1700 – English explorer William Dampier discovered the island of New Britain, the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago and part of New Guinea.
1807 – Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Paul Revere’s Ride, The Song of Hiawatha) was born in Portland, ME.
1827 – A group of masked and costumed revelers took to the streets of New Orleans in the first celebration of the city’s infamous Mardi Gras.
1867 – Dr. William G. Bonwill of Philadelphia, PA received a patent for the dental mallet; an idea he developed after watching a telegraph key sounder operate in a Philadelphia hotel.
1873 – Opera tenor Enrico Caruso was born in Naples, Italy.
1883 – Oscar Hammerstein I of New York City patented the first practical cigar-rolling machine.
1897 – Opera singer Marian Anderson was born in Philadelphia.
1908 – Star #46 was added to the U.S. flag – for Oklahoma, which had entered the union on November 16, 1907.
1922 – Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover convened the first National Radio Conference in Washington, D.C.
1922 – Eight members of the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared constitutional the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
1943 – A mine explosion at the Montana Coal and Iron Company in Bear Creek, MT killed 74 men.
1955 – Billboard announced that seven-inch, 45-rpm singles were outselling 78-rpm singles for the first time in the U.S.
1963 – Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees signed a baseball contract worth $100,000, making him the sport’s highest paid player.
1964 – The Italian government announced that it would accept suggestions on how to save the Leaning Tower of Pisa from collapsing.
1973 – Members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and a number of other local and traditional Native Americans began a 72-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota – the site of the 1890 massacre of Sioux men, women and children – to protest injustices against their tribes, violations of the many treaties, and abuses and repression of their people. The U.S. responded with a military-style assault against the protesters.
1974 – Time-Life (now Time-Warner) first published People magazine. It had an initial run of one million copies and became the most successful celebrity weekly magazine ever published.
1990 – The Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping were indicted on five criminal counts relating to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which had polluted Alaska’s Prince William Sound area in the Gulf of Alaska.
1991 – At 9 p.m. (EST), U.S. President George Bush said, “Kuwait is liberated. Iraq’s army is defeated. I am pleased to announce that at midnight tonight, exactly 100 hours since ground operations began and six weeks since the start of Operation Desert Storm, all United States and coalition forces will suspend offensive combat operations.”
Chief Writing Wolf 