-
1533: Clement VII excommunicated Henry VIII for
divorcing Catherine of Aragon, and afterward marrying Anne Boleyn. Two
years later, Henry broke with Rome and established the Anglican
communion as the national religion of England.
-
0472: Death of Anthemius, Emperor of the West
-
0969: Death of St. Olga
-
1244: Displaced by the Mongols, the Khwarismian Turks
take Jerusalem; 300 people escape
-
1276: Election of Pope Adrian V
-
1346: Charles IV chosen as Holy Roman Emperor
-
1346: Edward III of England lands in Normandy
-
1382: Death of Nicolas Oresme 1
-
1533: Pope Clement VII excommunicates England's King
Henry VIII
-
1593: Death of Guiseppe Arcimboldo, surrealist
painter
-
1598: Founding of San Juan de los Caballeros, New
Mexico
-
1613: Coronation of Michael I, Czar of Russia
-
1656: Ann Austin and Mary Fisher became the first
Quakers to arrive in America Ä andwere promptly arrested. Five weeks
later, they were deported back to England.
-
1798: The US Marine Corps was created by an act of
Congress.
-
1804: Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded
former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a pistol duel near
Weehawken, New Jersey.
-
1864: Confederate forces led by General Jubal Early
began an abortive invasion of Washington DC, turning back the next
day.
-
1888: Pennsylvania's Monongehela River rises 32'
after 24 hour rainfall
-
1914: Babe Ruth debuted in the major leagues with the
Boston Red Sox. Ruth made $2,900 his rookie season. In only six years
his paycheck was worth $125,000 when he became a member of the New
York Yankees. He started out as a pitcher. If the American League's
designated pitcher had been in effect we might not ever have learned
of his hitting ability.
-
1918: Enrico Caruso bypassed opera for a short time
to join the WWI effort. He recorded "Over There", the
patriotic song written by George M. Cohan.
-
1921: Mongolia gains independence from China
(National Day)
-
1934: President Roosevelt became the first chief
executive to travel through the Panama Canal while in office.
-
1937: George Gershwin died while a Hollywood surgeon
was trying to operate on his brain tumor. One of Gershwin's last words
was to complain that movie mogul Sam Goldwyn had come to visit him,
and complained that Gershwin was concentrating too much on writing
serious music.
-
1943: Convicts at Wormwood Scrubs prison in London
were treated to a recital. Peter Pears sang, Benjamin Britten
accompanied on the piano, and Michael Tippett served as page turner.
The latter composer, incidentally, was at that time doing time in the
prison.
-
1945: The U. S. Army used napalm on Japanese forces
on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. This is the first recorded
use of Napalm.
-
1952: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was nominated as the
Republican presidential candidate, with Richard Nixon as his running
mate. They were elected in November.
-
1955: The US Air Force Academy was dedicated at Lowry
Air Base in Colorado. The first class included 306 cadets.
-
1962: 1st transatlantic TV transmission via satellite
(Telstar I).
-
1967: Kenny Rogers formed The First Edition, just one
day after he and members Thelma Camacho, Mike Settle and Terry
Williams left The New Christy Minstrels.
-
1967: The Vatican reported that Albania had closed
its last Roman Catholic church.
-
1977: The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously
to the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior in a White House ceremony.
-
1978: 216 people were killed when a tanker truck
overfilled with propylene gas exploded on a coastal highway south of
Tarragona, Spain.
-
1979: The abandoned US space station
"Skylab" made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in
the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and the
Australian desert.
-
1981: Neva Rockefeller became the first woman ordered
by the court to pay alimony to her husband.
-
1983: The Reagan administration filed its first
school desegregation lawsuit, charging that Alabama's public colleges
and universities were practicing segregation.
-
1983: An Ecuadorian jetliner crashed into a mountain
and exploded, killing all 119 people aboard.
-
1984: Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole ordered
that airbags or automatic seat belts be installed in cars beginning
with some 1987 models unless states enacted laws requiring seat-belt
use.
