But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble.

Psalm   59:16

0342: Death of St. Shahdost of Persia

1258: Execution of the Caliph al-Musta'sim of Bagdad, by Hulagu Khan

1431: Death of Pope Martin V

1431: Trial of Joan of Arc

1437: Assassination of James I, King of Scotland

1513: Death of Pope Julius II

1521: Juan Ponce de Leon sets out for Florida with 200 colonists

1546: Coronation of Edward VI, King of England

1626: Burial of John Dowland, lutenist and composer

1648: The House of Commons votes the House of Lords as "useless and dangerous"

1725: The first known Indian scalping by white men was reported in the New Hampshire colony.

1790: Holy Roman Emperor Joseph the Second died.

1792: President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Postal Service. Letters delivered up to 30 miles cost six cents to mail. For letters up to 150 miles, postage was 12½ cents.

1809: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government was no greater than that of any individual state of the Union.

1816: "The Barber of Seville" , Rossini's opera, was premiered, however, at the time there was already a popular opera by another composer based on the same Beaumarchais comedy. Fans of that opera booed Rossini's, but his version quickly became an even bigger hit.

1831: Polish revolutionaries defeat the Russians in the Battle of Growchow.

1839: Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.

1872: Luther Crowell received a patent for a machine for manufacturing paper bags. Patent # 123811 allowed the bags to have two longitudinal inward folds.

1872: The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York City.

1872: Silas Noble and J.P. Cooley of Granville, Massachusetts, patented the toothpick manufacturing machine.

1873: University of California gets its 1st Med School (UC/SF).

1895: Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became one of America's most prominent abolitionists, died in Washington, D.C. (He was probably 78, although his exact date of birth is unknown.)

1900: J. F. Pickering, a black inventor, received a patent for his airship invention.

1903: Pope Leo XIII celebrates 25 years as the Pope.

1906: Russian troops seize large portions of Mongolia.

1915: President Wilson opens the Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.

1918: The Soviet Red Army seizes Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine.

1933: The House of Representatives completed congressional action on an amendment to repeal Prohibition.

1936: Switzerland bars all Nazis from entering the country.

1938: Anthony Eden resigned as Britain's foreign secretary to protest the "appeasement" policy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain toward Nazi Germany.

1938: Hitler demands self-determination for Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

1941: The Chicago Symphony under the direction of Frederick Stock premiered a piano concerto by Rudolph Ganz which the composer, who also soloed, based on themes drawn from the license plate numbers of his two cars.

1942: Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizes the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast.

1942: Lt. Edward O’Hare downs five out of nine Japanese bombers that are attacking the carrier Lexington, which earns him the Congressional Medal of Honor.

1944: During World War Two, US bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as "Big Week."

1947: The British pledge to leave India by June 1948.

1952: One of baseball's most popular figures, Emmett L. Ashford, became the first black umpire in organized baseball. Ashford was authorized to be a substitute in the Southwestern International League.

1952: A true American classic, "The African Queen", opened at the Capitol Theatre in New York City. The film starred Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, under the direction of John Huston.

1954: The Ford Foundation gives a $25 million grant to the Fund for Advancement of Education.

1959: The FCC applies the equal time rule to TV newscasts of political candidates.

1962: American astronaut John Glenn landed safely after three orbits of Earth in a Mercury space capsule "Friendship Seven."

1963: Moscow offers to allow on-site inspection of nuclear testing.

1963: Baseball great, Willie (The Say Hey Kid) Mays, signed with the San Francisco Giants as baseball's highest paid player (to that time). He earned $100,000 a year.

1965: The "Ranger Eight" spacecraft crashed on the moon after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface.

1971: The National Emergency Warning Center in Colorado erroneously ordered radio and TV stations across the US to go off the air; some stations heeded the alert, which was not lifted for about 40 minutes.

1971: Young people protest having to cut their long hair in Athens, Greece.

1974: After a decade of marriage, Cher filed for separation from husband Sonny Bono. Not long afterwards, she filed for divorce.

1981: The space shuttle Columbia cleared the final major hurdle to its maiden launch as the spacecraft fired its three engines in a 20-second test.

1982: Carnegie Hall in New York begins $20 million renovations.

