1586: Thomas Hooker, founder of Hartford, "Father of American Democracy"

1752: Joseph-Marie Jacquard. French silk weaver and inventor of the jacquard (programmable) loom.

1860: Gustav Mahler was born, in Kaliste, on the border of Moravia and Bohemia. In his twenties Mahler was an assistant to Artur Nikisch in Leipzig. He became music director of the New York Philharmonic. He finished the "Symphony of a Thousand" and began work on "Das Lied von der Erde." A Ninth Symphony was completed but a Tenth was not.

1887: Painter Marc Chagall

19??: Jeff Ausdemore (Nouveaux)

1906: Baseball pitcher Leroy "Satchel" Paige

1907: Robert A. Heinlein, author who helped develop Science Fiction as a sophisticated mode of literary expression.

1911: Composer Gian Carlo Menotti

1913: Blues musician Pinetop Perkins

1922: French fashion designer Pierre Cardin

1927: Musician-conductor Doc Severinsen

1927: Country singer Charlie Louvin

1933: Historian-author David McCullough

1940: Rock star Ringo Starr

1944: Singer-musician Warren Entner (The Grass Roots)

1946: Actor Joe Spano

1947: Country singer Linda Williams

1949: Actress Shelley Duvall

1951: Actress Roz Ryan

1962: Rock musician Mark White (Spin Doctors)

1966: Rhythm-and-blues musician Ricky Kinchen (Mint Condition)

1970: Actress Cree Summer ("A Different World")

1980: Figure skater Michelle Kwan

0665: Death of St. Ethelburga of Faremountiers-en-Brie

0705: Death of St. Hedda

0739: Death of St. Willibald, first known Englishman to visit the Holy Land

1124: Crusaders capture Tyre

1304: Death of Pope Benedict XI

1307: Death of Edward I, King of England, at Burgh-on-Sands. He dies on his way to Scotland to fight Robert the Bruce.

1348: The Black Death arrives in England at Weymouth

1438: Pragmatic Sanction

1456: French ecclesiastical court rehabilitates Joan of Arc

1520: Cortez defeats the Aztecs

1531: Death of Tilman Riemenschneider, late Gothic German sculptor

1537: Death of Madeleine, Queen to James V, King of Scots

1540: Francisco Vasquez de Coronado conquers a pueblo in the Southwestern USA, believing it to be one of the Seven Cities of Gold; 1st skirmish between Indians & Europeans in western US

1550: Emperor Charles V announces the convening of the Council of Valladolid, to discuss the issue of slavery in the New World

1553: Mary Tudor hides in Sawston Hall from the Duke of Northumberland

1585: Edict of Nemours

1585: Grenville & Lane land at Roanoke, Va. to found Raleigh's 1st colony

1623: Virginia colonists begin unsuccessful reprisals against Indians

1647: Rioting in Naples over a food tax

1647: Thomas Hooker, Puritan pastor, founder of Connecticut, and organizer of the first American federal government system, dies. Known as the "Father of American Democracy"

1747: Bach completed his "Musical Offering," and dedicated it to the most powerful fan he ever had, Frederick the Great. This monarch was a fairly good flute player and even did some composing himself. He hired Bach's son Carl Philip Emanuel as his chief court musician.

1754: King's College in New York City opened. (The school was renamed "Columbia College" thirty years later.)

1846: U.S. Navy Commodore J.D. Sloat proclaimed the annexation of California by the United States.

1865: Four people were hanged in Washington DC after being convicted of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Lincoln. Mary Surratt, owner of the boarding house where John Wilkes Booth stayed while planning Lincoln's assassination was hanged for her part in the alleged conspiracy. She was the first American woman to be executed for a crime.

1891: A patent was granted for the travelers cheque.

1896: The Democratic national convention opened in Chicago.

1898: President William McKinley signed a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the annexation of Hawaii by the United States.

1930: Construction began on Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam).

1946: Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, becomes the first American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. She arrived in the U.S. from Italy in 1889, and was naturalized in 1909. Her feast day is November 13.

1969: Canada's House of Commons gave final approval to a measure making the French language equal to English throughout the national government.

1970: Sir Allen Lane dies. He was the founder of Penguin Books and the first publisher to promote the paperback book.

1973: President Nixon said he would not appear before the Senate Watergate Investigating Committee, or give it access to White House files.

1981: President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice on the US Supreme Court.

1983: 11-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, left for a visit to the Soviet Union at the personal invitation of Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov.

1986: The government of South Africa said it had lifted all restrictions against anti-apartheid activist Winnie Mandela.

1986: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law.

1987: Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North began his long-awaited public testimony at the Iran-Contra hearing, telling Congress that he had "never carried out a single act, not one," without authorization.

1988: The candidate of Mexico's ruling party, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, claimed a "national victory" one day after presidential elections that opponents charged were riddled by fraud.

1989: The Labor Department reported that unemployment rose one-tenth of one percent in June to five-point-two percent.

1990: Martina Navratilova made Wimbledon history her 9th Wimbledon title, making her the first to to obtain first place this many times.

1990: President Bush welcomed fellow leaders of the world's leading industrialized democracies, gathered in Houston for their 16th annual Group of Seven economic summit

1991: Michael Stich defeated Boris Becker, 6-4, 7-6, 6-4, to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon.

1991: Responding to President Bush's call for stepped-up efforts on arms control talks, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the White House he was sending Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh and other officials for talks with Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third.

1992: Group of Seven leaders meeting in Munich, Germany, condemned the carnage in former Yugoslavia and warned Serb-led troops that UN military force would be used if needed to keep relief operations going.

1993: The Group of Seven nations, on the first day of their economic summit in Tokyo, unveiled a long-sought agreement on world trade. Prior to the summit opening, President Clinton delivered a speech at Waseda University.

1994: Panama withdrew its offer to the U.S. to accept thousands of Haitian refugees.

1994: President Clinton, visiting Poland, assured the parliament that the U.S. would "not let the Iron Curtain be replaced by a veil of indifference.""

1995: The space shuttle Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, bringing back American astronaut Norman Thagard, who'd spent three-and-a-half months aboard the Russian space station "Mir."

1996: President Clinton delivered more Whitewater trial testimony before video cameras, this time testifying in case of two Arkansas bankers accused of making political contributions with bank funds. (A jury later acquitted Herby Branscum Junior and Robert M. Hill of four counts and deadlocked on seven other counts; Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr decided not to retry the bankers.)

1996: Dutch tennis player Richard Krajicek won the Wimbledon men's title, defeating American MaliVai Washington 6-3, 6-4, 6-3.

1997: Three days after landing on Mars, the Pathfinder spacecraft yielded what scientists said was unmistakable photographic evidence that colossal floods scoured the planet's now-barren landscape more than a billion years ago.

1998: A jury in Santa Monica, California, convicted Mikail Markhasev of murdering Ennis Cosby, Bill Cosby's only son, during a roadside robbery.

1998: Imprisoned Nigerian opposition leader Moshood Abiola died of what the government said was a heart attack.

1998: The American League defeated the National League 13-to-8 in baseball's All-Star Game, played in Denver. 

1999: In the first class-action lawsuit by smokers to go to trial, a jury in Miami held cigarette makers liable for making a defective product that causes emphysema, lung cancer and other illnesses.

1999: Bill Clinton became the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to visit an Indian reservation as he toured the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

2000: President Clinton postponed the first federal execution since 1963 so that death row inmate Juan Raul Garza could ask for clemency under guidelines being updated by the government. (Garza was executed this past June 19th.) 

2000: Stock car driver Kenny Irwin was killed when his car slammed into a wall during practice at New Hampshire International Speedway; he was 30.