0044: Death of St. James the Greater
0325: The Council of Nicea closed. Regarded as the first 'ecumenical
council,' its 300 attending bishops drafted the Nicene Creed and fixed the formula for
Easter Sunday.
0326: Constantine refuses to carry out the traditional pagan
sacrifices.
1139: Alphonso I, King of Portugal, defeats the Moors
1201: Death of Gryffud ap Rhys
1215: Coronation, again, of Fredrick II as King of Germany
1261: Michael VIII recovers Constantinople - end of Latin Empire of
Romania
1345: John Chaucer, father of Geoffrey, summoned for non-payment of
rent
1394: Charles VI of France issues a decree for the general expulsion of
Jews from France.
1554: Marriage of Mary Tudor, Queen of England, to Philip of Spain
1564: Death of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Maximillian II
becomes emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
1567: Founding of Caracas, Venezuela
1570: Ivan IV, "the Terrible" Czar of Russia, attends the
public execution of almost all of his advisers and ministers
1582: Death of Philip Strozzi
1587: Japanese strong-man Hideyoshi bans Christianity in Japan and
orders all Christians to leave.
1593: Henry IV, Protestant King of France, becomes a Catholic:
"Paris is worth a Mass!"
1609: Sir Thomas Gates and Sir Thomas Dale run aground at Bermuda
1616: Death of Andreas Libavius, German alchemist
1621: Captain William Norton sent to Jamestown, Virginia
1650: Death of the Reverend William Burkit
1805: Aaron Burr visits New Orleans with plans to establish a new
country, with New Orleans as the capital city.
1814: George Stephenson of England tested his first steam locomotive.
1825: Schubert, having gotten good notices for a composition, wrote his
father not to be too pleased by that, because, he said, "a review, however favorable,
can be ludicrous if the critic lacks normal intelligence, which is often the case."
1866: Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army, the first officer
to hold the rank.
1868: Congress passed an act creating the Wyoming Territory.
1871: The merry-go-round was invented by William Schneider of
Davenport, Iowa.
1872: This day is known as the rain of black worms. Thousands of black
worms fell from the sky over Bucharest, Rumania.
1909: French aviator Louis Bleriot flew across the English Channel a
monoplane, traveling from Calais to Dover 37 minutes.The first person to fly a
"heavier-than-air machine" across the English Channel.
1934: Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is shot and killed by
Nazis.
1943: Benito Mussolini was dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor
Emmanuel the Third, and placed under arrest. (However, Mussolini was later rescued by the
Nazis, and re-asserted his authority.)
1946: The United States detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll the
Pacific the first underwater test of the device.
1952: Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the United
States.
1956: 51 people died when the Italian liner "Andrea Doria"
sank after colliding with the Swedish ship "Stockholm" off the New England
coast.
1959: Vice President Richard Nixon squares off against Soviet Premier
Nikita Khruschev during the so-called Kitchen debate in Moscow.
1963: The United States, the Soviet Union and Britainitialed a treaty
Moscow prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons the atmosphere, space or underwater.
1968: Pope Paul VI published the encyclical 'Humanae Vitae.' It
restated the Catholic position on the family, and condemned all artificial methods of
birth control.
1976: "Einstein on the Beach" premiered. Philip Glass's
opera, Minimalist in style and maximalist in scope, was sung at the Avignon Festival.
French audiences responded well, especially after hearing that the composer was a New York
taxi driver.
1978: Louise Joy Brown, the first "test tube baby," was born
Oldham, England; she'd been conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization.
1979: President Carter issued a letter absolving Dr. Samuel Mudd, the
physician who had treated the broken leg on John Wilkes Booth, of any role in the
assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
1983: The lowest natural temperature ever recorded occurred in
Antartica. The thermometer dropped to -129 degrees F.
1984: Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to
walk space as she carried out more than three hours of experiments outside the orbiting
space station "Salyut Seven."
1985: A spokeswoman for Rock Hudson confirmed that the actor,
hospitalized in Paris, was suffering from "AIDS." (Hudson died the following
October.)
