May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob set you securely on high!


Psalm 20:1

0044 BC: Julius Cėsar publicly refuses the crown (BCE)

1145: Death of Pope Lucius II

1145: Election of Pope Eugenius III

1152: Death of Conrad III, King of Germany

1288: Election of Pope Nicholas IV

1386: Coronation of Wladislas II as King of Poland

1502: Amerigo Vespucci sets sail for South America

1515: Francis I, King of France, enters Paris after his Coronation

1621: Death of Michael Praetorius, composer

1637: Death of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor

1645: British Army founded

1758: Mustard was advertised for the first time in America. It was Benjamin Franklin who brought mustard to America.

1764: The city of St. Louis was established.

1799: Printed ballots were authorized for use in elections in the State of Pennsylvania. The ballots were originally referred to as "vest-pocket tickets.""

1798: The first serious fist fight occurs in Congress.

1804: New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.

1842: A private mail service in New York City introduced the first adhesive postage stamps.

1857: The father of Russian classical music died, but not in Russia. Glinka was the first Russian composer to make a serious effort to put the indigenous sounds of Russian folk music into classical compositions, and for this he was honored.

1869: Charges of treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped. Jefferson Davis' Mexican War exploits led directly to the Confederate White House.

1879: President Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the US Supreme Court.

1898: The U.S. battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor today killing 2 officers and 258 crew members. Although the cause of the explosion was never determined, the event prompted U.S. intervention in the Cuban-Spanish conflict on the behalf of Cuba.

1900: The British threaten to use natives in the Boer War fight.

1925: The London Zoo announces it will install lights to cheer up fogged in animals.

1932: George Burns and Gracie Allen debuted as regulars on "The Guy Lombardo Show" on CBS Radio.

1933: President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an attempt on his life in Miami, when shots fired at him by an assailant (Giuseppe Zangara) missed. However, Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was killed.

1934: U.S. Congress passes the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, allotting new funds for Federal Emergency Relief Administration.

1940: Hitler orders that all British merchant ships will be considered warships.

1941: Duke Ellington and his Orchestra recorded one of big band's all time classics. "Take the "A" Train" was recorded at Victor Records' Hollywood studio and became the Duke's signature song.

1942: British forces in Singapore surrender to Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita.

1943: The Germans break U.S. lines at the Fanid-Sened Sector in Tunisia.

1944: During World War II, Allied forces heavily bombed the monastery atop Monte Cassino in Italy.

1946: Edith Houghton, age 33, was signed as a baseball scout by the Philadelphia Phillies; the first female scout in the major leagues.

1946: Royal Canadian mounted police arrest 22 as Soviet spies.

1950: Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung sign a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.

1953: The first American to win the women's world figure skating championship was 17-year-old Tenley Albright. She won the competition in Davos, Switzerland.

1957: Andrei Gromyko replaces Dmitri T. Shepilov as the Soviet Foreign Minister.

1961: 73 people, including an 18-member figure skating team from the US, were killed in the crash of a Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 in Belgium. (The skaters were en route to a world meet in Czechoslovakia.)

1965: Canada's new maple-leaf flag was unfurled in ceremonies in Ottawa.

1965: Nat King Cole died in Santa Monica, California, at age 45. Cole was born in Alabama and raised in Chicago. He made his first recording in 1936.

1967: Thirteen U.S. helicopters are shot down in one day in Vietnam.

1970: Chicago defense attorney, William Kunstler, gets a four-year sentence on contempt charges.

1971: Britain changed to a decimal currency system from pounds, shillings and pence.

1974: U.S. gas stations threaten to close because of federal fuel policies.

1978: Leon Spinks shocked the boxing world by beating Muhammad Ali in a 15-round split decision, to capture the heavyweight title in Las Vegas.

1982: 84 men were killed when a huge oil-drilling rig, the "Ocean Ranger," sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a fierce storm.

1982: Welterweight boxing champion, Sugar Ray Leonard, knocked out Bruce Finch in the third round of a fight in Reno, Nevada. Leonard was injured in the second round and underwent retinal surgery in May.

1985: Pope John Paul II met with leaders of the American Jewish Committee and issued a statement condemning anti-Semitism as "incompatible with Christ's teaching.""

1986: The Philippines National Assembly proclaimed Ferdinand E. Marcos president for another six years, following an election marked by allegations of fraud.

1987: ABC broadcast the first segment of "Amerika," a controversial miniseries about a Soviet takeover of the United States that was criticized by some as potentially damaging to superpower relations.

1988: Austrian President Kurt Waldheim vowed in a televised address not to "retreat in the face of slanders" concerning his service for the German Army during World War Two.

1989: The Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.

1990: President Bush and the leaders of Columbia, Bolivia and Peru met in Cartagena, Colombia, for a drug-fighting summit.

1991: Iraq proposed a conditional withdrawal from Kuwait, an offer dismissed by President Bush as a cruel hoax.

1991: The government of South Africa and the African National Congress announced an agreement on terms of the ANC's decision to suspend its armed struggle against apartheid.

1992: Benjamin L. Hooks announced plans to retire as executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

1992: Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Schuman died in New York at age 81.

1992: A Milwaukee jury found that Jeffrey Dahmer was sane when he killed and mutilated 15 men and boys.

1993: President Clinton issued an economic "call to arms," asking Americans in a televised Oval Office address to accept a painful package of tax increases and spending cuts.

1993: At the Montreal Symphony, Ulf Schirmer conducted Handel's "Royal Fireworks" music and Richard Strauss's "Sinfonia domestica," and an Oboe Concerto by Prevost for which the soloist will be Theodore Baskin.

1994: Navy chief Admiral Frank Kelso II agreed to early retirement because of criticism over the Tailhook sex abuse scandal.

1994: Drifter Danny Harold Rolling entered a surprise guilty plea to the 1990 murders of five college students in Gainesville, Florida.

1994: American Diann Roffe-Steinrotter won the super-giant slalom at the Winter Olympics in Norway.

1994: Viacom won a hard-fought victory to acquire Paramount Communications.

1995: The FBI arrested Kevin Mitnick, its "most wanted hacker," charging him with cracking security for some of the nation's most protected computers. Mitnick agreed to a plea bargain carrying an 8-month jail term.

1995: A fire roared through a three-story nightclub in Taichung, Taiwan, killing at least 64 people.

1996: Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin announced he would run for re-election.

1996: A federal judge temporarily blocked the Communications Decency Act, saying the government had to explain what material it considered indecent before it could enforce the law, designed to protect children from sexually explicit material on computer networks.

1997: North Korean defector Lee Han-young was shot and mortally wounded in South Korea, three days after another North Korean defected in Beijing.

1997: Tara Lipinski upset Michelle Kwan at the U-S Figure Skating Championships in Nashville, Tennessee, becoming the youngest gold medalist at the nationals.

1998: Monica Lewinsky's attorney, William Ginsburg, continued his harsh criticism of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr for alleged leaks of information to the news media, charging on CNN that his client's constitutional rights were being trampled.

1998: Two Japanese ski jumpers (Kazuyoshi Funaki and Masahiko Harada) leapt to gold and bronze medals in the 120-meter event at the Nagano Olympics.  

1999: The body of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African gunned down by New York City police, was returned to his native Guinea.

2000: Republican presidential rivals George W. Bush and John McCain fought over campaign financing and the tenor of their nomination contest in a testy debate in Columbia, South Carolina, that included Alan Keyes. 

2000: Fox aired "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?," a TV special which drew huge ratings and much notoriety.