Capt. Lovewell kill and scalp 10 Native Americans in Wakefield, NH
1872: Toothpick patented
1943: New volcano Paracutin erupts in farmer's corn patch, Mexico
1956: US rejects Soviet proposal to ban nuclear weapons
1960: Jimi Hendrix's first concert, at a Seattle high school
1962: John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth
1971: National Emergency Center erroneously orders US radio & TV
stations off the air for 30 minutes
1878: New Haven, Conn., Telephone Company publishes first phone directory
with 50 subscribers
1965: Malcolm X shot and killed in New York City
1630: Amer. Indians introduce popcorn to Pilgrims
1732: George Washington born
1819: Florida ceded to United States by Spain
1879: First Woolworth store opens in NY
1917: Russian Revolution begins
1935: Airplanes no longer permitted to fly over White House
1972: Nixon goes to China
1987: Andy Warhol dies in NY at age 58
1455: Gutenberg prints first book, the Bible
1775: Patrick Henry says, "Give me liberty, or give me death."
1836: Santa Anna begins siege of the Alamo
1847: Santa Anna defeated at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico
1886: Aluminum refined for practical use
1896: Tootsie Roll invented
1945: American flag raised on Iwo Jima
1954: First mass inoculation of children against polio
1997: Scottish scientists announce they have cloned a sheep
1998: 42 people killed by tornadoes in central Florida
1582: Gregorian calendar reforms the Julian calendar system
1821: Mexico declares independence from Spain
1848: French monarchy overthrown
1961: Leakeys find "Missing Link" skull
1868: House impeaches President Andrew Johnson
1988: U.S. Supreme Court rules 8-0 against Falwell, in favor of Larry
Flynt
1979: The Police's "Roxanne" is released
1998: Elton John knighted
1836: Samuel Colt patents the 6-shooter
1859: First use of insanity plea to prove innocence
1913: 16th Amendment to U.S. Constitution authorizing federal income
tax
1963: First Beatles record released in the US, "Please Please Me"
1964: Cassius Clay becomes world heavyweight boxing champ
1967: American warships begin shelling Vietnam
1791: Bank of England issues first pound note
1815: Napoleon escapes from Elba (to be defeated at Waterloo)
1848: Marx publishes The
Communist Manifesto
1870: New York's first subway line opens
1919: Grand Canyon National Park established
1935: RADAR first demonstrated
1955: 45 rpm records outsell 78s for the first time
1977: The Eagles' "Hotel California" is released
1991: George Bush admits supporting Khmer Rouge ( The Killing Fields) in
Cambodia
1993: Explosion at Manhattan World Trade Center (6 people die)
1827: New Orleans celebration of Mardi Gras begins
1933: Nazis set fire to the German parliament building in Berlin
1990: Exxon Corp. indicted over Exxon Valdez oil spill
1993: Waco, TX - Branch Davidian/BATF gunfight begins
45BC: First Leap Year
1692: 3 woman arrested in Salem, Mass. on charges of witchcraft (beginning
of the Salem Witch
Trials)
1932: Lindbergh baby
disappears
1961: Peace
Corps established
1889: Passage of the Indian Appropriations Bill takes land from American
Indians
1904: Dr. Seuss born
1923: Time magazine debuts
1949: James Gallagher completes first non-stop around the world flight
1958: Sir Vivian Fuchs completes first crossing of Antarctica by land
1847: US Congress approves use of postage stamps
1847: Alexander Graham Bell born
1855: Congress appropriates $30,000 to introduce camels into US
Southwest
1863: First US draft law passes (clause provided draft exemption for
$300)
1871: US Congress makes all Native Americans wards of state (nullifies all
treaties)
1931: Star-Spangled Banner adopted as US national anthem
1957: Catholic archdiocese of Chicago bans rock & roll
1991: Rodney King beaten by Los Angeles police officers
1789: Constitution of the United States goes into effect
1917: (US) Jeanette Rankin is first woman elected to Congress
1958: U.S. atomic submarine Nautilus reaches North Pole (beneath Arctic
ice cap)
1975: Charlie
Chaplin knighted at Buckingham Palace
1993: $69 million lawsuit filed against U.S. government by 8,600
Amerasian children claiming U.S. military fathers
abandoned them in Philippines
1658: Antoine Cadillac, founder of Detroit, born
1770: Boston
Massacre
1868: Court of Impeachment organized against President Andrew Johnson
1933: In German elections, the Nazi Party wins 44% of the vote
1946: Winston Churchill gives his famed "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton,
MO
1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg sentenced to death
1953: Joseph Stalin dies
1955: Elvis Presley makes his television debut
1963: Patsy Cline dies in plane
crash in Tennessee
1982: John Belushi dies of drug overdose at 33
1836: Mexican forces capture Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, killing last of
187 defenders
1857: U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott
decision
1930: First individually packaged flash-frozen foods appears on store shelves
161: Marcus Aurelius becomes Emperor of Rome
1869: Suez Canal opens, connects Mediterranean and Red Sea
1932: 3,000 men riot at Detroit plant of Ford Motor Company, 4 killed
1933: Board game Monopoly
invented by Charles B. Darrow of Pennsylvania
1997: U.S. veto kills unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning
new Jewish settlements in Arab East Jerusalem
1917: Russian Bolshevik revolution starts in St. Petersburg
1993: Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas under siege
1999: Joe DiMaggio dies at age 84
1796: Napoleon marries Josephine
1841: Amistad Africans are freed
1862: First battle between two ironclad ships, the Monitor(Union) and
Merrimack(Confederate)
1916: Pancho Villa leads 1500 guerrillas into New Mexico
1969: The Smothers Brothers' Comedy Hour canceled by CBS-TV for letting
Joan Baez talk about her husband who was being jailed for
draft-objection
1982: Washington Post reveals $19 million in CIA covert aid given to
Contras
1535: First Europeans arrive at Galapagos Islands
1862: US government issues first paper money
1876: Alexander Graham Bell's first successful test of the telephone
1880: Salvation Army arrives in the U.S. from England
1894: New York passes nation's first dog-licensing law
1969: James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr.
1811: (England) Luddites
attack wool-weaving machines
1818: Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein
1847: Johnny Appleseed dies
1888: Blizzard of '88, 4 day snowstorm, kills more than 200 people in
NYC
1918: First cases of Spanish
Influenza reported in US in Kansas (40 mill. deaths worldwide)(ASM)
1912: First meeting of the Girl
Scouts of America in Savanna, GA
1917: (Russia) Czarist regime overthrown
1922: Jack Kerouac born
1930: Gandhi's Salt March begins
1945: Anne Frank dies in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at 15
1781: Sir William Herschel discovers Uranus
1868: U.S. Senate begins impeachment proceedings against President Andrew
Johnson
1887: Chester Greenwood of Maine receives patent for earmuffs
1992: Earthquake in Turkey kills more than 400 people
1996: Man shoots dead 16 children, teacher, and self in Dunblane, Scotland
1794: Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin
1864: John Luther Jones (the real Casey Jones) born
1879: Albert Einstein born
1907: Stock market crash, New York City
1950: FBI's "10 Most Wanted Fugitives" list makes its debut
1964: Jack Ruby found guilty of murder of Lee Harvey Oswald
Ides of March
44 BC: Julius
Caesar assassinated
1493: Columbus returns to Spain after his first voyage to "New World"
1892: Escalator patented by Jesse W. Reno of New York
1917: US Supreme court approves Eight-hour Act
1917: Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates (revolution)
1937: First blood bank in western hemisphere opened at Chicago's Cook
County Hospital
1966: Looting & burning of Watts, California
1990: Mikhail Gorbachev elected first executive president of Soviet
Union
1991: Serbia secedes from Yugoslavia
1968: Vietnam: My
Lai Massacre: more than 300 unarmed villagers murdered
1971: Lava lamp patented
1998: Titanic surpasses Star Wars as the highest-grossing U.S.
