1470: Charles VIII, King of France

1893: English socialist leader Harold Laski

1896: Film director Howard Hawks

1917: Actress Susan Hayward

1917: Drummer Buddy Rich

1917: Singer Lena Horne

1936: Actor Tony Musante

1936: Actress Nancy Dussault

1943: Singer Florence Ballard of The Supremes

1944: Singer Glenn Shorrock (Little River Band)

1951: Jazz musician Stanley Clarke

1953: Rock musician Hal Lindes (Dire Straits)

1955: Actor-comedian David Alan Grier

1959: Actor Vincent D'Onofrio

1963: Actor Rupert Graves

1966: Boxer Mike Tyson

1969: Rock musician Tom Drummond (Better Than Ezra)

1970: Actor Brian Bloom

1970: Actor Brian Vincent 

1971: Actress Monica Potter

1139: Death of St. Otto of Bamberg

1394: A French Royal Audience hears arguments for a General Council of the Church

1520: CortÇs forced to evacuate Tenochtitlİn by Aztec revolt

1552: Death of Christopher Marlowe, playwright

1559: Henry II, King of France, mortally wounded on the last day of the three day Tournament. This served to help end jousting.

1595 :"Red" Hugh O'Neill proclaimed a traitor by the English

1597: William Barents, Dutch navigator, dies at about 50

1603: Henry IV, King of France, officially re-opens work on the Pont Neuf

1614: Globe Theater re-opens after fire

1637: William Prynne, Henry Burton, and John Bastwick pilloried, their ears removed, and Prynne branded "Seditious Libeler"

1643: Founding of the Comedie-Francaise

1646: John Gaule, Vicar of Huntingdonshire, England, preaches against witches

1826: Franz Schubert was very busy concluding his last string quartet in just 10 days. His speed was not because he knew he was dying; as near as we can tell, he did not. He simply composed rapidly because his ideas flowed rapidly.

1859: French acrobat Blondin (blahn-DAN') (born Jean Francois Gravelet) crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope as five-thousand spectators watched.

1870: Ada H. Kepley of Effingham, Illinois, became America's first female law school graduate.

1893: The Excelsior diamond (blue-white, 995 carats) discovered.

1908: A giant fireball impacts in Central Siberia (the Tunguska Event).

1913: Erik Satie wrote the first of his three piano pieces which he would entitle, "Desiccated Embryos."

1914: Mahatma Gandhi's 1st arrest, in campaign for Indian equal rights in South Africa.

1921: President Harding appointed former President Taft chief justice of the United States.

1934: Adolf Hitler began his "blood purge" of political and military leaders in Germany. Among those killed was one-time Hitler ally Ernst Roehm, leader of the Nazi stormtroopers.

1936: Margaret Mitchell's Civil War novel "Gone With the Wind" was published in New York.

1952: "The Guiding Light," a popular radio program, made its debut as a television soap opera on CBS.

1963: Pope Paul the Sixth was crowned the 262nd head of the Roman Catholic Church.

1971: A Soviet space mission ended in tragedy when three cosmonauts aboard "Soyuz Eleven" were found dead inside their spacecraft after it had returned to Earth.

1971: The 26th Amendment to the Constitution, lowering the minimum voting age to 18, was ratified as Ohio became the 38th state to approve it.

1982: The extended deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment expired, three states short of the 38 needed for passage.

1985: 39 American hostages from a hijacked TWA jetliner were freed in Beirut after being held 17 days.

1986: In a five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states could outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults.

1986: Hugh Hefner, calling his Playboy Bunny a "symbol of the past," closed Playboy Clubs in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.

1987: The prosecutor at the trial of Klaus Barbie in Lyon, France, denounced the crimes of the former Nazi Gestapo official and demanded the maximum sentence of life in prison. (Barbie died in September 1991 at age 77.)

1988: There was a surprising display of "glasnost" during a Soviet Communist Party conference as delegate Vladimir I. Melnikov bluntly criticized President Andrei A. Gromyko and other longtime Kremlin figures.

1988: Renegade Roman Catholic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops in defiance of papal authority; the Vatican announced the excommunication of all five.

1989: General Wojciech Jaruzelski announced he didn't intend to run for Poland's new presidency, saying the people viewed him as the man who imposed martial law.

1990: African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela visited Oakland, California, a day after receiving a star-studded welcome in Los Angeles.

1991: The federal base-closing commission voted to shut down 17 military bases, including the massive Philadelphia Navy Shipyard, in addition to seven facilities ordered closed two days earlier.

1992: Planes loaded with food and medicine arrived at the airport in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of an international relief effort. Fidel Ramos was sworn in as the new president of the Philippines.

1992: Fidel Ramos was sworn in as the new president of the Philippines.

1993: The Milwaukee Symphony performed with the Moody Blues to launch its summer concert series.

1993: Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy promised federal help for Midwestern farmers as he toured flood-damaged areas of Iowa, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

1993: Actor George "Spanky" McFarland of "Our Gang" and "Little Rascals" fame died in Grapevine, Texas, at age 64.

1994: The Supreme Court ruled that judges can bar even peaceful demonstrators from getting too close to abortion clinics.

1994: The US Figure Skating Association stripped Tonya Harding of the 1994 national championship and banned her from the organization for life for an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan.

1995: In a stunning Kremlin purge, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired three top security ministers for the botched handling of a bloody hostage-taking by Chechen rebels in southern Russia.

1995: President Clinton, speaking in Chicago, proposed an even tighter ban on armor-piercing handgun ammunition known as "cop-killer" bullets.

1995: Actor Gayle Gordon died in Escondido, California, at age 89.

1996: President Clinton paid tribute to the 19 killed and hundreds wounded in the truck bomb attack in Saudi Arabia as he attended memorial services at Eglin Air Force Base and Patrick Air Force Base in Florida.

1996: Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic responded to international pressure to step aside by handing his powers to an equally nationalist deputy.

1997: In Hong Kong, the Union Jack was lowered for the last time over Government House as Britain prepared to hand the colony back to China after ruling it for 156 years.

1998: Linda Tripp, whose tape-and-tell friendship with Monica Lewinsky spurred a White House crisis, spent six hours testifying before a grand jury in Washington.

1998: Officials confirmed that the previously unidentified remains of a Vietnam War serviceman buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were those of Air Force pilot Michael J. Blassie.

1999: The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in two years, boosting the target for the funds rate a quarter-point to 5 percent.

1999:  On the day the independent counsel law expired, Kenneth Starr wrapped up the Whitewater phase of his investigation as presidential friend Webster Hubbell pleaded guilty to a felony and a misdemeanor.

2000: The highest legislative body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) called for an outright ban on the blessing of same-sex unions by its ministers. The sharply divided 268 to 251 vote by the church's General Assembly followed a week of wrenching debate and fervent prayer.

 2000: Nine people died in a crush of fans during a rock festival in Roskilde, Denmark. 

2000: An Arkansas Supreme Court committee sued President Clinton to strip him of his law license. (Clinton later agreed to pay a fine and give up his law license for five years.)