0390 BC: Gauls defeat Romans and sack Rome
0064: The Great Fire of Rome began. The cause of the fire was blamed on
the Christians.
0641: Death of St. Arnulf of Metz
1100: Death of Godfrey de Boullion; Baldwin becomes King of Jerusalem
1216: Election of Honorius III as Pope
1289: Death of Alfonso, King of Aragon
1290: A treaty safeguarding liberties of Scots against the English
1290: Edward I, King of England, expels the Jews from England
1374: Death of Petrarch
1536: The authority of the pope was declared void in England.
1610: Death of Caravaggio, painter
1627: French explorers noted it seeping out of the ground near Cuba,
New York, and described the phenomenon in a letter to Joseph de la Roche de Allion back in
France.
1639: Death of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar
1723: Johann Sebastian Bach, still settling in as the music director of
Leipzig, produced the motet "Jesu, meine Freunde" for a memorial service for the
widow of the Leipzig postmaster.
1792: American naval hero John Paul Jones died in Paris at age 45.
1817: Author Jane Austen died.
1870: The Vatican I Ecumenical Council issued the proclamation 'Pastor
Aeternus,'declaring the pope's primacy and infallibility in deciding faith and moral
matters. (Few Protestants agree with this doctrine.)
1872: Britain introduced the concept of voting by secret ballot.
1927: Ty Cobb hit safely for the 4000th time in his career.
1927: "Mahagonny," by Kurt Weill, premiered at the
Baden-Baden Festival to cheers and catcalls.
1932: The United States and Canada signed a treaty to develop the St.
Lawrence Seaway.
1936: The Spanish Civil War began as General Francisco Franco led an
uprising of army troops based in Spanish North Africa.
1944: Hideki Tojo was removed as Japanese premier and war minister
because of setbacks suffered by his country in World War Two.
1947: President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which
placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of
succession after the vice president.
1968: Intel Corporation is incorporated.
1969: A car driven by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Democrat,
Massachusetts) plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard. His
passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, died.
1971: Brazilian soccer player Pelé played his last game, in a match in
Rio de Janiero with the Yugoslavian team. It was a tie game.
1976: The serious, potentially fatal arthritic condition called Lyme
disease was named on this day. It is contacted from deer ticks. Its name comes from the
Connecticut town near which the disease was first observed.
1977: Vietnam was admitted to the United Nations.
1984: Walter F. Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination in
San Francisco.
1984: A gunman opened fire at a McDonald's fast food restaurant in San
Ysidro, California, killing 21 people before being shot dead by police.
1985: Appearing publicly for the first time since his cancer surgery,
President Reagan waved to photographers from a window at Bethesda Naval Hospital, flashing
an "OK" sign when asked how he felt.
1986: The world got its first look at the remains of the Titanic as
videotapes of the British luxury liner, which sank in 1912, were released by researchers
from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
1986: Molly Yard was elected the new president of the National
Organization for Women, succeeding Eleanor Smeal.
1987: President Reagan used his weekly radio address to call on
Congress to give more aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. Molly Yard was elected the new
president of the National Organization for Women, succeeding Eleanor Smeal.
1988: Texas Treasurer Ann Richards delivered the keynote address at the
Democratic national convention in Atlanta, needling Republican nominee-apparent George
Bush as having been "born with a silver foot in his mouth."
1989: Reversing an earlier decision, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski declared
his candidacy for Poland's presidency, which he won the following day.
1989: Actress Rebecca Schaeffer, 21, was shot to death at her Los
Angeles home by obsessed fan Robert Bardo, who was later sentenced to life in prison.
1990: Baseball great Pete Rose was sentenced to five months in prison
for tax evasion.
1990: Dr. Karl Menninger, the dominant figure in American psychiatry
for six decades, died in Topeka, Kan., four days short of his 97th birthday.
1991: Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon demanded the release of two
Lebanese brothers being held in Germany, warning there could be "grave
consequences."
1991: The first Ibero-American Summit Conference opened in Guadalajara,
Mexico.
1992: Britain's opposition Labor Party chose John Smith as its leader,
replacing Neil Kinnock.
1993: FBI Director William Sessions continued to resist White House
suggestions he step down, saying he would resign only if President Clinton asked him to.
1994: Bosnia-Herzegovina's Muslim-dominated parliament endorsed a peace
plan, but later withdrew its support after Bosnian Serbs rejected it.
1994: A car bomb destroyed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, killing 95.
1994: Tutsi rebels declared an end to Rwanda's 14-week-old civil war.
1995: Senate Republicans opened a new round of Whitewater hearings.
1995: Opening statements were presented in the trial of Susan Smith,
the South Carolina woman charged with drowning her two young sons. Senate Republicans
opened a new round of Whitewater hearings.
1996: Recovery efforts continued off Long Island, New York, for the
bodies of the 230 people who died in the fiery crash of TWA Flight 800; President Clinton,
meanwhile, urged Americans not to immediately assume the crash was the work of terrorists.
1997: German businessman Thomas Kramer was slapped with a record
$323,000 penalty by the Federal Election Commission for making illegal US political
contributions.
1997: All key systems on the Russian space station "Mir"
returned to near-normal, about 24 hours after the already disabled spacecraft had lost
power.
1998: Residents along the northern coast of Papua New Guinea were left
reeling after a 23-foot-high tidal wave hit the night before, killing an estimated
three-thousand people.
1999: David Cone of the New York Yankees pitched a perfect game against
the Montreal Expos, leading his team to a 6-0 victory.
1999: Authorities looking into the disappearance of the plane
carrying John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law announced that the search and
rescue operation had become search and recovery.
1999: Paul Lawrie won the British Open after Jean Van de Velde
triple-bogeyed on the 72nd hole.
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2000: Shrugging off a veto threat from an
incompetent, lying immoral President Clinton, the Senate voted 61-to-38 in favor of eliminating the so-called "marriage penalty" by cutting taxes for virtually every married couple.
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2000: Senator Paul Coverdell (Republican, Georgia) died in Atlanta at age 61.
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