film of all time
461: St. Patrick dies
1845: Rubber bands are invented
1910: Camp Fire Girls founded
1871: Paris Commune
begins
1900: Casey Jones
dies with one hand on the whistle, one on the brake
1922: Mahatma Gandhi sentenced to 6 years in prison for civil disobedience
against British
1925: Worst tornado in U.S. history kills 695 people
1931: Schick Inc. markets first electric razor
1933: Tennessee Valley
Authority created
1959: Hawaii becomes
fiftieth US state
1965: Cosmonaut Alexei
Leonov is first human to "walk in space"
1974: Arab oil-producing nations end embargo against US
Swallows return to Capistrano
624: Muhammed proclaims the Day of Deliverance
1813: Dr. Livingstone, I presume, is born
1831: First recorded U.S. bank robbery (NYC)
1848: Wyatt Earp born
1918: U.S. Congress approves time zones and Daylight
Saving Time
1931: Nevada legalizes gambling
1953: Academy Awards televised for
first time
1957: Elvis buys Graceland
FIRST DAY OF SPRING (Vernal Equinox)
1617: Pocahontas dies in England at about age 22
1685: Johann Sebastian Bach born
1963: Alcatraz
federal penitentiary in the San Francisco Bay shut down
1492: Columbus sets sail for the Indies
1841: Englishman Orlando Jones patents cornstarch
1882: Congress outlaws polygamy
1895: First demonstration of motion pictures using celluloid film
(Paris)
1917: U.S. first to recognize new Soviet Russian government
1974: Equal Rights Amendment passed by Congress
2228: Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise born (1931: William
Shatner born)
1775: Patrick Henry declares "Give me liberty, or give me death"
1840: J. W. Draper takes first successful photo of moon
1919: Benito Mussolini founds the Fascist Party in Italy
1925: Tennessee bans the teaching of evolution in schools
1942: U.S.
government begins massive imprisonment of Japanese-American citizens
(WWII)
1957: U.S. Army sells off last of its homing pigeons
1306: Robert the Bruce crowned Robert I of Scotland
1807: English Parliament abolishes slave trade
1896: First modern Olympic games inaugurated in Athens, Greece
1911: Fire and
locked doors kills 146 immigrants at Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in NYC
(owners found guilty of manslaughter)
1954: Radio Corporation of America begins commercial production of color
TVs
1996: FBI surrounds Freemen's Montana compound -- beginning standoff
1953: Dr.
Jonas Salk announces discovery of vaccine against polio
1971: Bengali nationalists declare People's Republic of Bangladesh
1513: Ponce de Leon sights coast of Florida
1836: First temple of Latter-Day Saints
Church (Mormon Church) dedicated in Ohio
1964: First known pirate radio station begins broadcasting
1797: Nathaniel Briggs awarded patent for first washing machine
1881: P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey create "Greatest Show on Earth"
1910: First seaplane takes off from water, flies 1,650 feet
1939: Franco occupies Madrid (Spanish Civil War)
1979: Most serious nuclear accident in US occurs at Three Mile Island
(PA)
1886: Pharmacist John Pemberton creates Coca-Cola
1971: Lt. William Calley was found guilty for "My Lai" massacre
1971: Charles Manson sentenced to death
1973: Last U.S. troops leave Vietnam
1746: Spanish painter, Francisco Goya born
1842: First patient anesthetized using ether
1853: Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh born
1853: Patent granted to Hyman Lipman for pencil WITH ERASER
1867: US government purchases Alaska from Russia
1869: Anarchist, Emma Goldman born
1953: Einstein announces revised unified field theory
1964: Television game show, Jeopardy airs for
first time
1981: US President Ronald Reagan shot by John Hinckley, Jr. in Washington, D.C.
1889: France's Eiffel Tower officially opens in Paris
April Fools Day!
1826: Samuel Morey patents internal combustion
engine
1924: Hitler sentenced to prison for high treason for Beer Hall Putsch,
writes "Mein Kampf"
1970: Nixon bans cigarette advertising on radio and television
1979: Iran declares itself an Islamic Republic
1982: U.S. transfers control of Panama Canal Zone to Panama
1996: Outbreak of mad cow disease in Britain
1998: Sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones against President
Clinton dismissed
742: Charlemagne, founder of the Holy Roman Empire, born
1513: Ponce De Leon of Spain lands in Florida searching for Fountain of
Youth
1792: Congress authorizes first U.S. mint
1805: Hans Christian Andersen born
1902: First motion picture theater opens in Los Angeles
1992: Mob boss John Gotti, convicted in five murders, racketeering and
other charges
1829: Coffee
mill patented
1860: Pony
Express begins
1910: Alaska's Mt.
McKinley climbed for first time
1818: Congress adopts stars&stripes as U.S. flag
1887: Susanna Medora Salter elected as first woman mayor in United
States
1896: Yukon gold rush begins
1968: Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated
1806: Isaac Quintard of Connecticut patents apple cider mill
1989: Virginia coal miners strike
1614: Pocahontas
marries John Rolfe in Jamestown
1955: Winston Churchill
retires
1830: Joseph Smith founds Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons)
1909: First people in
recorded history to reach the North Pole
1917: United States enters World War I
1938: Teflon accidentally invented at Du Pont (Roy Plunkett and Jack
Rebok)
1947: First Tony Awards presented
1712: Slave revolt in New York City
1933: (U.S.) Prohibition (18th amendment) repealed
563 bc: Buddha born
1974: Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth's home run record (at 715 home runs)
1865: (US Civil War) General Robert E. Lee surrenders to General Ulysses
S. Grant
1866: Congress passes Civil Rights Bill of 1866
1940: Germany invades Norway and Denmark
1947: Tornado hits 12 towns in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, killing 169
people
1959: NASA introduces America's first astronauts to press and
public
1970: Paul McCartney announces official split of the Beatles
1998: Tornadoes kill 39 in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi
1999: President of Niger assassinated
1790: First circumnavigation of the globe by a US vessel completed
1849: First safety pin patented by William Hunt of New York
1864: Austrian Archduke Maximilian becomes emperor of Mexico
1919: Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata ambushed and killed by
government troops in Morelos, Mexico
1942: Bataan Death March - over 5,200 American POWs die
1945: Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald liberated
1971: U.S. table tennis team arrives in China, 1st Americans since 50s
1992: Charles Keating Jr. sentenced to 10 years in prison for securities
fraud
1998: Viagra goes on the market
1945: Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany liberated by Allied
troops
1947: Jackie Robinson becomes first black in major league baseball
1968: President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act into law
1970: Apollo-13 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, aborted
1979: (Uganda) Idi
Amin overthrown
1986: Comet Halley reappeared
1861: U.S. Civil War begins
1954: Bill
Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock," starts the
rock-and-roll era
1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin
becomes first human in space
1988: Harvard University patents gene-altered mouse
1999: Federal judge in Little Rock, AR finds President Clinton in contempt
of court for lying in sworn deposition (no sex relations with Monica -
fined $1,202)
1796: First elephant brought to America from India
1970: Explosion aboard Apollo 13 spacecraft
1956: First practical videocassette recorder (VCR) demonstrated (price:
$75,000)
1986: Ronald
Reagan bombs Libya
1865: President Abraham Lincoln dies
1912: Titanic
sinks on maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg
1920: Armed robbery in Massachusetts becomes known as the
"Sacco-Vanzetti Case"
1889: Charlie Chaplin born
1924: Henry Mancini born
1972: Apollo-16 blasts off to moon
1998: Tornadoes kill 10 people in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee
1421: Sea breaks dikes at Dort, Holland, drowning 100,000 people
1521: Martin Luther excommunicated from Roman Catholic Church
1964: Jerrie Mock of Ohio becomes first woman to complete solo flight
around world
1775: Paul Revere begins ride through Massachusetts, "The British are
coming!"
1906: Earthquake in San
Francisco kills over 500 people
1923: Yankees Stadium opens in New York
1934: First Laundromat opens in Fort Worth, Texas
1942: U.S. planes first bomb Japan in WWII
1949: Republic of Ireland formally declares itself independent from
Britain
1996: Gunmen kill 18 and wound 15 tourists at Egyptian pyramids
1775: First battle of American Revolutionary War in Lexington &
Concord, The Shot Heard Round the World
1933: United States goes off gold standard
1989: Demonstrations begin in Beijing's Tiananmen Square
1993: FBI and BATF attack Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, killing over 80
people including 17 children
1994: Rodney King awarded $3.8 million in damages for being beaten by LA
police
1995: Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City bombed, 168
people killed
4/20
735 B.C.: Romulus founds Rome
1912: Bram Stoker dies
1914: The Ludlow
Massacre - Colorado state militia attacks coal miners and
families killing 20 including 11 children
1999: Massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado
1812: Luddites destroy machinery at Rhodes' woollen cloth mill
1918: Red Baron (Manfred
von Richthofen) shot down
1921: US: Police fire on striking miners in Butte, Montana
Earth Day
1889: At noon, a gunshot signaled the start of the
Oklahoma Land Rush
1914: Babe Ruth makes his professional pitching debut (for Baltimore
Orioles)
1970: First Earth Day (U.S.)