1983: Israel's Cabinet, at the request of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, voted to retain former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon as a member of two key government bodies involving defense and Lebanon.

1985: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher addressed a joint meeting of Congress in which she praised the U.S. administration's policies and endorsed President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.

1985: The sale of contraceptives was made legal in Ireland.

1986: President Reagan visited Grenada, scene of the 1983 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Caribbean island's Marxist government.

1986: Los Angeles Dodger's pitching ace Orel Hershiser became the first player to receive a one million dollar salary by arbitration. He was a 19-game winner in 1985 at the age of 27.

1987: Soviet authorities released Jewish activist Josef Begun.

1987: After 11 years on ABC's "Good Morning America," David Hartman left the show. He introduced the new co-host, Charles Gibson.

1987: A bomb blamed on the Unabomber exploded behind a computer store in Salt Lake City, seriously injuring a store executive.

1988: U.S. figure skater Brian Boitano won a gold medal in the men's competition at the Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Canada, with Brian Orser of Canada placing second.

1989: Members of the European Economic Community decided to withdraw their top diplomats from Iran to protest Ayatollah Khomeini's order for Muslims to kill author Salman Rushdie

1990: President Bush welcomed Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel to the White House, promising trade rewards for Prague's moves toward democracy.

1991: In the Persian Gulf War, Baghdad radio said President Saddam Hussein would be sending Foreign Minister Raeiq Aziz back to Moscow with a reply to a Soviet peace plan.

1991: Quincy Jones' "Back on the Block" was named album of the year at the 33rd Grammy Awards.

1992: Texas billionaire Ross Perot told CNN's "Larry King Live" he would run for president if his name were placed on the ballot in all 50 states.

1992: South African President F.W. de Klerk stunned his country by announcing a whites-only referendum on ending apartheid.

1992: Rightist Salvadoran leader Roberto D'Aubuisson died at age 48.

1993: The hijacking of a Russian jetliner finally ended in Stockholm, Sweden. The Azerbaijani who commandeered the plane after it departed from Siberia gave up his demand to go to the U.S. and surrendered.

1993: Police in Liverpool, England, charged two ten-year-old boys with the abduction and slaying of toddler James Bulger, a crime that shocked the country and terrified parents. (Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were later convicted.)

1994: Bosnian Serbs, faced with the threat of air strikes, pulled back most of heir heavy guns from around Sarajevo as a NATO deadline approached.

1995: A U.S. Marine, Sgt. Justin A. Harris, died in a helicopter crash during the evacuation of United Nations forces from Somalia. ember.

1996: Patrick Buchanan won the New Hampshire Republican primary by a slim margin over Bob Dole.

1996: Gangsta rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg and his former bodyguard were acquitted of murder in the

1993 shooting death of an alleged gang member.

1997: The National Transporation Safety Board called for a speedup in the redesign of the rudder controls on Boeing 737's, citing potential problems suspected in a pair of deadly crashes.

1998: With the U-S military poised to attack Iraq, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan began a final campaign to end the crisis over UN weapons inspections without bloodshed.

1998: Tara Lipinski of the US won the ladies' figure skating title at Nagano, becoming at age 15 the youngest gold medalist in Winter Olympics history; Michelle Kwan won the silver.

1998: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson was interrupted by demonstrators protesting the Clinton administration's stance on Iraq during a speech, and he responded that the demonstrators "are wrong." About 50 protesters drowned out Richardson with chants during his breakfast speech to a foreign policy forum at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

1998: Prosecutor Kenneth Starr defended his aggressiveness in probing the White House sex scandal, and suggested he was ready for a court fight with President Clinton over the limits of White House secrecy.

1998: The crew of Mir celebrated the 12th anniversary of the space station by flying their escape capsule around the aging, accident-prone ship.

1999: Movie reviewer Gene Siskel died at a hospital outside Chicago; he was 53. (I can't believe it has been a year already.)

1999: The United States and five other nations agreed to extend by three days the deadline for a Kosovo peace agreement. (NATO had threatened airstrikes against the Serbs if they did not reach an agreement with Albanian insurgents.)

2000: The Fox TV network canceled the scheduled rebroadcast of its highly rated special "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" after learning that the groom, Rick Rockwell, was once accused of hitting and threatening to kill an ex-girlfriend, accusations Rockwell denied.