0459: Death of St. Simon Stylites
0478: Death of St. Lupus, who turned Attila from Troyes, France
1148: The 2nd Crusade arrives before Damascus
1187: Toron falls to Saladin
1221: The defeat of the 5th Crusade
1307: A General Chapter meeting of the Templars is held in Paris
1505: Portuguese destroy the city of Kilwa, East Africa
1534: Jacques Cartier discovers St. Laurence River; claims Canada for
France
1567: Forced abdication of Mary, Queen of Scots
1567: James VI proclaimed King of Scotland
1568: Death of Don Carlos "the Mad" of Spain
1679: New Hampshire became a royal colony of the British crown.
1701: French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac landed at the
present site of Detroit and founded Fort Detroit.
1739: Benedetto Marcello died in Brescia. Nobody remembers Marcello
today, but he was evidently quite respected in his day, because the tombstone is still
there, and it calls him "the Michelangelo of music."
1793: The first copyright law was instituted in France.
1847: Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived the valley
of the Great Salt Lake present-day Utah.
1861: Tennessee readmitted to the Union on this day.
1862: The eighth president of the United States, MartVan Buren, died
Kinderhook, New York.
1866: Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union
after the Civil War.
1896: The first national convention of the People's Party met in St.
Louis, Missouri. The party nominated William Jennings Bryan for president.
1915: Eastland: Great Lakes excursion steamer overturned in Chicago
River; 812 died.
1923: The Treaty of Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern
Turkey, was concluded Switzerland.
1929: President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which
renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy.
1936: The hottest day for Kansas was recorded today. It was 121°F near
Alton, Kansas.
1936: On this day Nebraska recorded its hottest temperature of 118°F
at Minden.
1937: The state of Alabama dropped charges against five black men
accused of raping two white women the "Scottsboro Case."
1938: Richard Strauss was in his seventies when he conducted an
operatic premiere in his home town for the first time. Munich audiences loved Strauss, but
Nazis authorities were less pleased when they heard "Friedenstag" on this day.
"Friedenstag" means "Day of Peace."
1938: Instant coffee was invented.
1946: The U. S. Conducted the first underwater test of an atomic bomb
at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
1956: The first guided missle ship was launched.
1959: During a visit to the Soviet Union, Vice President Richard M.
Nixon got into a "Kitchen Debate" with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a US
exhibition.
1969: The "Apollo Eleven" astronauts -- two of whom had been
the first men to set foot on the moon -- splashed down safely the Pacific.
1974: The US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Nixon had
to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.
1975: An Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a
mission which included the first-ever docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union.
1979: A Miami jury convicted Theodore Bundy of first-degree murder in
the slayings of Florida State University sorority sisters Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy.
1984: President Reagan told a news conference he had "no
plan" for a tax increase the following year despite Democratic presidential nominee
Walter F. Mondale's assertion that one was inevitable.
1984: After 14 years and four Super Bowl championships with the
Pittsburgh Steelers, Terry Bradshaw retired from the National Football League. Bradshaw,
age 35, was forced to the sidelines by an elbow injury.
1985: About 100 Lebanese released from an Israeli military prison
crossed the border into Lebanon; it was the second group of prisoners to be freed by the
Israelis since a TWA jetliner was hijacked by Shiite Muslim extremists.
1986: A federal jury in San Francisco convicted former Navy radioman
Jerry A. Whitworth of espionage for his role in a Soviet spy ring headed by John A. Walker
Jr. (Whitworth was sentenced to 365 years in prison.)
1986: Muslim captors release Rev. Lawrence Martin Jenco
1987: The re-flagged Kuwaiti supertanker "Bridgeton"
sustained damage after hitting a mine the Persian Gulf.
1987: Hulda Crooks, a 91-year-old mountaineer from California, became
the oldest woman to conquer Mount Fuji, Japan's highest peak.
1988: On the campaign trail, Republican George Bush heard chants of
"E-R-A," a reference to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, from members of a
professional women's group in Albuquerque, while Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was
heckled by anti-abortion protesters in St. Louis.
1989: President Bush reacted to reports that veteran U.S. diplomat
Felix S. Bloch might have spied for the Soviet Union by saying he was
"aggrieved" about the allegations.
1989: The Exxon Corporation estimated that its cleanup of the Alaskan
oil spill would cost $1.28 billion dollars.
1990: Iraq, accusing Kuwait of conspiring to harm its economy through
oil overproduction, massed tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks along the
Iraqi-Kuwaiti border.
1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced a final agreement
on a treaty designed to preserve the Soviet federation while giving more power to the
republics.
1991: Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer died in Miami at
age 87.
1992: Members of POW-MIA families disrupted a speech by President Bush,
prompting Bush to snap, "Would you please shut up and sit down?"
1993: The Russian government announced it would invalidate billions of
pre-1993 rubles.
1993: House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski denied allegations
he'd received embezzled funds, saying he had engaged in "no illegal or unethical
conduct."
1993: Two Los Angeles police officers sentenced in Rodney King beating
1994: Rwandan refugees began trickling home after Zaire reopened the
border between the two countries; meanwhile, the first wave of a U.S. airlift arrived.
1994: Miguel Indurain won his fourth consecutive Tour de France
victory.
1995: A suicide bomber set off an explosion in a crowded commuter bus
in Tel Aviv, Israel, killing six people.
1996: Two bombs blamed on Tamil separatists ripped through a commuter
tranear Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 64 civilians and wounding more than 400.
1997: Retired Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan died in
Arlington, Virginia, at age 91.
1997: Haley Barbour, countering Democrats, tells Senate inquiry that
party did not accept illegal foreign campaign contributions while he was leader.
1998: A gunman burst into the US Capitol, opening fire and killing two
police officers before being shot and captured.
1999: President Clinton attacked the Republicans' $792 billion tax-cut
plan in fund-raising speeches and his weekly radio address, saying it would "imperil
the future stability of the country." House Majority Leader Dick Armey replied that
the GOP plan would help fix an unfair tax system.
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2000: President Clinton continued to mediate the Camp David Mideast summit, meeting with Israeli, Palestinian and US negotiators.
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2000: Michael Stone, a pro-British paramilitary member, was freed from prison as part of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord after serving eleven years of a life sentence for murder.
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2000: Georgia's Democratic former governor Zell Miller was appointed to the late Republican Paul Coverdell's Senate seat.
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