1564: William Shakespeare born
1616: William Shakespeare dies
1635: First (and oldest) public school in America, Boston Latin School,
opens
1898: First movie theater opens at Koster and Bials Music Hall in NYC
1985: Coca-Cola introduces New Coke
1800: Library of Congress established
1915: Armenian Genocide
1961: Integrated circuit (chip) patented
1986: Worst nuclear accident - reactor at Chernobyl nuclear plant (Soviet Union) explodes
1521: Ferdinand Magellan killed in the Philippines
1791: Samuel F.B. Morse born
1880: Electrical hearing aid patented
1937: First Social Security payment made in U.S.
1991: 70 tornadoes hit Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri,
Nebraska and Iowa, killing 23 people
1789: Mutiny on the Bounty
1945: Benito
Mussolini executed
1994: Circadian clock gene identified and cloned
1803: U.S. more than doubles land area with Louisiana Purchase ($15
million)
1939: Franklin D. Roosevelt is first U.S. president to appear on TV (NY
World's Fair)
1945: Burned body of Hitler found in bunker in Berlin
1967: Muhammad Ali stripped of world heavyweight boxing championship,
refusing to be drafted
1975: South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnam
1993: Monica Seles, world's No. 1 women's tennis player, stabbed in back
by fan of Steffi Graf
1995: Suspension of all U.S. trade with Iran
May Day!
International Workers' Day
1884: Construction begins on world's first skyscraper, Home Insurance
Company building in Chicago
1886: Strike for eight-hour work day begins
1960: Gary Powers shot down over Soviet Union in his U-2 spy plane
1931: Empire State Building opens in New York City
1971: Amtrak begins service
1992: 4,000 military troops sent into Los Angeles riot
2001: Ku Klux Klan member convicted in 1963 bombing of a church that
killed four black girls
1885: Congo Free State established
1919: U.S. airplane passenger service begins when pilot Robert Hewitt
flies two women from NY to Atlantic City
1971: National Public Radio (NPR)
begins broadcasting
1997: Standoff by armed separatists near Fort Davis, Texas, ends with
surrender of 6 people
1999: 76 tornadoes hit Plains states, killing about 50 people and injuring
more than 700
2000: Trial of 2 Libyan men accused in 1988 bombing of Pan Am jet over
Lockerbie, Scotland, begins in Netherlands
1821: Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, dies on the island of St.
Helena
1862: Cinco de Mayo: Mexican troops defeat the French army
1891: Carnegie Hall opens in New York City
1961: Alan
Shepard becomes first US astronaut to reach outer space
1527: Sack
of Rome begins
1626: Dutch colonist Peter
Minuit buys Manhattan Island from the Wappinger Indians for about
$24
1851: John Gorrie granted first US patent for mechanical refrigeration
1937: Dirigible, Hindenburg
explodes over New Jersey after Atlantic flight, killing over 30
1941: Josef Stalin becomes official leader of Soviet government
1993: 2 postal workers shoot co-workers in separate incidents in post
offices in Michigan and California (3 dead, 3 wounded)
1994: Paula Jones accuses President Clinton with making sexual
advances
1994: Channel Tunnel, railway under the English Channel between Britain
and France, inaugurated
2001: Pope John Paul II becomes first pope to enter a mosque (Umayyad
Mosque in Damascus, Syria)
1915: Sinking of the Lusitania
1945: Germany surrenders in WWII
1794: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier decapitated in Paris for being a tax
collector
1973: 71-day siege at Wounded Knee in South Dakota ends when members of
the American Indian Movement
(AIM) surrender
1502: Christopher Columbus sets sail from Spain on fourth and final voyage
to America
1785: Joseph Bramah receives British patent for beer pump handles
1926: Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett are first to fly over North Pole
1945: Unconditional surrender of Germany to Allied forces begins
1960: FDA approves first oral contraceptive pill in U.S
1967: Muhammad Ali stripped of heavyweight boxing title for refusing
induction into army
1969: New York Times reveals U.S. secretly bombing Cambodia
1974: Impeachment hearings against Dick Nixon begin
1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis captured by Union troops
1869: First
transcontinental railroad completed at Promontory Point, Utah
(golden spike)
1940: Nazi Germany invades Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands
1967: Betty Mae Jumper becomes first woman to assume position of "Chief" of a
federally-recognized tribe, the Seminoles
1994: John Wayne Gacy, killer of 33 men and boys, executed in Illinois
1995: Terry Nichols charged in bombing of federal building in Oklahoma
City
1995: World Health Organization says disease in Zaire caused by Ebola
virus
868: First dated printed book produced in China
1927: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences founded
1949: Siam becomes Thailand
1997: IBM's Deep
Blue defeats Garry Kasparov, world chess champion
1310: 54 Knights Templars burned at stake as heretics in France
1820: Florence Nightingale born
1932: The body of Charles
Lindbergh's son found
1972: Police clash with 3,000 anti-war protesters in San Francisco
1607: Jamestown, first permanent English colony in North America, founded
near James River in Virginia
1846: U.S. declares war against Mexico
1981: Pope John Paul II shot twice at close range
1985: Philadelphia police bomb MOVE organization headquarters, kills 11
and burns 53 homes
1607: Building of first permanent English settlement in U.S. begins in
Jamestown, Virginia
1643: King Louis XIV becomes ruler of France
1796: Edward Jenner inoculates against smallpox
1904: Olympic Games held in United States (St. Louis) for first time
1973: Skylab launched
1998: Frank Sinatra dies of heart attack at 82
1998: Final Seinfeld episode
1998: Federal judge dismisses charges against FBI agent who killed Randy
Weaver's family in 1992 in Ruby Ridge, Idaho
1856: L. Frank Baum (author of "The Wizard of Oz") born
1918: First regular Air Mail service established between Washington D.C.
and New York City
1930: Ellen Church becomes first airline stewardess (United Airlines
flight from San Francisco to Cheyenne, Wyo)
1940: Nylon stockings sold in stores in US for the first time
1972: Presidential candidate,
George Wallace, shot
1988: Soviet forces begin withdrawal from Afghanistan
1866: US Treasury begins minting nickels
1920: Joan of Arc canonized by Pope Benedict XV
1929: First Academy Awards ceremony
held (Los Angeles)
1792: New York Stock
Exchange created
1875: First running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in
Louisville, KY
1954: Brown v. the Board of Education decision lets Linda Brown go to
school (racial segregation in public schools decided to be
unconstitutional)
1973: Senate Watergate Committee opens hearings into break-in at
Democratic National headquarters
1804: Napoleon
Bonaparte declares himself Emperor of France
1933: US Congress creates Tennessee Valley Authority
1980: Volcano Mount
St. Helens in southwestern Washington erupts
1857: Electric fire alarm patented
1536: Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, beheaded
1934: T. E. Lawrence "Lawrence of Arabia" dies from motorcycle crash injuries
1874: Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis granted patent for process of
riveting pants (Levis)
1953: Jacqueline Cochran becomes first woman to break the sound barrier
1881: Clara Barton creates the American Red
Cross
1927: Charles Lindbergh completes first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in
history flying the "Spirit of St. Louis" 3,610 miles between Long Island, New
York and Paris, France in 33 hours, 30 minutes
1998: School shooting in Eugene, Oregon
1804: Lewis and Clark begin their expedition
1932: Amelia Earhart becomes first woman to fly solo across Atlantic
Ocean
1992: Johnny Carson hosts "The Tonight Show" for the last time
1844: First US telegraph line (between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD) -- Samuel Morse sends first message
1803: Ralph Waldo Emerson born
1807: Slave trade in U.S. abolished
1844: Stuart Perry patents internal combustion
engine
1895: Oscar Wilde convicted of "acts of gross indecency" in England
1932: Thousands of WWI veterans march on Washington, D.C., demanding promised
bonuses
1935: Babe Ruth (Boston Braves) hits home runs 713 & 714
1977: Motion picture "Star Wars" first shown to the public
1896: Nicholas Romanov II crowned czar of Russia (last czar before communism)
1924: Immigration and Naturalization Act passed (U.S.) placing quotas on immigrants
1927: Ford Motor Company discontinues Model T
1937: San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge completed and opened to public
861: Paris burned by Vikings
1830: President Andrew Jackson forcibly removes all Indians west of
Mississippi River (Removal Act)
1929: First all-color talking picture, "On with the Show," opened in New
York
1934: First known quintuplets to survive infancy born
1953: Edmund Hillary & guide Tenzing Norkay plant flags on Mt. Everest
1453: Constantinople falls to Ottoman Empire
1953: Summit of Mount Everest reached for first time
1985: 39 killed, 400 injured at European Soccer Cup Final (Liverpool v.
