- 0193: Didius Julianus,
Roman Emperor, killed by Rome's Danube legions
- 1217: Pope Innocent III
calls for the Fifth Crusade
- 1281: Othon de Grandson
returns to England
- 1283: Charles of Anjou
enters Bordeaux
- 1421: At Caslav, the
representatives of Bohemia and Moravia renounce the authority of the Emperor Sigsimund and
found a government
- 1495: 1st written record
of Scotch whiskey appears in Exchequer Rolls of Scotland - Friar John Cor is the distiller
- 1498: Pagolo Vitelli
appointed Captain of the Florentine Republic
- 1533: Anne Boleyn
crowned Queen of England
- 1608: A second
"False Dimitri" attempts to usurp the Russian throne
- 1616: Death of Tokugawa
Ieyasu, Shogun of Japan
- 1621: The Plymouth
settlement is granted a Royal Patent
- 1638: 1st earthquake
recorded in US, at Plymouth, Mass.
- 1660: Mary Dyer, a
Quaker, is hanged in Boston for heretical preaching
- 1792: Kentucky became
the 15th state of the union.
- 1796: Tennessee became
the 16th state.
- 1809: Haydn's funeral.
With Mozart already several years gone, Vienna's music scene went into a brief decline
until Beethoven, already an active composer, began turning out his greater and more
controversial compositions.
- 1812: President James
Madison warned Congress that war with Britain was imminent. The War of 1812 started 17
days later.
- 1813: The US Navy gained
its motto as the mortally wounded commander of the US frigate "Chesapeake,"
Captain James Lawrence, was heard to say, "Don't give up the ship" during a
losing battle with a British frigate.
- 1868: James Buchanan,
the 15th president of the United States, died near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
- 1925: Lou Gehrig starts
in 1st of 2130 consecutive games, a record.
- 1943: A civilian flight
from Lisbon to London was shot down by the Germans during World War Two, killing all
aboard, including actor Leslie Howard.
- 1958: Charles de Gaulle
became premier of France.
- 1964: The U.S. Supreme
Court banned prayers and Bible teaching in public schools on the constitutional grounds of
separation of church and state.
- 1967: The Beatles
released their album, "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
- 1968: Author-lecturer
Helen Keller, who earned a college degree despite being blind and deaf most of her life,
died in Westport, Connecticut.
- 1973: Greek Prime
Minister George Papadopoulos abolished the Greek monarchy and proclaimed Greece a republic
with himself as president.
- 1977: The Soviet Union
formally charged Jewish human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky with treason.
(Shcharansky was imprisoned, then finally released in 1986.)
- 1980: Cable News Network
made its debut.
- 1987: Vice President
George Bush addressed the Third International Conference on AIDS in Washington, and, like
President Reagan before him, drew scattered boos by calling for more widespread testing
for possible carriers of the AIDS virus.
- 1988: President Reagan
and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev concluded their Moscow summit by exchanging the
documents of ratification of the intermediate-range nuclear arms treaty they'd signed the
previous December.
- 1989: Former Sunday
school teacher John E. List, sought for 18 years in the slayings of his mother, wife and
three children in Westfield, New Jersey, was arrested in Richmond, Virginia. (List was
later sentenced to life in prison.)
- 1990: The South African
government proposed a bill to scrap the 37-year-old law segregating buses, trains,
toilets, libraries, swimming pools and other public amenities.
- 1991: The United States and the Soviet Union resolved differences over the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, clearing the way for a superpower summit.
- 1991: NASA scrubbed the launch of the space shuttle "Columbia" after a navigational unit failed.
- 1992: The US Treasury
Department, responding to UN sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia, froze an estimated $200
million in assets of the Serb-led Yugoslav government.
- 1992: The Pittsburgh
Penguins completed a four-game sweep of the Chicago Blackhawks to win hockey's Stanley Cup
for the second straight year.
- 1993: The founder and
director of the Colorado Symphony Chorus became the director of the Chicago Symphony
Chorus effective on this date.
- 1993: A mortar attack on
a holiday soccer game in a suburb of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, killed at least 15
people and wounded more than 80.
- 1993: The Supreme Court
ruled that a criminal conviction must be overturned if the jury was given a
constitutionally flawed definition of "beyond reasonable doubt."
- 1994: President Clinton
embarked on a European trip that included commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-Day; his
first stop was Italy.
- 1996: An estimated
200,000 participants, most of them schoolchildren, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to
protest government cuts for social and educational programs.
- 1997: Betty Shabazz, the
widow of Malcolm X, was fatally burned in a fire set by her 12-year-old grandson in her
Yonkers, New York apartment. The Broadway show "Titanic" won five Tony Awards,
including best musical.
- 1998: President Clinton
abruptly abandoned his executive privilege claim in the Monica Lewinsky investigation,
reducing the prospect of a quick Supreme Court review of a dispute over the testimony of
presidential aides.
- 1998: Thousands of
refugees from Serbia's Kosovo province streamed into neighboring Albania to escape deadly
fighting.
- 1999:
President Clinton ordered a government investigation into whether - and
how - the entertainment business markets violence to children.
- 1999:
An American Airlines MD-82 landed off-center during a severe
thunderstorm in Little Rock, Ark. and barreled off the end of the
runway, breaking apart and catching fire; 11 people, including the
captain, died.
- 2000: With about half an hour to spare, Texas Governor George W. Bush blocked the scheduled execution of convicted killer Ricky McGinn so that possibly exculpatory DNA evidence could be reviewed. (The DNA tests failed to establish McGinn's innocence, and he was put to death by injection the
in September 2000.)
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