Category Archives: History

1897 – A quake now estimated to measure 8.8 on the Richter scale struck Assam, India, devastating an area roughly 160,000 square miles and killing more than 1,500 people.

1898 – During the Spanish-American War, Filipino rebels proclaimed independence from Spain after 300 years of Spanish rule.

1916 – Producer – director Irwin Allen (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure) was born in New York City.

1929 – Anne Frank, one of the most famous of all Nazi Holocaust victims, was born in Lower Saxony, Germany.  She received a diary for her 13^th birthday in 1942, a month before her family went into hiding in Amsterdam.

1935 – Ella Fitzgerald recorded her first songs for Brunswick Records: Love and Kisses and I’ll Chase the Blues Away.

1939 – The Baseball Hall of Fame was formally dedicated at Cooperstown, NY.

1963 – Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his home in Jackson, MS, by White supremacist Byron de la Beckwith.  Beckwith’s first trial in 1964 ended with a deadlocked jury.  But, he was re-tried in 1994, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

1975 – Indira Ghandi, India’s first female Prime Minister, was found guilty of election fraud in her 1971 campaign.

1987 – President Ronald Reagan delivered a now-famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin that included the statement: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  Destruction of the wall began 2 years later, ending 28 years of division for the city of Berlin.

1994 – The bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were discovered outside Nicole’s Brentwood, California condominium.  Brown’s ex-husband, actor and former professional football player O.J. Simpson was charged with the double murders, but was acquitted in criminal court the following year.

1509 – King Henry VIII of England married the first of his 6 wives, Catherine of Aragon.

1776 – The Continental Congress appointed a committee to draft the Declaration of Independence.

1776 – Artist John Constable (The White Horse, The Hay-Wain, The Cornfield, Stoke-by-Nayland, Arundel Mill and Castle) was born in East Bergholt, England.

1864 – Composer Richard Strauss (Also Sprach Zarathustra, Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel) was born in Munich, Germany.

1880 – Jeannette Rankin, first U.S. Congresswoman, was born in Missoula, MT.

1910 – Ocean explorer Jacques – Yves Cousteau was born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France.

1925 – Author William Styron (Sophie’s Choice, The Long March) was born in Newport News, VA.

1927 – Charles A. Lindbergh was presented the first Distinguished Flying Cross.

1936 – The Presbyterian Church of America was formed in Philadelphia, PA.

1962 – Three men, John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Lee Morris, escaped from Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay.  They were never seen again.

1963 – President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order that the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa be desegregated.

1692 – In Salem Village in the Massachusetts Colony, Bridget Bishop became the first of several people executed by hanging after being found guilty of practicing witchcraft.

1752 – Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm and collected a charge in a jar when lightning struck the kite.

1775 – During a meeting of Congress in Philadelphia, John Adams proposed the formation of a Continental Army.

1854 – The U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, MD, graduated its first class.

1895 – Actress Hattie McDaniel (Gone with the Wind, Judge Priest, The Little Colonel, Showboat, Saratoga; first African-American to win an Oscar) was born in Wichita, KS.

1901 – Composer Frederick Loewe (Gigi, My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Camelot, Paint Your Wagon) was born in Berlin.

1922 – Actress – singer Judy Garland (The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, A Star is Born, Easter Parade, The Harvey Girls, Judgment at Nuremberg) was born in Grand Rapids, MN.

1924 – The first political convention on radio was presented by NBC.  Graham McNamee provided coverage of the Republican National Convention from Cleveland, OH.

1928 – Children’s author – illustrator Maurice Sendak was born in New York City.

1935 – In New York City, two recovering alcoholics, Dr. Robert Smith and William G. Wilson founded Alcoholics Anonymous.

1940 – As Norway surrendered to Germany during World War II, Italy declared war on France and Great Britain.

Nazi troops in Norway

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini with Adolph Hitler

1954 – General Motors announced that the first successful gas-turbine bus had been produced.

1534 – French explorer Jacques Cartier became the first European to navigate the St. Lawrence River in present-day Québec, Canada.

1781 – George Stephenson, developer of the steam locomotive, was born in Wylam, Northumberland, England.

1790 – The first copyright for a book was given to The Philadelphia Spelling Book.

1973 – Secretariat became the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

632 – Mohammed, the founder of Islam, died in Medina, near present-day Saudi Arabia.

A folio from an early Quran, written in Kufic script (Abbasid period, 8th–9th century).

1783 – Iceland’s Laki Volcano erupted and spewed lava continuously for eight months.  One of the most violent of volcanic eruptions ever recorded, it killed 9,350 people and caused a famine which lasted until 1790.

1786 – Commercial ice cream was manufactured for the first time in New York City.

1810 – Composer Robert Schumann (Symphonic Etudes, Fantasia in C Major, Concerto in a Minor) was born in Saxony, Germany.

1867 – Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (Pennsylvania’s Falling Water, NYC’s Guggenheim Museum) was born in Richland Center, WI.

1869 – Ives W. McGaffey of Chicago, IL, received a U.S. patent for the suction vacuum cleaner.

1874 – Chief Cochise, a leader of the Apache Indians, died on the Chiricahua Reservation in southeastern Arizona.

1966 – The American Football League and the National Football League announced they will merge.