Juventus) in Brussels
1431: Joan of Arc burned at stake as heretic
1848: Ice cream freezer patented
1868: Memorial Day becomes officially sanctioned holiday
1911: First Indianapolis 500
1790: George Washington signs first Copyright Act
1859: Big Ben begins making time
1495: First written record of Scotch whiskey appears
1638: First recorded earthquake in US history (Plymouth Plantation,
Massachusetts)
1801: Mormon leader, Brigham Young born
1880: First public phone booth installed in New Haven, Connecticut
1926: Actress, Norma Jean Baker born in Los Angeles
1938: First issue of the comic book "Superman" hits newsstands
1963: Prayers banned in U.S. public schools
1967: First nonstop transatlantic flight by a helicopter
1968: Helen Keller dies
1740: Marquis de Sade born
1886: President Grover Cleveland becomes first US president to marry while
in office
1924: Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all American Indians
1953: Princess Elizabeth crowned Queen Elizabeth II
1896: Guglielmo Marconi receives first patent for broadcasting by
electromagnetic waves
1966: US spacecraft Surveyor 1 makes first successful soft landing on
moon
1997: Timothy McVeigh convicted in 1995 Oklahoma City bombing
DOG DAYS begin
1832: Opium exempted from federal tariff duty
1835: Children strike at Paterson, New Jersey for 11-hour day & six day
week
1850: First public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration
1883: Franz Kafka born
1937: The Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII) marries Wallis
Simpson
1965: Edward White becomes first US astronaut to walk in space
1971: Jim Morrison dies
1896: Henry Ford drives his first car (Detroit)
1917: Pulitzer Prizes first
awarded in New York City
1985: U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Alabama minute-of-silence law as
fostering classroom prayer
1989: Chinese
troops open fire against unarmed protesters in Tiananmen Square in
Beijing
1990: Mayor Marion Barry's drug trial opens in U.S. District Court in
Washington, D.C.
1990: Jack Kevorkian helps first person to commit suicide in Michigan
1998: Terry Nichols sentenced to life in prison without parole for 1995
bombing of federal building in OKC
1810: P.T. Barnum born
1865: William Booth founds Salvation Army in London
1878: Pancho Villa born
1883: Economist, John Maynard Keynes born
1924: First FAX
1933: Roosevelt abolishes gold standard
1968: Senator Robert "Bobby" Kennedy shot and killed
1982: Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma declared insolvent
1872: Susan B. Anthony fined for voting
1933: First drive-in movie theater opens in Camden, New Jersey
1935: Dalai Lama born
1944:
D-Day (WWII invasion of Normandy)
1949: George
Orwell's 1984 published
1982: Israel invades Lebanon
1494: Spain and Portugal divide their two countries
1654: King
Louis XIV of France crowned
1893: Mahatma
Gandhi thrown off segregated train in South Africa
1965: U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Connecticut law banning
contraceptives
1975: First videocassette recorders go on sale to public
2000: Federal judge orders Microsoft break-up
632: Founder of
Islam,
Muhammad, dies in Medina
1783: Iceland's
Laki volcano begins erupting
1869: Ives McGaffney of Chicago obtains patent for first vacuum cleaner
68: Nero,
fifth emperor of Rome, commits suicide
1672: Russian Czar Peter the Great born
1860: First dime novel, "Malaeska", published
1898: China leases Hong Kong to Great Britain
1934: Donald
Duck born
1943: Congress passes act authorizing employers to withhold income tax
from salary checks
1793: First public zoo opens in Paris, France
1909: SOS distress
signal used for first time
1184 B.C.: Greeks burn Troy
1793: First US patent for a stove issued to Robert Haeterick
1971: Indigenous people
evicted from Alcatraz island in the San Francisco Bay after 19 months of
occupation
1929: Anne Frank born
1963: Medger Evers killed by sniper in Jackson, Miss
1967: U.S. Supreme Court rules states cannot outlaw inter-racial
marriages
1982: 700,000 people gather in NY Central Park for world nuclear
disarmament
323 B.C.: Alexander the Great dies at age 33 in Babylon
1865: William Butler Yeats born
1920: U.S. Post Office Department rules children may not be sent by parcel
post
1963: Sniper assassinates civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson,
Mississippi
1966: In the Miranda v. Arizona case, Miranda Rights are established
1994: Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman found stabbed to death in LA
1996: Freeman militia 81-day standoff in Montana ends
1997: Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, sentenced to death
1834: Sandpaper patented
1928: Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara born
1940: Auschwitz concentration camp opens
1945: U.S. Supreme Court rules compulsory flag saluting by school children is
illegal
1951: Unveiling of UNIVAC I, first commercial computer
1954: (U.S.) President Eisenhower signs order adding words "under God" to the
Pledge of Allegience
1972: (U.S.) EPA bans DDT
1215: King John of England seals the Magna Carta
1844: Charles Goodyear receives patent for vulcanizing rubber
1896: Most devastating
tsunami in Japanese history hits
1976: Jeremy Garrison born
1999: Rosa Parks presented with Congressional Gold Medal
1963: Soviet cosmonaut
Valentina Tereshkova becomes first woman to go into space
1976: Student uprising begins in Soweto, South Africa
1885: The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York City
1972: The Watergate scandal begins
Anti-Capitalism Day
1815: Napoleon defeated in
Battle of
Waterloo
1873: Civil Rights leader Susan B.
Anthony found guilty of voting
1983: Physician and pilot Sally K. Ride becomes first U.S. woman to go
into space
1996: Theodore Kaczynski charged as UNAbomber
240 BC: Greek mathematician Eratosthenes finds
diameter and circumference of Earth
1623: Blaise Pascal born
1867: (Mexico) Emperor Maximilian executed
1953:
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed under charges of espionage at
Sing Sing Prison
1992: Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, shot and wounded
2000: U.S. Supreme Court rules prayers not allowed at high school
football games
1893: Lizzie Borden found innocent of ax-murdering her parents (New
Bedford, MA U.S.)
1948: Ed Sullivan Show first
broadcast
1972: The Tallahatchie Bridge collapses
1972: 18 minutes are erased from the Watergate tapes
1994: O.J. Simpson pleads not guilty to murder
1999: NATO finally stops bombing Yugoslavia
First Day of Summer!
1633: Galileo found guilty of heresy for saying the Earth orbits the
sun
1834: Mechanical
reaper patented by Cyrus Hall McCormick
1905: Jean-Paul Sartre born
1964: Three civil rights workers murdered by the KKK in Mississippi
1985: Dr. Josef Mengele's bones identified in Brazil
1990: 7.7 earthquake hits Iran, killing 50,000 people
1997: Cambodia announces capture of Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot
1611: Henry Hudson & son set adrift in Hudson Bay by mutineers
1846: Adolphe Sax invents the Saxophone
1847: The doughnut is invented
1898: US intervenes in the war of Independence of Cuba
1940: France falls to Germany in World War II
1941: Germany invades Soviet Union
1969: Cuyahoga River catches fire downstream from Cleveland Ohio & burns
for 20 minutes
1683: Chief Tamanend of Leni-Lenape
tribe and William Penn sign friendship treaty in (now) Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
1868: Christopher Latham Sholes receives patent for prototype of typewriter
1961: The Antarctica Treaty, making Antarctic continent demilitarized zone
(preserved for scientific research) goes into effect
1876: Custer's Last Stand (Battle of Little Bighorn)
1951: CBS airs first
color
TV program (Ed Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey)
1991: Slovenia and Croatia declare independence
1945: The Charter of the United Nations signed
1974: Bar code for scanning used for first time on pack of gum at
supermarket in Troy, Ohio
1975: FBI shoots Lakota Indians at Oglala, South Dakota
1990: President Bush admits he lied about "no new taxes"
1844: Joseph Smith, founder of Mormons, murdered
1847: First telegraph wire links established between New York City and
Boston
1859: (Louisville, KY) Mildred and Patty Hill write "Happy Birthday
to You"
1880: Helen Keller born
1927: Captain Kangaroo (Bob Keeshan) born
1950: President Truman orders U.S. naval and air force defence for South
Korea
1954: First atomic power station opens near Moscow
1995: Space shuttle Atlantis blasts off from Cape Canaveral
1820: Robert Gibbon Johnson eats tomatoes on
Salem, NJ courthouse steps to prove they are not poisonous
1894: Labor Day declared official US holiday
1911: Dog killed by 18-lb meteorite, Nakhla, Egypt
1919: Germany and Allied forces sign Treaty
of Versailles, officially ending World War I
1997: Mike Tyson bit the ears of heavyweight boxing champion Evander
Holyfield
1776: San Francisco founded
1853: Gadsden Purchase - U.S. buys more of Arizona and New Mexico from
Mexico for $10 million
1888: First appendectomy performed in England
1970: Last American troops withdrawn from Cambodia
1972: US Supreme Court bans capital punishment
1992: World's first transplant of baboon liver into human patient
1908: Huge,
unknown explosion over Siberia, Russia
1934: Night of the Long Knives - Hitler stages purge of Nazi party
1535: Sir
Thomas More convicted of treason (executed 5 days later)
1863: Battle of Gettysburg begins in Pennsylvania (Civil War)
1884: Dow and Jones publish first average of US stocks
(U.S.) Independence Day
1776: US Declaration of Independence approved
1845: Henry David Thoreau goes to live at Waldon Pond
1810: P.T. Barnum born
1865: William Booth founds Salvation Army in London
1994: Yasser Arafat becomes head of Palestinian National Authority
1699: Pirate Capt. William Kidd seized in Boston, deported to England &
later hanged
1854: Republican Party established
1885: Louis Pasteur cures rabies
1923: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) created
1958: Alaska becomes 49th US state
1846: California is annexed by the U.S.
