0323 B.C.: Alexander the Great died of fever in Babylon at age 33.
1231: Death of St. Anthony of Padua
1329: The Kingship of Robert I, "the Bruce," King of Scots,
is recognized by Pope John XXII
1374: Chaucer given an annual pension from John of Gaunt
1392: Pierre de Craon attempts the assassination of Clisson, Constable
of France
1483: Richard of Gloucester accuses Jane Shore of sorcery
1612: Coronation of Matthias II as Holy Roman Emperor
1650: First publication of "Mercurius Politicus," British
periodical
1777: Marquis de Lafayette lands in the United States.
1886: King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria drowned in Lake Starnberg.
1888: Congress created the Department of Labor.
1898: Yukon Territory of Canada is organized with Dawson chosen as
capital.
1900: China's Boxer Rebellion against foreigners and Christians.
1914: The advisor to the Czar Gregory, Rasputin, is poisoned and
stabbed to death in St. Petersburg.
1920: The U.S. Post Office Department rules that children may not be
sent by parcel post
1923: The "Ballet Russe" danced "Les Noces,"
Stravinsky's cubist portrait of a peasant wedding.
1927: Charles Lindbergh honored in New York City for his trans-Atlantic
flight. 750,000 lbs of ticker-tape shower down.
1933: Federal Savings and Loan Association authorized.
1933: First sodium vapor lamps installed Schenectady, NY.
1942: President Roosevelt created the Office of War Information, and
appointed radio news commentator Elmer Davis to be its head.
1943: German spies land on Long Island, New York, and are soon
captured.
1944: Nazi Germany begins V-1 (Fieseler Fi-103) buzz-bomb attacks
against Britain.
1948: Babe Ruth's #3 is retired.
1963: Vostok 6 launched. The pilot is Valentina Tereshkova, first woman
cosmonaut.
1966: Supreme court hands down Miranda vs. Arizona decision. Declares a
suspect must be informed of rights.
1967: President Johnson nominated Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall
to become the first black justice on the US Supreme Court.
1971: N.Y. Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret study
of America's involvement in Vietnam.
1977: James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., was captured
in a Tennessee wilderness area after escaping from prison.
1977: Former Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark died in NY at 77.
1979: Sioux Indians are awarded $105 million in compensation for the
U.S. seizure in 1877 of their Black Hills in South Dakota.
1980: Rep. John Jenrette Jr (D-SC) indicted in "Abscam"
investigation.
1981: A teen-ager fired six blanks at Queen Elizabeth II.
1982: Fahd becomes king of Saudi Arabia when King Khalid dies at 69.
1983: The robot spacecraft Pioneer-10 became the first man-made object
to leave the solar system. It did so 11 years after it was launched.
1986: President Reagan criticizes South African state of emergency.
1986: Benny Goodman died in Chicago, he was 77. Jazz fans remember
Goodman's swing band, and the even better Sextet that preceded it.
1987: Geraldine Page dies.
1988: A federal jury found cigarette manufacturer Liggett Group liable
in the lung-cancer death of New Jersey resident Rose Cipollone, but innocent of
misrepresenting the risks of smoking. (An appeals court later overturned the jury's award
of $400,000 and ordered a new trial; the family dropped the lawsuit in 1992.)
1989: The Detroit Pistons won their first National Basketball
Association title, sweeping the Los Angeles Lakers in four games.
1990: Secretary of State James A. Baker III, testifying before the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged Israel to accept a U.S. plan for peace talks.
(Baker gave out the telephone number for the White House switchboard, telling the Israelis
publicly, "When you're serious about this, call us.")
1991: The US Supreme Court ruled a jailed suspect represented by a lawyer in one criminal case sometimes may be questioned by police about another crime without the lawyer present.
1991: Tragedy struck the first round of the US Open golf tournament when lightning struck and killed a spectator.
1992: Democrat Bill Clinton stirred controversy during an appearance
before the Rainbow Coalition by criticizing the rap singer Sister Souljah for making
remarks "filled with hatred" toward whites.
1993: Canada's Progressive Conservative Party chose Defense Minister
Kim Campbell to succeed Brian Mulroney as prime minister; she was the first woman to hold
the post.
1993: Astronaut Donald K. "Deke" Slayton died in League City,
Texas, at age 69.
1994: A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blamed recklessness by Exxon Corp.
and Capt. Joseph Hazelwood for the "Exxon Valdez" disaster, allowing victims of
the nation's worst oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.
1994: O.J. Simpson was questioned for several hours by Los Angeles
police following the slashing deaths of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
1995: President Clinton proposed a 10-year plan for balancing the
federal budget, saying in a televised address his proposal would cut spending by $1.1
trillion.
1995: France announced it would abandon its 1992 moratorium on nuclear
testing and conduct eight more tests between September and May.
1996: The 81-day-od Freemen standoff ended as the 16 remaining members
of the anti-government group surrendered to the FBI and left their Montana ranch.
1996: The Supreme Court placed greater limits on congressional
districts intentionally drawn to get more minorities elected to Congress.
1997: Former soldier Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for the
Oklahoma City bombing, a devastating crime that killed 168 people and thrust
indiscriminate political terror into the heart of America.
1997: Michael Jordan scored 39 points and the Chicago Bulls worked
their fourth-quarter magic again to beat the Utah Jazz 90-86 and win their fifth NBA
championship in seven years.
1998: Civil rights leaders and politicians called for an end to racial
violence as hundreds of mourners gathered in Jasper, Texas, for the funeral of James Byrd
Junior, a black man who police said was brutally killed by white supremacists.
1998: President Clinton visited Thurston High School in Springfield,
Oregon, where two students were killed and 22 others wounded the previous month.
1999: NATO soldiers shot dead two armed men as peacekeepers tried to
contain new violence in Kosovo; Russian troops, meanwhile, blocked British troops from
entering the airport in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.
2000: The presidents of South Korea and North Korea opened a summit in the northern capital of Pyongyang with pledges to seek reunification of the divided peninsula.
2000: Italy pardoned Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who'd tried to kill Pope John Paul the Second in 1981.
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