1475 – Artist and sculptor Michelangelo de Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (Sistine Chapel, David) was born.
1646 – Joseph Jenkes of Massachusetts received the first official patent in the Western Hemisphere. Although handwritten, the patent was granted for a water engine prototype.
1808 – The first college orchestra was founded at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.
1857 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the Dred Scott case, Sanford v. Dred Scott, stating that slaves didn’t have the right to sue for their freedom.
1899 – German pharmaceutical company Friedrich Bayer & Co. receives a patent for acetylsalicylic acid, aka aspirin.
1947 – The USS Newport News was launched from a shipbuilding yard at Newport News, VA. It was the first air-conditioned naval ship.
1951 – Ethel and Julius Rosenberg went on trial in New York on espionage charges.
1964 – Tom O’Hara ran the mile in 3 minutes, 56.4 seconds, setting a world indoor record in Chicago, IL.
1981 – Walter Cronkite, the dean of American television newscasters, said “And that’s the way it is” for the final time, as he closed the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. An audience estimated at 17,000,000 viewers saw ‘the most trusted man in America’ sign-off.
1982 – The most points scored by two teams in the National Basketball Association made history. San Antonio beat Milwaukee 171-166 in three overtime periods to set the mark.
1983 – The United States Football League began its first season of professional football competition. Fans didn’t support the new spring league opposition to the National Football League and, as a result, team names such as the Bandits, Breakers, Blitz, Invaders and Wranglers were relatively short-lived. The USFL lasted two seasons, forced to fold amid controversy, low fan acceptance and lower television ratings.
1985 – Yul Brynner played his famous role as the king in The King and I in his 4,500th performance in the musical. The actor, then age 64, had opened the successful production on Broadway in 1951.
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