1863: First military draft by US (exemptions cost $100)
1876: Jesse James holds up Missouri-Pacific train
1898: Hawaii is annexed by the U.S.
1940: Ringo Starr born
1941: U.S. occupies Iceland
1777: Vermont becomes first US state to abolish slavery
1872: John F. Blondel receives patent for doughnut cutter
1877: First Wimbledon Tennis
Tournament
1893: First successful open-heart surgery performed
1955: Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" hits No.1 in
Billboard magazine
1947: Arlo Guthrie born
1985: "Rainbow
Warrior" bombed and sank in New Zealand
1991: (Moscow) Boris Yeltsin inaugurated as first elected president of
Russian republic
1999: Democratic Republic of the Congo ends civil war
1979: Skylab falls to earth
1985: France blows up Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace's flagship
100B.C.: Julius Caesar born
1817: Henry David Thoreau born
1873: Rain of Frogs in Kansas City, Missouri
1933: U.S. industrial code established fixing minimum wage at 40 cents
an hour
1961: Rain of peaches in Shreveport, Louisiana
1945: First test of atom bomb in New Mexico
1969: Apollo 11 (first moon-landing mission) launched from the Kennedy
Space Center
2781 BC: Egyptian calendar starts
1814: Samuel Colt born
1834: Degas born
1860: Lizzie Borden born
1946: Marilyn Monroe's first screen test
1969: John Fairfax becomes first person to row across Atlantic alone
1923: Pancho Villa murdered
1969: The
Eagle landed - Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin hit the moon
1873: World's first train robbery, by Jesse James
1972: George Carlin charged with
disorderly conduct & profanity after performing his famous "7 Words"
routine at Summerfest in Milwaukee
1376: The Pied
Piper rids Hamelin of its rats
1975: Robert E.
Lee has his US citizenship restored by Congress
1829: William Burt of Michigan patents "typographer," first typewriter
1892: Haile Selassie born
1967: Detroit 12th Street riot, 4 days, 7,000 National Guard and Army
troops, 43 dead, 342 injured
1973: White House subpoenaed for Nixon's tapes
1982: Vic Morrow and two child actors killed by helicopter on set of "The
Twilight Zone" movie
1999: Col. Eileen Collins becomes first woman to command a space shuttle
flight
1898: Amelia Earhart born
1679: New Hampshire becomes royal colony of British crown
1974: U.S. Supreme Court rules President Nixon should surrender White
House tapes
1850: Rain of Frogs at Rajkote, India
1956: Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria sinks off Long Island
1978: Louise Brown, world's first
test-tube baby, born in Oldham, England
1997: Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot sentenced to life imprisonment
1775: U.S. Post Office established
1933: Joe Dimaggio ends 61 game hitting streak
1943: Mick Jagger born
1947: National Security Act creates Department of Defense and the CIA
1991: PeeWee Herman arrested for exposing himself in a movie theater
2000: Federal judge orders Napster to stop allowing digital trading of
copyrighted music over its Web site
1568: Sir Walter Raleigh brings first tobacco to England from Virginia
1866: First telegraph cable between Europe and Americas laid
1919: Chicago race riots
1921: Insulin isolated
1940: Bugs Bunny makes his debut in Warner Brothers' A Wild
Hare
1953: Korean War armistice signed at Panmunjom (end of war)
1974: House Judiciary Committee recommends Nixon impeachment
1996: Bomb explodes in Atlanta during Olympic Games, 1 dead, 111 injured
1586: Potatoes first introduced to Europe
1655: Cyrano de Bergerac dies at 36
1794: French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre guillotined in
Paris
1868: 14th Amendment to U.S. Constitution ratified - rights for everyone
except women and Indians
1896: Miami becomes a city
1914: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, beginning World War I
1838: Rain of frogs in London
1938: Hitler presents Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle
to Henry Ford
1498: Columbus discovers Trinidad
1790: First U.S. patent issued
1921: Rain of frogs, Sterling, Connecticut
1964: Tonkin Gulf incidents begin
1975: Jimmy Hoffa reported missing
1758: First Indian reservation in North America established
1774: Joseph Priestly identified a gas called oxygen
1790: First US census completed (nearly 4 million people)
1793: France begins using the metric system
1889: Rain of Ants at Strasbourg, Germany
1838: Slavery was declared unlawful throughout the British Empire
1936: Olympic games open in Berlin presided over by Adolf Hitler
1901: Burial within San Francisco City limits prohibited
1944: Anne Frank penned her last entry in her diary
1966: Charles Joseph Whitman shoots and kills 15 people at U of Texas
(gunned down by police)
1981: MTV makes its debut (1st video: Video killed the Radio Star by the
Buggles)
1983: US resumes making chemical weapons
1968: Earthquake in Philippines kills 307 people
1792: Poet, anarchist Percy Shelley born
1869: Emperor Norton
I, ruler of the US, abolishes both the Democratic
& Republican parties
1892: Lizzie Borden's father & stepmother brutally hacked to death
with axe in Fall River, Massachusetts
1944: Nazi police in Amsterdam, Netherlands discover Anne Frank & family
in hiding
1620: Mayflower & Speedwell sail from England
1858: First transatlantic cable completed
1962: Marilyn Monroe found dead of an overdose of sleeping pills
1964: US begins bombing North Vietnam
1964: Congress passes Tonkin Gulf
Resolution
1998: U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed, 190 people killed
1876: Thomas A. Edison patents mimeograph machine
1879: Emiliano Zapata born
1937: Dustin Hoffman born
1957: American Bandstand with Dick Clark starts on TV
1963: Great Train Robbery in England
1974: Richard Nixon resigns
1990: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein annexes Kuwait
480 B.C.: Persians overrun Spartans at Thermopylae in Greece
1910: Alva J. Fisher patents electric washing machine
1945: U.S. B-29 bomber drops atomic bomb on Nagasaki
1969: Sharon Tate and four others killed by Manson's family
1948: Allen Funt's "Candid Camera" makes its television debut
1990: Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry convicted for cocaine
possession
1909: Arapahoe is first US ship to use radio distress
call "SOS"
1965: Watts Riot begins, South Central L.A., lasts 6 days, 34 people dead
1521: Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (today Mexico City) conquered by Spanish troops
1889: William Gray patents coin-operated telephone
1899: Alfred Hitchcock born
1907: First taxicab in the streets of New York City
1927: Fidel Castro born
1961: East German Democratic Republic begins building Berlin
wall
1971: Att. Gen. John Mitchell says no investigation of May 4, 1970 Kent
State National Guard murders
1935: (US) Congress passes Social Security Act
1945: Japan accepts terms for unconditional surrender, ending World War
II
1966: Unmanned U.S. Orbiter 1 spacecraft begins orbiting moon
1888: T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) born
1969: Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens
1987: Harmonic Convergence
1896: Gold discovered in Klondike Territory
1943: Allies
take Sicily
1978: First manned balloon crosses Atlantic Ocean
1662: Blaise Pascal dies
1692: Five people hanged in Salem, Massachusetts for witchcraft
1902: Ogden Nash born
1993: 16 Yanomami Indians massacred by gold miners in Amazon jungle,
Brazil
1741: Vitus Jonas Bering discovers Alaska
1904: Colorado miners seize town of Cripple Creek
1948: Robert Plant born
1986: Postal worker Patrick Henry Sherrill shoots and kills 14 and self,
wounds 6 in Edmond, OK PO
1841: John Hampson patents venetian blinds
1878: American Bar Association
founded
1888: William S. Burroughs awarded patent for adding machine
1911: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa stolen from Louvre
1920: Christopher Robin Milne born in London, England
1864: First
Geneva Convention
1989: Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton murdered
1305: Scottish patriot
William Wallace hanged, beheaded, and quartered in London
1500: Christopher Columbus arrested & sent back to Spain in chains
1926: Rudolph Valentino dies
1927: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian-born anarchist labor militants,
executed
1942: Battle of Stalingrad begins
79: Vesuvius erupts (Bay of Naples, Italy)
410: Rome overrun by Visigoths, fall of Roman Empire
1456: Gutenberg Bible printed
1814: British troops invade city of Washington and burn White House and
Capitol (War of 1812 - US vs. Great Britain)
1967: Abbie Hoffman & Jerry Rubin throw 300 one-dollar bills from
balcony onto floor of New York Stock Exchange
1718: New Orleans founded
1875: Matthew Webb becomes first person to swim across the English Channel
1786: Shay's Rebellion
1905: George Washington dies
1920: 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote is ratified
1946: George Orwell publishes Animal Farm
1970: Jimi Hendrix makes his last public appearance
1859: Edwin L. Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania, first person to
successfully drill oil from the earth
1883: Indonesian volcanic island, Krakatoa (between Java and Sumatra) explodes
with force of 100 megatons, biggest explosion in recorded history - 36,000 dead
1990: Guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan dies
1828: Leo Tolstoy born
1907: Jim Casey at 19 yr. old, starts American Messenger Company which
becomes UPS
1922: First radio commercial aired on station WEAF in NYC (10 min., $100,
for Queensboro Realty Co.)
