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 13th 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.
Chief Writing Wolf 