1968 – James Earl Ray, the prime suspect in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested in London.

1848 – Artist Paul Gaugin (The Yellow Christ, Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going?) was born in Paris.

1866 – Chief Seattle, for whom the Seattle, WA, is named, died in a nearby coastal village.

1909 – Physician Virginia Apgar, developed the Apgar Score System, a method of evaluating newborns’ need for medical care, was born in Westfield, NJ.

1913 – Hudson Stuck, an Alaskan missionary, led the first successful ascent of Mt. McKinley, the highest point on the North American continent.

1917 – Poet Gwendolyn Brooks (Annie Allen, We Real Cool, The Bean Eaters, Winnie, Coming Home) was born in Topeka, KS.

1917 – Dean Martin (Dino Paul Crocetti; singer: Memories are Made of This, Return to Me, Everybody Loves Somebody, The Door is Still Open to My Heart, Houston; actor: My Friend Irma, Hollywood or Bust, Airport) was born in Steubenville, OH.

1939 – King George VI became the first British monarch to visit the United States, when he and his wife, Elizabeth, crossed the U.S. – Canadian border at Niagara Falls, NY.

1942 – The 4-day “Battle of Midway” – one of the most decisive victories in the U.S. war against Japan – came to an end.  But then, Japanese soldiers landed on and temporarily took control of the Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska, marking the only time foreign military personnel occupied U.S. territory during World War II.  The Japanese killed 25 American troops in the initial assault, but the U.S. wouldn’t recapture the islands until the following year.

1606 – Playwright Pierre Corneille (Cinna, Le Cid, L’illusion Comique) was born in Rouen, France.

1756 – Artist John Trumbull (The Battle of Bunker Hill, The Surrender of Cornwallis, The Declaration of Independence) was born in Lebanon, CT.

1816 – Heavy snow fell in New England, Canada and Western Europe in what became known as the “Year Without a Summer.”  A solar cycle of low magnetic activity that had begun around 1795, coupled with a series of massive explosions of the Mount Tambora volcano in Indonesia in April of 1815, contributed to an incredibly cold summer for most of the Northern Hemisphere.

1833 – Andrew Jackson became the first U.S. President to ride in a railroad car, when he boarded a Baltimore & Ohio passenger train in Baltimore, MD.

1844 – George Williams founded the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in London.

1875 – Author Thomas Mann (Little Mr. Friedemann, Royal Highness, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Death in Venice) was born in Lübeck, Germany.

1882 – Henry W. Seely patented the first electric flatiron, now called the electric iron.

1942 – Adeline Gray made the first nylon-parachute jump in Hartford, CT.

1944 – In the largest military operation in world history, thousands of Allied troops invaded Normandy, France to open a second major European front in the battle against the Nazis.  It became known as “D-Day.”

1946 – The Basketball Association of America formed in New York City.

1949 – George Orwell published1984.

1987 – Steffi Graf beat Martina Navratilova and to win her first Grand Slam title at the French Open in Paris.  Graf is the only tennis player to win each of the four Grand Slam titles at least four times – Wimbledon: 7, French Open: 6, U.S. Open: 5, Australian Open: 4.

1723 – Author and philosopher Adam Smith (An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations) was born in Fife, Scotland.

1819 – Mathematician and astronomer John Couch Adams (discovered the planet Neptune) was born in Lidcott, England.

1895 – Actor William Boyd (“Hopalong Cassidy”) was born in Cambridge, OH.

1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the U.S. off the gold standard, which had been in use since 1879.

1967 – The “Six Day War” between Israel and Egypt in response to growing tension between the 2 countries.

1968 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), U.S. Attorney General under his older brother John F. Kennedy, was shot by Sirhan Sirhan after celebrating his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary in Los Angeles.  He died the following day.

2004 – Former President Ronald Reagan died at his home in Los Angeles, CA, at the age of 93.

1738 – King George III of Great Britain was born in London.

1831 – The independent constitutional monarchy of Belgium named Prince Leopold I as its first king.

1876 – The Transcontinental Express train arrived in San Francisco, 83 hours after leaving New York City.

1896 – Henry Ford took a trial run around the streets of Detroit, MI, in his “Quadricycle,” the first vehicle he had designed.

1910 – Christopher Cockereel, inventor of the Hovercraft, was born in Cherry Hinton, England.

1917 – The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded under the name “Plan of Award.”

1919 – Congress passed the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, and sent it to the states for ratification.

Suffrage Parade, New York City, ca. 1912

1931 – The first rocket-glider flight was made by William Swan in Atlantic City, NJ.

1989 – The People’s Army of China opened fire on pro- democracy student protestors in Peking’s Tiananmen Square.

1800 – John Adams became the first U.S. president to move to Washington, D.C.  The People’s House, or the Executive Mansion, later known as the White House, wasn’t completed until November of that year, so Adams lived at Tunnicliffe’s City Hotel.

1808 – Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America (1861 – 1865) was born in Christian County, KY.

1856 – Cullen Whipple of Providence, RI, patented the screw machine.

1956 – Santa Cruz, CA, became the first city in the U.S. to ban rock n’ roll.

1959 – The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, graduated its first class.

1965 – Major Edward H. White became the first American to walk in space, when he exited the Gemini 4 spacecraft 120 miles above Earth.