1973: Earthquake in central Mexico kills 520
1996: Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorce
1966: The Beatles make their last public performance (Candlestick Park, San Francisco)
30 BC: Cleopatra commits suicide
1476: Locusts attack Poland, causing much famine
1974: In federal court, John Lennon testifies Nixon tried to have him deported
1666: Great London Fire starts
1875: Edgar Rice Burroughs born (Tarzan creator)
1956: Elvis Presley buys his mother a pink Cadillac
1189: Richard
the Lionheart crowned King of England
1783: Paris Peace Treaty signed, officially ending the American
Revolution
1962: e. e. cummings dies
1967: Woody Guthrie dies
1882: First US Labor Day
1923: First (military) use of smoke-screen for concealing troops
1901: US President William McKinley shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz
1941: All Jews over age 6 in German territories ordered to wear a star
1961: Bob Dylan debuts at the Gaslight Cafe
1963: 4 killed in racist church bombing in Birmingham, AL
1901: Boxer Rebellion (China) ends
1936: Buddy Holly born
1940: Nazi Germany launches London blitz
1996: Dr. Jack Kevorkian assists in 40th suicide
1921: Margaret Gorman becomes first Miss America
1930: Transparent cellophane tape on sale for first time
1935: Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long shot to death in Baton Rouge, LA
1966: Star Trek premiered on television
1968: Huey Newton (head of Black
Panther Party) convicted of voluntary manslaughter in killing of
Oakland policeman
1974: President Ford pardons Nixon
1974: Evel Knieval attempts to jump Snake River Canyon
1976: Mao Tse Tung dies
1956: Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.
1971: Beginning of the Attica Prison revolt
1846: Elias Howe receives patent for sewing machine
1890: Rain of fish in Cairo, Illinois
1915: William Sanger convicted for illegal distribution of birth
control literature
1955: Gunsmoke premieres on television
1963: 20 black students enter public schools in Alabama, after National
Guardsman standoff with Governor George Wallace
1936: President Roosevelt dedicates Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam) in
Nevada
1954: Miss America pageant makes its network TV debut on ABC
1959: Congress passes bill authorizing food stamps for low-income
Americans
1962: The Beatles record their first single, Love Me Do
1971: Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev dies at age 77
1992: 17-year-old gunman opens fire in Amarillo, Texas high school
1998: Congress releases Kenneth Starr's report (Clinton & Lewinsky)
2001: Hijacked planes crash into World Trade Center and Pentagon
1940: Lascaux cave paintings discovered
1958: Little Rock High School in Arkansas ordered by U.S. Supreme Court to
admit blacks
1958: Jack Kilby invents the Integrated
Circuit (chip)
1969: Heavy bombing of Vietnam resumes under orders from President
Nixon
1974: Military officers depose Emperor Haile Selassie from Ethiopian
throne
1992: Endeavour sent into orbit on NASA's 50th shuttle flight
1994: Pilot crashed small plane on White House lawn, killing himself
1788: Congress authorizes first U.S. national election
1814: Francis Scott Key writes lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
1922: Temperature at El Azizia, Libya, reached 136 degrees F., world's highest
recorded atmospheric temperature
1943: Chiang Kai-shek becomes president of China
1971: Attica Prison revolt ends after 4 days and 42 dead
1847: Mexico City occupied by US troops
1959: Lunik II becomes first human-made object to reach the moon
1963: First set of quintuplets in US history born (the Fischers)
1982: Princess Grace of Monaco dies
1830: William Huskisson, member of British Parliament, becomes first
person run over by a railroad train
1891: Agatha Christie born
1947: (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established
1963: Four children killed when Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Alabama is bombed
1862: Union forces attack Confederate troops near Antietam Creek in
Maryland
1939: Soviet troops invade Poland
1983: Vanessa Williams becomes first black Miss America
1937: J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" published
1947: Stephen King born
1957: "Little Rock Nine": Federal troops sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine black students at Central High School
Ancestor Appreciation Day
1950: Answering machine invented
1964: The Warren Commission report was issued (stating Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone in the assassination of JFK)
1850: Flogging abolished as form of punishment in US Navy
1895: Louis Pasteur, French bacteriologist, dies at 72
1920: Eight members of Chicago White Sox indicted in Black Sox Scandal
1924: US Army planes complete first around-the-world flight
1930: Lou Gehrig's errorless streak ends at 885 consecutive games
1953: Edwin P. Hubble, astronomer & designer of telescopes, dies at 63
1964: Harpo Marx dies at 75
1965: Lava flows kill at least 350 in Philippines
1978: John Paul I dies after 33 days as Pope
1991: American jazz great, Miles Davis, 65, dies from pneumonia
Mexico: Festival Of Tezcatzonctl
1066: William the Conqueror invades England
1399: King Richard II becomes first English monarch to abdicate throne
1969: 2,000 welfare protesters take over state capitol building in
Madison, Wisconsin
1982: 7 people die after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with
cyanide
1988: Cartoonist Charles
Addams dies
1988: 80,000 in West Berlin protest IMF policies, 400 arrested
1908: Henry Ford introduces Model-T automobile
1949: Mao Tse-tung establishes People's Republic of China
1974: Five Nixon folks go on trial for Watergate
1996: Clinton, Netanyahu and Arafat meet, still no peace
1836: Charles Darwin and HMS Beagle return to England after expedition
of Atlantic and Pacific (incl. Galapagos)
1869: Mahatma Gandhi born
1950: Comic strip, Peanuts
by Charles Schulz, first published
1985: Rock Hudson dies of AIDS
1535: First complete English translation of the Bible printed
1877: Chief Joseph surrenders with starving remnant of Nez Perce people
1957: Sputnik 1 launched by USSR, beginning Space Age
1957: (US) "Leave It To Beaver" first appears on TV
1961: Bob Dylan makes his concert hall debut at New York's Carnegie Hall
1970: Janis Joplin dies
1986: Two thugs attack CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather yelling, "What's
The Frequency Kenneth?"
