0570: Muhammed, Prophet of Islam

1625 Astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini

1671: The Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni was born.

1810: German composer Robert Schumann

1869: Architect Frank Lloyd Wright

1917: Retired Supreme Court Justice Byron White

1921: President Suharto of Indonesia

1925: Former First Lady Barbara Bush

1916: British geneticist Francis Crick, who helped determine the "double helix" structure of DNA

1930: Actress Dana Wynter

1933: Comedian Joan Rivers

1934: Actress Millicent Martin

1936: Baseball great Lou Brock

1936: Actor James Darren

1939: Actor Bernie Casey

1940: Singer Nancy Sinatra

1942: Singer Chuck Negron (Three Dog Night)

1944: Musician Boz Scaggs

1947: Rock musician Mick Box (Uriah Heep)

1950: Actress Sonia Braga

1950: Actress Kathy Baker

1951: Country musician Tony Rice

1953: Singer Bonnie Tyler

1955: Actor Griffin Dunne

1958: Actor-director Keenan Ivory Wayans

1960: Singer Mick Hucknall (Simply Red)

1962: Musician Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran)

1965: Former Grammy winner Rob Pilatus (Milli Vanilli)

1966: Rhythm-and-blues singer Doris Pearson (Five Star)

1967: Actress Julianna Margulies

1967: Actor Dan Futterman

1970: Rhythm-and-blues singer Nicci Gilbert (Brownstone)

1970: Actress Kelli Williams ("The Practice")          

0065: Jewish rebels capture fortress of Antonia in Jerusalem Beginning of the Jewish rebellion against Rome

0410: Death of St. Melania the Elder

0632: The prophet Mohammed died

0793: Norsemen sack Lindesfarne

1042: Harthacnut, King of England & Denmark, dies. He is succeeded in England by Edward the Confessor, in Denmark by Magnus, King of Norway

1154: Death of St. William of York

1191: Richard I, King of England, lands at Acre

1287: Revolt of Rhys ap Meredudd

1333: Edward III orders seizure of the Isle of Man

1374: Chaucer given the office of Controller of Customs

1492: Death of Elizabeth, wife of King Edward IV of England

1495: First written record of Scotch Whiskey

1504: Michaelangelo's "David" set in place in the Palazzo of Florence, Italy

1739: A very Baroque incident occurred. A sacred concert in Venice was marred by a fight between two castrati.

1786: 1st commercially-made ice cream sold in New York.

1845: Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, died in Nashville, Tennessee.

1861: Tennessee seceded from the Union to join the Confederacy.

1869: Ives McGaffney of Chicago obtained a patent for a "sweeping machine, "the first vacuum cleaner.

1915: Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned in a disagreement over US handling of the sinking of the "Lusitania."

1926: There was a very special performance of "La Boheme." Mimi was sung by Nellie Melba at the age of 65. It was her last performance.

1937: Carl Orff's masterpiece was premiered when "Carmina Burana" was sung in Frankfurt.1953: The Supreme Court ruled that restaurants in the District of Columbia could not refuse to serve blacks.

1967: 34 US servicemen were killed when Israeli forces raided the "Liberty," a Navy ship stationed in the Mediterranean. (Israel called the attack a tragic mistake.)

1968: Authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Junior.

1978: A jury in Clark County, Nevada, ruled the so-called "Mormon will," purportedly written by the late (B) billionaire Howard Hughes, was a forgery.

1982: President Reagan became the first American chief executive to address a joint session of the British Parliament.

1987: Fawn Hall began testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings, describing how, as secretary to National Security aide Oliver L. North, she helped to shred some documents and spirit away others.

1988: The judge in the Iran-Contra conspiracy case ruled that Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim had to be tried separately.

1989: Chinese Premier Li Peng reappeared on TV, praising a group of army soldiers, apparently for their role in crushing the student-led pro-democracy movement.

1990: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir announced he had succeeded in forming a new right-wing coalition government, ending a three-month-old political crisis.

1991: A $12 million parade for the Persian Gulf War veterans, including 8,000 troops and military jets flying overhead, was held in Washington, D.C.

1991: Preakness winner "Hansel" won the Belmont Stakes. 

1992: Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev met in Washington to try to pave the way for a new round of strategic arms cuts.

1993: The Chicago Symphony tour of Spain was in Valencia to do Haydn's 48th Symphony and Bruckner's Fourth.

1993: Los Angeles voters elected their first registered Republican mayor since 1961, choosing Richard Riordan over City Councilman Michael Woo.

1993: In New Jersey, Christie Todd Whitman defeated four other Republicans for the chance to face Governor Jim Florio in the November election.

1994: President Clinton returned to Oxford University, where he'd attended as a Rhodes scholar, to receive an honorary doctorate.

1994: Bosnia's warring factions agreed to a one-month cease-fire.

1995: Declaring racial hostility was behind recent church fires in the South, President Clinton said in his weekly radio address he would devote whatever resources were needed to "smother the fires of hatred." China set off an underground nuclear test blast. "Editor's Note" won the Belmont Stakes.

1995: U.S. Marines rescued Captain Scott O'Grady, whose F16-C fighter jet had been shot down by Bosnian Serbs on June 2. Baseball's Mickey Mantle received a liver transplant at a Dallas hospital but died two months later.

1996: Declaring racial hostility was behind recent church fires in the South, President Clinton said in his weekly radio address he would devote whatever resources were needed to "smother the fires of hatred." 

1996: China set off an underground nuclear test blast. "Editor's Note" won the Belmont Stakes. 

1997: Irish Prime Minister John Bruton conceded narrow defeat in national elections to opposition leader Bertie Ahern.

1998: The National Rifle Association elected Charlton Heston its president.

1998: Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha died at age 54.

1998: The shuttle Discovery pulled away from Mir, ending America's three-year space partnership with Russia.  

1999: The United States, Russia and six leading democracies authorized a text calling for a peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

1999: President Clinton announced new restrictions aimed at making it tougher for teens to sneak into R-rated movies.

2000: Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jeff MacNally died in Baltimore, Maryland, at age 52. 

2000: Two gunmen shot to death Brigadier Stephen Saunders, a British defense attache, in Athens, Greece; the elusive terrorist group November 17 claimed responsibility, saying it killed Saunders because of his role in NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia.