0685: John V becomes Pope
1227: Death of Kiu Chang Chun
1373: Saint Bridget of Sweden dies. The pious and charitable Swede,
founder of the Bridgettine Order, is recognized as a major figure in the pope's decision
to return to Rome.
1532: Turkish invasion forces Charles V to agree to peace with
Protestants
1540: Beheading of Thomas Cromwell
1595: Spanish land in Cornwall, burn Mousehole & Penzance
1599: Caravaggio's 1st public commission for paintings
1623: Virginia colonists attacked by Indians
1637: A court decision forces King Charles I to hand over the colony of
Massachusetts to Sir Ferdinand Gorges, one of the founders of the Council of New England
1637
1637: Jenny Geddes throws a stool at the Dean of St. Giles Church in
Edinburgh, in protest against the new Prayer-book of King Charles I.
1827: The first U.S. Swimming School opened in Boston, Massachusetts.
1829: William AustBurt of Mount Vernon, Michigan, received a patent for
his "typographer" – a forerunner of the typewriter.
1852: First interment in US National Cemetary at Presidio.
1885: Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died
Mount McGregor, New York, at age 63.
1886: New York saloonkeeper Steve Brodie claimed to have made a
daredevil plunge from the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River.
1904: By some accounts, the ice cream cone was invented by Charles E.
Menches during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition St. Louis.
1912: On this day in 1912, the opera composer Ethel Smyth was arrested
for throwing a brick through the British Home Secretary's window. She was also charged
with setting fire to the country home of the Colonial Secretary.
1914: Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the
killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; the dispute led to World War
One.
1918: American Baptist clergyman Joseph H. Gilmore dies at the age of
84 . He is remembered today primarily for the hymn, 'He Leadeth Me,' which he wrote at the
age of 28.
1952: Egyptian military officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew
King Farouk the First.
1967: Rioting that claimed some 43 lives erupted Detroit.
1973: Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox served subpoenas on
the White House after President Nixon refused to turn over tapes and documents.
1977: A jury Washington DC convicted 12 Hanafi Muslims of charges
stemming from the hostage siege at three buildings the previous March.
1979: Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini, who overthrew the Shah of Iran and
made his country a theocracy, laid down the law on music. He said, "Music is no
different from opium. Music affects the human mind in a way that makes people think of
nothing but music and sensual matters."
1980: The USSR's Soyuz 37 was launched. On board were cosmonauts Viktor
Gorbato and Lt. Col. Pham Tuan: The first non-Caucasian in space.
1982: TV star Vic Morrow and two child actors were killed when a
helicopter disabled by special effects explosives crashed on the set of "The Twilight
Zone" movie.
1983: President Reagan appealed in his weekly radio address for a donor
liver to save the life of Ashley Bailey, an 11-month-old girl at a Minneapolis hospital. A
donor could not be found; Ashley died in November.
1984: After "Penthouse" published nude photos of
Vanessa Williams, she resigned her title of Miss America. Thus she became the first Miss
America to resign her title.
1985: President Reagan, just out of the hospital for cancer surgery,
met with Chinese President Li Xiannian at the White House, where they approved the signing
of a nuclear cooperation agreement.
1985: Bandleader Kay Kyser, known for his "Kollege of Musical
Knowledge," died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
1986: Britain's Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster
Abbey London. (The couple divorced 1996.)
1987: President Reagan named nearly a dozen people to complete the
ranks of his commission on the deadly illness AIDS.
1987: Billy William, Catfish Hunter and Ray Dandridge were inducted
into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
1988: In his weekly radio address, President Reagan responded to the
just-completed Democratic national convention by accusing the Democrats of "singing
the same sad song they sang four years ago."
1989: In a stunning defeat, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party
lost its majority in the upper house of the Diet in parliamentary elections, prompting
Prime Minister Sousuke Uno to resign the next day.
1989: Greg LeMond of the United States won the Tour de France.
1990: President Bush announced his choice of Judge David Souter of New
Hampshire to succeed retiring Justice William J. Brennan on the U.S. Supreme Court.
1991: The Senate voted to impose a long list of strict new conditions
on renewal of China's normal trade status in 1992. However, the 55-44 vote fell short of
the 2/3 majority later needed to override President Bush's veto.
1991: The Soviet government applied for full membership to the IMF and
World Bank after the Group of Seven recommended a limited "special association"
for the USSR.
1992: Israel's new government canceled plans to build more than 6,600
housing units in the occupied territories.
1992: Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third, touring the Middle
East, made a secret visit to Lebanon.
1992: AIDS experts meeting in Amsterdam expressed alarm over possible
reports of an AIDS-like illness in people not infected with the AIDS virus, HIV.
1993: White House deputy counsel Vincent W. Foster Junior was buried
near Hope, Arkansas, three days after taking his own life in a Virginia park.
1993:Surgeon General-designate Joycelyn Elders stuck to her firm stands
on sex education and AIDS prevention in a one-day confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.
1993: James Jordan, father of basketball star Michael Jordan, was
murdered near Bennettsville, South Carolina.
1994: The space shuttle Columbia returned to Earth after a 15-day
mission which included experiments on the effects of weightlessness on aquatic animals.
1995: In a new get-tough approach, the United Nations ordered the first
combat unit from its rapid reaction force to Sarajevo to take out any rebel Serb guns that
fired at U.N. peacekeepers.
1996: At the Atlanta Olympics, Kerri Strug made a heroic final vault
despite torn ligaments in her left ankle as the U.S. women gymnasts clinched their
first-ever Olympic gold medal.
1996: The U.S. Senate passed a welfare overhaul bill.
1997: The search for Andrew Cunanan, the suspected killer of designer
Gianni Versace and others, ended as police found his body on a houseboat in Miami Beach,
Florida, an apparent suicide.
1998: Scientists at the University of Hawaii announced they had turned
out more than 50 carbon-copy mice, with a cloning technique said to be more reliable than
the one used to create Dolly the sheep.
1999: Members of the Kennedy family gathered in New York City for a
private memorial Mass a week after John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister,
Lauren Bessette, died in a plane crash off Martha's Vineyard.
1999: Space shuttle Columbia blasted off with the world's most powerful
X-ray telescope and Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a U.S. space flight.
1999: Morocco's King Hassan II died at age 70.
1999: Woodstock '99 opened in Rome, New York.
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2000: President Clinton rejoined the troubled Middle East talks at Camp David after hurrying back from a four-day trip to Asia.
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2000: Leaders of the major industrial countries concluded their summit in Japan by announcing a campaign to slash the number of deaths worldwide from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
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2000: In sports: Lance Armstrong clinched his second straight victory in the Tour de France. Tiger Woods, at 24, became the youngest player to win the career Grand Slam with a record-breaking performance in the British Open. Karrie Webb, 25, won the US Women's Open.
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