1841 – The first steam fire engine was tested in New York City.
1845 – Wilhelm Roentgen, who discovered x-rays, was born in Lennep, Germany.
1860 – The corkscrew was patented by M.L. Byrn of New York City.
1905 – British police used fingerprint evidence to solve the murders of Thomas and Ann Farrow, shopkeepers in South London; the first time the technology was used to solve a crime.
1912 – First Lady Helen Taft, wife of U.S. President William Howard Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese Ambassador, planted the first two cherry trees in Washington, D.C. The trees are Yoshino cherries, and are still standing several hundred yards west of the John Paul Jones statue at the south end of 17th Street.
1958 – CBS Laboratories announced a new stereophonic record that was playable on ordinary LP phonographs, meaning monaural.
1964 – The strongest earthquake in American history, measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale, struck southern Alaska, killing 125 people and creating a deadly tsunami that swept down the Pacific coast, taking another 110 lives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoJLfsRvE5c
1973 – Marlon Brando turned down the Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Godfather.
1977 – Two Boeing 747 jets, a Pan Am and a Dutch KLM, collided at an airport on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands in heavy fog. The disaster killed 582 passengers and crew in the deadliest crash in aviation history.
Chief Writing Wolf 