-
1985: Two explosions sank the Rainbow Warrior,
flagship of the Greenpeace environmental activist group, in Auckland,
New Zealand; killing a ship's photographer and launching an
international uproar. France later acknowledged responsibility.
-
1985: Nolan Ryan, of the Houston Astros, became the
first, major-league pitcher to earn 4,000 strikeouts in a career as he
led the Astros to a 4-3 win over the New York Mets.
-
1986: An Air Force plane crashed in Sequoia National
Forest in California. Experts speculated the plane was a radar-evading
stealth fighter jet, a plane whose existence had yet to be officially
confirmed.
-
1987: Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke won a third
consecutive term, becoming the first Labor Party leader in the
country's history to be elected to three straight terms in office.
-
1988: Nine people were killed when three gunmen
attacked hundreds of tourists aboard a Greek cruise ship, the
"City of Poros," which was steaming toward a marina in
suburban Athens.
-
1989: Laurence Olivier, considered by many the finest
English-speaking actor of his generation, died at age 82.
-
1989: The American League won the 60th All-Star Game,
defeating the National League 5-3 in Anaheim, California.
-
1990: Leaders of the so-called "Group of
Seven" nations concluded their summit in Houston by encouraging
Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to enact reforms in return for
Western aid.
-
1991: A solar eclipse cast a blanket of darkness
stretching 9,000 miles from Hawaii to South America, lasting nearly
seven minutes in some places.
-
1991: A Nigerian Airlines jet carrying Muslim
pilgrims crashed at the Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, international airport,
killing all 261 people on board.
-
1992: Undeclared presidential hopeful Ross Perot,
addressing the NAACP convention in Nashville, Tennessee, startled and
offended his listeners by referring to the predominantly black
audience as "you people."
-
1993: President Clinton wrapped up his visit to South
Korea with a visit to the Demilitarized Zone separating South and
North Korea; he then flew to Hawaii, where he placed a wreath at the
site of the sunken battleship USS "Arizona" at Pearl Harbor.
-
1993: In Des Moines, Iowa, severe flooding shut down
a water system serving 250,000 residents.
-
1994: Shawn Eckardt was sentenced in Portland,
Oregon, to one and a-half years in prison for his role in the attack
on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.
-
1994: Haiti's army-backed regime ordered the
expulsion of international human rights observers.
-
1994: President Clinton, on his first official visit
to Germany, urged his hosts to take on a stronger leadership role in
global affairs.
-
1995: The U.N.-designated "safe haven" of
Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces.
-
1995: President Clinton announced the normalization
of full diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam.
-
1996: An Air Force F-16 jet trying to make an
emergency landing slammed into a house in Pensacola, Florida, setting
the home on fire, killing a four-year-old boy and badly burning his
mother. (The pilot ejected safely.)
-
1997: President Clinton was cheered by tens of
thousands of people in Bucharest, Romania, where he raised hopes for
NATO membership.
-
1997: Ninety-one tourists were killed when fire broke
out at the Royal Jomtien Hotel in Pattaya, Thailand.
-
1998: Air Force Lieutenant Michael Blassie, a
casualty of the Vietnam War, was laid to rest near his Missouri home,
after the positive identification of his remains, which had been
enshrined at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, Virginia.
-
1999: A U.S. Air Force cargo jet, braving Antarctic
winter, swept down over the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Center
to drop off emergency medical supplies for Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a
physician at the center who had discovered a lump in her breast.
-
2000: A Middle East summit hosted by President Clinton opened at Camp David between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
-
2000: The American League defeated the National League 6-to-3 in the All-Star Game.
-
2000: Robert Runcie, the former archbishop of Canterbury, died in Hertfordshire, England, at age 78.
-
2000: The African Methodist Episcopal Church, the nation's oldest black church, elected the Reverend Vashti McKenzie of Baltimore its first female bishop.
Send Mail to 