1582: Pope Gregory annuls 14 days, bringing calendar back in line with
seasons
1813: Shawnee Chief Tecumseh killed in War of 1812
1864: Most of Calcutta destroyed by cyclone (approx. 60,000 die)
1947: First televised White House address - President Truman asks for no
meat-eating on Tuesdays and no chicken on Sunday
1962: The Beatles release their first hit, "Love Me Do"
1969: Dianne Linkletter (daughter of Art) leaps to death from window; Art
says she's on LSD
1989: TV evangelist Jim Bakker convicted on 24 counts of fraud and
conspiracy
1989: 14th Dalai Lama awarded Nobel Peace Prize
2000: Yugoslavians overthrow Belgrade government
1536: Anglican priest, William Tyndale burned at stake as a heretic in
Belgium after making first English translation of the Bible
1927: First feature talkie film,
"The Jazz Singer"
opens in New York City
1849: Edgar Allan Poe dies
1950: UN says that U.S. can advance north of 38th parallel into North
Korea
1871: Great Chicago
Fire begins
1929: First movies shown on an airplane in the air
1956: Donald Larsen (New York Yankees) pitches
first perfect game in World Series history (against Brooklyn
Dodgers), no hits, no runs, no walks
1000: Leif Erikson reaches Vinland (New England?)
1940: John Lennon born
1967: First edition of "Rolling Stone" magazine appears
1967: Argentinean revolutionary leader, Ernesto "Che"
Guevara, executed
Indigenous People's
Day
1886: Griswold Lorillard of Tuxedo Park, N.Y., makes first tuxedo
1973: Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns with $10,000 fine and 3 years
probation
Columbus Day
Canadian Thanksgiving Day
1760: Russian army captures Berlin
1899: Anglo-Boer War begins in South Africa
1975: NBC's Saturday Night Live makes its debut with guest host George
Carlin
1984: Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes first U.S. female astronaut to walk
in space
1990: U.S. begins reparations payments to survivors & families of
Japanese-Americans put into internment camps during WWII
1998: Pope John Paul II canonizes first Jewish-born saint of modern era:
Edith Stein, a Catholic nun killed at Auschwitz
1792: The cornerstone of the White House laid
1844: Friedrich Nietzsche born
1892: 1.8 million acres of Crow
Indian land in Montana stolen by U.S. government
1917: Mata Hari refuses blindfold and throws kiss to firing squad at her
execution
1969 -- Millions in U.S. demonstrate against Vietnam War in first Vietnam
Moratorium/Peace Day
World Food Day
1793: Queen Marie Antoinette of France beheaded
1854: Oscar Wilde born
1978: Karol Wojtyla elected pope
John Paul II
1999: 7.0 earthquake centered in Joshua Tree, California, USA
1933: Albert Einstein arrives in US, a refugee from Nazi Germany
1961: Algerian
massacre in Paris by police
1989: 7.1 earthquake hits San Francisco Bay Area
1922: British
Broadcasting Company (BBC) formed
1929: Women become persons in Canada
1961: Museum of Modern Art hangs Matisse's Le Bateau upside down (till
December)
1968: John Lennon & Yoko Ono busted for pot in Ringo's apartment
439:
Vandals conquer Carthage
1745: Jonathan Swift dies in Dublin at 77
1781: English and German troops surrender to George Washington in
Virginia
1944: Actor Marlon Brando makes his stage debut
1966: Ken Kesey, back from Mexico, arrested
1916: Emma Goldman arrested for distributing birth control information
1947: HUAC opens hearings into alleged Communist influence in
Hollywood
1969: Beat writer Jack Kerouac dies at 47 of abdominal bleeding caused by drinking
1797: First parachute jump (6500 ft) made by Andre-Jacques Garnerin
1938: Charles Carlson produces first dry, or xerographic, copy
1920: Timothy Leary born
Swallows leave Capistrano
1915: 25,000 women march in NY City for voting rights
1921: Massive demonstrations in Europe in support of Sacco & Vanzetti
1924: First national radio broadcast in US
1956: First video recording on magnetic tape televised
coast-to-coast
1959: Charles Van Doren admits to grand jury that TV quiz show "21"
supplied answers
1972: Earthquakes kill over 10,000 people in Nicaragua
1990: Rallies in 22 US cities against Gulf War
1648: Thirty Years' War ends
1788: Sara Josepha Hale, author of "Mary had a little lamb", born
1836: Match patented
1861: First telegram transmitted across US
1929: Wall Street Stock market Crash
1931: Al
Capone convicted in Chicago on charges of tax evasion and sentenced
to 11 years in prison
1945: United Nations founded
1989: TV evangelist Jim Bakker sentenced to 45 years and $500,000
1881: Pablo Picasso born
1939: "Trunk murderess"
Winnie Ruth Judd escapes from Arizona State Insane Hospital
1962: John Steinbeck awarded Nobel Prize in Literature
1971: U.N. General Assembly votes to admit mainland China and expel
Taiwan
1993: Vincent Price dies
1400: Geoffrey
Chaucer dies
1806: Max
Stirner born
1825: Erie Canal opens
1860: Grizzly Adams dies
1906: Workers in St. Petersburg set up first Russian soviet
1923: Teapot Dome scandal
1939: Convicted "trunk murderess"
Winnie Ruth Judd escapes from Arizona State Insane Hospital for the
first time
1972: Guided tours of Alcatraz begin
1553: Michael Servetus condemned to death for blasphemy
1881: Gunfight at the OK corral
1904: First rapid transit subway opens in New York City
1932: Sylvia Plath born
1938: Du Pont announces it will name its new synthetic yarn nylon
1947: "You Bet Your Life", starring Groucho Marx, premieres on ABC
Radio
1970: Doonesbury debuts
1978: Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin
National Chocolate Day
1726: Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels published
1886: Statue of Liberty dedicated on Bedloe's Island in New York
harbor (renamed Liberty Island)
1618: Sir Walter Raleigh executed
1929: Black
Tuesday - The Crash of 1929 -- Beginning of the Great
Depression
1958: Atomic bomb exploded above ground in US; winds blow fallout over
LA
1961: First 50-megaton bomb exploded, USSR
1969: First Internet connection made between UCLA and Stanford
1970: Anti-war protesters pelt Dick Nixon's motorcade with rocks
& eggs in San Jose, California
1885: Ezra Pound born
1918: Czechoslovakia created
1938: "War
of the Worlds" first broadcast
1945: US government announces end of shoe rationing
1990: Chunnel English/French connection established
Hallowe'en
1517: Martin Luther posts 95 Theses on Wittenberg Palace church
(Germany) marking start of Protestant Reformation
1926: Harry Houdini dies
1956: G.J. Dufek is first to land an airplane at the South Pole
1968: President Johnson orders halt to U.S. bombing of North
Vietnam
1984: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi assassinated
1512: Michelangelo's
paintings on ceiling of Sistine Chapel (Rome) revealed to public for
first time
1755: Lisbon destroyed by earthquake and tsunami - over 60,000 dead
1942: Larry Flynt born
1755: Marie Antoinette born
1917: British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour proposes Jewish homeland
in Palestine
1947: Howard Hughes' 200 ton plane,
Spruce Goose, makes its one and only
flight over Long Beach Harbor, CA
1839: Britain starts first Opium War with
China
1957: Laika, Soviet
dog, is first animal in space (Sputnik 2)
1922: Howard Carter's team discovers the entrance to the tomb of Egyptian
King
Tutankhamen
1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin assassinated
Guy
Fawkes Day
1605: Gunpowder plot to blow up English Parliament detected, leader Guy
Fawkes captured
1644: Samuel Pepys goes to see Macbeth, writes that it's a "pretty
good play"
1855:
Eugene Debs born
1920: Eugene Debs receives nearly one million votes as Socialist Party
presidential candidate while in jail
1930: First commercial television broadcast aired
1935: Parker Brothers introduces Monopoly
1942: Rommel defeated in North Africa
1860: Abraham Lincoln elected President
1917: Lenin masterminds coup, assumes leadership of Russia & Russian
Bolshevik revolution begins
1990: Mary Robinson elected first woman president of Ireland
1793: The Louvre Museum
opens in Paris
1895: German physicist, Wilhelm Roentgen, discovers X-rays by accident
1985: Rubin "Hurricane" Carter finally released from prison after 19 years
1872: Worst
fire in Boston history starts
1985: (Moscow) 22 yr.old Armenian chess player, Gary Kasparov,
becomes youngest person ever to win world chess champion title
1989: Berlin Wall
opened after 28 years
1871: Dr.
Livingstone, I presume? (found in Africa by Stanley)
1969: Sesame Street
premiers
Veterans Day
1918: World War I ends
1992: Church of
England votes to allow women to become priests
1859: Designer of leotard, Jules Leotard, makes first public appearance as
world's first flying trapeze artist
1946: First drive-up banking facility opens at Exchange National Bank in
Chicago, Illinois
1927: Holland Tunnel opens under Hudson River, linking NYC and New
Jersey
1933: First recorded "sit-down" strike in the US by Hormel workers in
Minn.
