1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed on the mainland North America, near what is now St. Augustine, FL, which would become the first permanent European settlement in the future United States.
1805 – Author Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odensk, Denmark.
1792 – The U.S. Congress authorized the first U.S. mint in Philadelphia, PA.
1840 – Author Emile Zola was born in Paris, France.
1872 – G.B. Brayton of Boston, MA, received a patent for the gas-powered engine.
1875 – Walter Chrysler, founder of the Chrysler Corporation, was born in Wamego, KS.
1889 – Charles Hall patented aluminum on this day.
1896 – Madison Square Garden in New York City hosted the season premiere of the Barnum and Bailey Circus and featured a Duryea horseless carriage.
1902 – Esther Morris, the first woman judge elected in the United States, died in Cheyenne, WY.
1902 – The first motion picture theatre opened in Los Angeles. The Electric Theatre charged a dime to see an hour’s worth of entertainment.
1917 – President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany.
1917 – Jeanette Pickering Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, took her seat as a representative of Montana.
1956 – Two very successful daytime dramas, The Edge of Night and As the World Turns, premiered on CBS-TV.
1969 – The Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association signed Lew Alcindor for a reported $1,400,000 five-year contract. Alcindor soon changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabar, and his team changed their name to the Los Angeles Lakers.
1972 – Actor Burt Reynolds appeared nude in Cosmopolitan magazine. That issue of Cosmo became an instant collector’s item and an additional 700,000 copies had to be printed.
1982 – Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in an ill-fated attempt to reclaim them from Great Britain. The brief war cost England 256 lives and Argentina 750 lives.
Chief Writing Wolf 