1491: English King Henry VIII

1476: Pope Paul IV

1490: Albert, Margrave of Brandenburg, cardinal (attacked by Luther)

1491: Henry VIII of England.

1577: Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish Baroque painter

1703: English clergyman John Wesley, founder of Methodism

1712: Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born. Rousseau wrote one of the most important early treatises on music. He stands with George Bernard Shaw as someone not often remembered in connection with music who actually wrote a lot about.

1902: Richard Rodgers was born.

1902: Bank robber John Dillinger

1914: Country music entertainer Lester Flatt

1926: Film maker and comedian Mel Brooks

1930: Actor Pat Morita

1936: Singer Cathy Carr

1938: Former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta

1945: Rock musician Dave Knights (Procul Harum)

1946: Actor Bruce Davison

1948: Actress Kathy Bates

1955: Actress Alice Krige

1960: Football player John Elway

1962: Record company chief executive Tony Mercedes

1965: Actress Jessica Hecht ("Friends","The Single Guy")

1965: Rock musician Saul Davies (James)

1966: Actress Mary Stuart Masterson

1966: Actor John Cusack

1967: Actor Gil Bellows

1969: Actress Danielle Brisebois

1969: Jazz musician Jimmy Sommers

1972: Actor Alessandro Nivola

0548: Death of Theodora, Empress of Byzantium

0767: Death of St. Paul, Pope

1098: BATTLE OF THE LANCE (1st Crusade)

1128: Zengi made Governor of Aleppo

1243: Coronation of Pope Innocent IV

1245: Council of Lyons convenes to discuss the excommunication of the Holy Roman Emperor

1461: Coronation of Edward IV, King of England

1483: Howard family takes possession of Dukedom of Norfolk

1519: Election of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

1544: Burning of Kelso Abbey by the English

1559: Start of the three-day Tournament, in France

1629: The "Edict of Grace"

1778: "Molly Pitcher" (Mary Ludwig Hays) carried water to American soldiers at the Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth, New Jersey.

1820: The tomato is proved to be nonpoisonous.

1836: The fourth president of the United States, James Madison, died in Montpelier, Virginia.

1894: Labor Day was established as a holiday for federal employees on the first Monday of September.

1914: Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sofia, were assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist -- the event which triggered World War One.

1919: World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

1919: Harry S. Truman married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace in Independence, Missouri.

1934: President Roosevelt signed into law the National Housing Act, which established the Federal Housing Administration.

1950: North Korean forces captured Seoul, South Korea.

1951: A TV version of the radio program "Amos 'N' Andy" premiered on CBS. (Although criticized for racial stereotyping, it was the first network TV series to feature an all-black cast).

1971: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of public funds for parochial schools was unconstitutional.

1972: President Nixon announced that no more draftees would be sent to Vietnam unless they volunteered for service in the Asian nation.

1978: The Supreme Court ordered the University of California at Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a white man who argued he'd been a victim of reverse racial discrimination.

1987: Secretary of State George P. Shultz told NBC's "Meet the Press" he'd found some of the recent revelations about the Iran-Contra affair "sickening," but he defended the Reagan administration's foreign policy.

1988: The federal government sued the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to force reforms on the nation's largest labor union. The two sides reached agreement in March 1989.

1989: China's new Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin, said the Beijing government would show no mercy to leaders of the pro-democracy movement, which he termed a "counterrevolutionary rebellion.""

1990: Jurors in the drug and perjury trial of Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. viewed a videotape showing Barry smoking crack cocaine during an FBI hotel-room sting operation.

1991: In Detroit, a white woman was attacked by a group of black women at a downtown fireworks display in an incident captured on amateur video. (Five women later pleaded no contest to charges stemming from the assault.)

1991: Two people were killed when an earthquake of magnitude 6 shook Southern California.

1992: Southern California was rocked by a pair of earthquakes that killed one person and injured 402.

1992: French President Francois Mitterrand was cheered as he visited war-torn Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1992: A 35-year-old man at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center became the first recipient of a baboon liver transplant; he lived ten more weeks.

1993: First Elektra-Nonesuch made a lot of money from Gorecki's Third Symphony, the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." Now Boosey & Hawkes feels its turn has come to profit from this unlikely hit.

1993: The Supreme Court kept alive a "racial gerrymandering" case, saying congressional districts designed to benefit racial minorities may violate white voters' rights.

1993: The National Commission on AIDS ended its work after four years, with members expressing frustration over how little national leaders had done to combat the disease.

1994: North and South Korea set July 25-27 as the dates for a historic summit between the leaders of both countries (the summit was derailed by the death of North Korean President Kim Il Sung the following month.)

1994: President Clinton became the first chief executive in U.S. history to set up a personal legal defense fund and ask Americans to contribute to it.

1995: The House overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to protect the American flag from desecration (however, the amendment was later defeated in the Senate).

1995: Webster Hubbell, the former No. 3 official at the Justice Department, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for bilking clients of the law firm where he and Hillary Rodham Clinton were partners.

1996: The Citadel voted to admit women, ending a 153-year-old men-only policy at the South Carolina military school.

1997: President Clinton, unable to meet his own July Fourth deadline for campaign finance reform, blamed the inaction on Congress in his weekly radio address.

1997: In a wild rematch, Evander Holyfield retained the WBA heavyweight boxing championship after his opponent, Mike Tyson, was disqualified for biting Holyfield's ear during the third round of their fight in Las Vegas.

1998: The 12th World AIDS Conference opened in Geneva.

1998: The Cincinnati Enquirer apologized to the Chiquita banana company as it retracted stories questioning the company's business practices; the paper agreed to pay more than $10 million to settle legal claims. 

1999: Announcing even bigger projected budget surpluses, President Clinton said the government could drastically reduce the national debt while still buttressing Social Security and Medicare.

2000: The Supreme Court struck down Nebraska's so-called "partial-birth" abortion law. 

2000: Seven months after he was cast adrift in the Florida Straits, Elian Gonzalez was returned to his native Cuba. 

2000: The Supreme Court finally woke up and made a correct decision by ruling that the Boy Scouts can bar homosexuals from serving as troop leaders.