1956: U.S. Supreme Court rules segregation on interstate buses
unconstitutional
1985: Volcano erupts in Colombia, killing 25,000, third-deadliest volcano
disaster in history
1666: First blood transfusion takes place in London between dogs
1832: First horse-drawn streetcar (New York City)
1986: White House acknowledges that CIA gave weapons to Iran
1991: Postal worker in Royal Oak, Mich. kills 4 and self
1920: First assembly of League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland
1943: Himmler orders Gypsies and part-Gypsies placed in Nazi concentration
camps
1969: Largest
anti-war rally in US history, 250,000 people gather in Washington D.C. to
protest Vietnam War
1989: Tornadoes strike 6 Southern states, killing 17 people, injuring
463
1969: Lieutenant William Calley, Jr., faces court martial for My Lai Massacre in Vietnam
1558: Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, ascends to the throne of England
1869: Suez Canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean is inaugurated
1307:
William Tell forced to shoot apple off son's head
1928: Mickey Mouse's birthday
1863: President
Abraham Lincoln delivers Gettysburg Address in
Pennsylvania
1915: Labor organizer and folk singer Joe Hill
murdered by firing squad in Utah
1954: First automatic toll collection machine (New Jersey Garden State
Parkway)
1969: Pele kicks his 1,000th goal
1945: The Nuremberg Trials begin in Germany
1783: Pilatre de Rozier and Francois Laurent become first humans to fly
(hot-air balloon in Paris)
1929: Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dali
makes first solo exhibit
1980: 83 million viewers tune in to "Dallas" to learn who shot J. R.
1963: President John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas
1936: LIFE magazine
debuts
1963: Dr. Who premieres
1859: "The
Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection," by
Charles Darwin published in England
1874: Barbed wire patented by Joseph Glidden
1864: Lewis Carroll sends
handwritten manuscript of Alice in Wonderland to 12-year-old Alice
Liddell
1865: Alice in Wonderland published
1922: King Tutankhamen's tomb opened
1942: Jimi Hendrix born
1965: Ken Kesey's first acid test
1969: 700 U.S. Army medics in Pleiku fast to protest Vietnam War
1978: San Fran Mayor George Moscone & City Sup. Harvey Milk shot to
death by former supervisor Dan White (said Twinkies made him do it)
1911: Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata proclaims Plan of Ayala
1967: First pulsar detected
1968: Jimi Hendrix plays the
Philharmonic Hall (NYC)
1864: John
Chivington and his army of Third Colorado Volunteers murder 200 women and
children Indians
1890: First Army-Navy football game (24-0, Navy)
1898: C.S. Lewis born
1926: Lt. Commander Richard E. Byrd flies over North Pole
1929: Lt. Commander Richard E. Byrd flies over South Pole
1944: John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery
1947: UN partitions
Palestine
1963: Warren Commission established to investigate JFK assassination
1976: Jerry Lee Lewis shoots his bass player, Norman "Butch" Owens,
twice in the chest while trying to hit a soda bottle
30BC: Cleopatra commits suicide
1900: Oscar Wilde dies
1969: 600 Native Americans occupy Alcatraz
1973: Frozen mallard ducks fall on Stuttgart, Arkansas, USA
1991: 93 cars & 11 truck accident near San Francisco (17 die)
1999: Riots in Seattle over the WTO
1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on the bus
1804: Napoleon crowned emperor of France
1901: King C.
Gillette patents first safety razor with double-edged disposable blade
(Nickerson invented disposable blade)
1942: The nuclear age begins when first controlled nuclear chain reaction
is demonstrated at University of Chicago
1954: Joseph
McCarthy condemned by US Senate
1982: First artificial heart transplanted
1586: Sir Thomas Herriot and Sir Francis Drake bring potatos to England
from Columbia
1947: Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire opens in New
York
1955: First Elvis record released
1964: Over 800 students arrested at Berkeley,
occupying main building
1967:
First human heart transplant
1971: War breaks out in Bangladesh
1964: Berkley student boycott
1981: Reagan authorizes CIA to spy on citizens
1991: SLA chairman Charles Keating convicted on 17 counts of securities
fraud
1992: President Bush orders U.S. troops into Somalia
1993: Frank Zappa dies
1484: Pope makes Paganism punishable by death
1933: Prohibition ends!
1945: 5 U.S. Navy
bombers disappear into Bermuda Triangle
EPIPHANY
1412: Joan of Arc born
1811: First of series of earthquakes in and around New Madrid,
Missouri
1865: 13th Ammendment abolishes slavery
1877: Edison records first sounds
1933: Bars and liquor stores open again after Prohibition
1969: Hell's Angels kill at Rolling Stones concert
1973: Gerald Ford sworn-in as vice president under Nixon, replacing Spiro
Agnew
1997: Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia hit by one of largest earthquakes
ever recorded (8.5 to 9)
1934: US Pilot, Wiley Post, reaches record altitude of 50,000 ft.
1941: Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
1970: Machine-maker Rube Goldberg dies
1977: JFK files released by FBI
1975: East Timor invaded
1792: First official cremation in US (Henry Laurens)
1943: Jim Morrison born
1980: John Lennon
assassinated
1640: Hugh Bewitt banished from colony of Massachusetts when he declares
himself free of original sin
1842: Peter Kropotkin born
1898: Emmett Kelly born
1953: General Electric announces all Communist employees will be fired
1967: Jim Morrison
of the Doors is arrested onstage
1898: Treaty of Paris signed, ending the Spanish-American War
1901: Nobel Prize established
1921: Albert Einstein receives Nobel Prize for Physics
1941: Germany and Italy declare war on United States
1951: Joe DiMaggio retires from baseball
1844: First use of nitrous oxide (dentistry)
1936: Edward VIII abdicates English throne to marry Wallis Simpson
1991: USSR dissolves
1925: World's first motel ("motor hotel") opens in San Luis Obispo, California
Happy Birthday, Mom!
1903: Italo Marcioni patents the ice cream cone, New Jersey
1928: Clip-on tie designed
1937: The Rape
of Nanking
1950: James Dean lands first role in Pepsi commercial
1503: Nostradamus born in France
1911: Roald Amundsen, first man to reach South Pole
1972: Bombing of Hanoi
1981: Israel annexes Golan Heights
1791: U.S. Bill of Rights ratified
1890: Sioux Chief, Sitting Bull, murdered
1939: "Gone With The Wind" premiers
1770: Beethoven born
1773: Boston Tea Party
1901: Anthropologist Margaret
Mead born
Earthquakes Today
1811: New Madrid, Missouri, USA - 8.6
1920: Gansu, China - 8.5
1790: Aztec calendar discovered in Mexico
1791: First one-way street (in NYC)
1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright make 1st airplane flight in the Kitty Hawk
1944: Japanese-Americans released from detention camps in US
1st day of ancient Roman Saturnalia (Dec. 17-23)
1849: First photograph of moon through a
telescope
1865: 13th Amendment (US)-Slavery abolished
1912: Piltdown Man "found"
1917: (US) Prohibition begins
1920: First public radio broadcast in US
1969: Great Britain abolishes capital punishment
1970: Nuke test in Nevada blows radioactive dust over Wyoming
1871: Corrugated cardboard patented
1998: US President Clinton impeached
1803: US buys Louisiana Territory
1835: Cherokee Indians begin Trail of Tears
1860: S. Carolina first state to secede from U.S.
1989: US invades Panama
WINTER SOLSTICE
1620: Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock
1911: First use of get-away-car in bank robbery (France)
1968: Apollo 8 launched (first manned mission to orbit moon)
1440: Pirate, Bluebeard executed
1882: T. Edison creates first string of Christmas lights
1972: US again bombs Hanoi hospital
1974: Hopi & Navajo Relocation Act passed by Congress
1976: Worst oil spill off US coast
1997: 45 peasants massacred in Chiapas, Mexico
Christmas Eve
Christmas
1865: Coffee percolator invented
1831: Charles Darwin leaves England aboard the H.M.S. Beagle
1932: Radio City Music Hall
opens
1979: Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
1703: Earthquake in Tokyo kills 200,000 people
1905: Idaho's Gov. Steunenberg assassinated with a bomb
1970: Paul McCartney sues the Beatles
NEW YEAR'S EVE!
1879: Thomas Edison first demonstrates electric incandescent light
1890: Ellis Island opens as U.S. immigration depot
1901: 130 people lynched in U.S.
1907: First New Year's ball drops at Times Square
1946: U.S. President Truman officially ends World War II
1970: Nixon signs bill to remove silver from all U.S. coinage
1974: U.S. citizens allowed to buy/own gold