1986: Former Navy radioman Jerry Whitworth was convicted of selling
U.S. military secrets to the Soviets through the John Walker spy ring. The government
called it the most damaging espionage case since World War II.
1986: Masked Sikh extremists shot and killed 15 people, 14 of them
Hindus, in an ambush on a bus at a railroad crossing in India's Punjab state.
1986: Movie director Vincente Minnelli, known for such film musicals as
"Gigi," "An American in Paris," and "The Band Wagon," died
in Los Angeles at age 76.
1987: Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige died of internal injuries he
sustained while participating a rodeo. (He was suceeded by C. William Verity.)
1988: A judge in New York ordered the feuding San Diego Yacht Club and
a New Zealand challenger to settle the battle for the America's Cup with a September race.
(The Americans used a two-hulled catamaran to easily defeat the New Zealanders' monohull,
setting off a legal dispute that ended two years later in victory for the American team.)
1989: The pilot of the United DC-10 that crashed in Sioux City, Iowa,
July 19th, Alfred C. Haynes, appeared at a news conference in which he dismissed
descriptions of himself as a hero after he and his crew managed to save 184 of the 296
people aboard the crippled aircraft.
1990: The Senate voted 96-0 to denounce Sen. Dave Durenberger, R-Minn.,
for ethics violations.
1990: The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein to discuss Iraq's economic dispute with Kuwait.
1990: Comedian Roseanne Barr sparked controversy with an off-key
rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner" during a double-header at Jack Murphy
Stadium in San Diego.
1990: Eastern Airlines and 10 present and former managers were indicted
on federal charges of faking maintenance records.
1991: Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the leader of the former Soviet Union, told
Communist Party leaders that is was no longer a realistic goal of building Communism and
that the party must reject "outdated ideological dogmas.""
1991: A deadline for Iraq to provide full details of its weapons of
mass destruction passed, with U.S. officials indicating military action was not imminent.
1991: The South African government admitted donating $35 billion in
1989 to support political parties opposing the South-West Africa People's Organization.
1992: The Italian government sent 7,000 soldiers to Sicily in a
crackdown on the "Mafia."
1992: Opening ceremonies were held Barcelona, Spain, for the 1992
Summer Olympics. Antonio Rebollo, a bronze medalist archer from Madrid, shot a flaming
arrow into the cauldron touching off the flame that would burn during the 15-day games.
1992: Actor-singer Alfred Drake died New York at age 78.
1993: Israelis launched a week of raids on guerrilla bases in south
Lebanon, while guerrillas fired rockets into Israel; the fighting ended July 31st with a
US-brokered cease-fire.
1994: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Raband Jordan's King Husse signed
a declaration at the White House ending their countries' 46-year-old formal state of war.
1995: A U.N. war crimes tribunal indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan
Karadzic, army commander General Ratko Mladic, and 22 other Serbs for war crimes.
1995: A bomb exploded on a Paris subway, killing seven people and
injuring at least 60.
1996: Divers searching the wreckage of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island,
New York, recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
1997: Autumn Jackson, the young woman who claimed to be Bill Cosby's
out-of-wedlock daughter, was convicted by a federal jury in New York of trying to extort
$40 million from the entertainer.
1997: K.R. Narayanan was sworn in as India's president, becoming the
first member of the "untouchable" Dalits caste to do so.
1997: Golfer Ben Hogan died in Fort Worth, Texas, at age 84.
1998: Two government officials revealed that special prosecutor Kenneth
Starr had subpoenaed President Clinton to testify before a federal grand jury about the
Monica Lewinsky case.
1998: The US Capitol was reopened, a day after a gunman killed two
police officers; a wounded suspect, Russell E. Weston Junior, was charged with murder.
1999: Lance Armstrong rode to victory in the Tour de France. Morocco
held a funeral for King Hassan II.
1999: The Woodstock '99 music festival in Rome, N.Y., ended in fires
and looting.
-
2000: A New York-bound Air France Concorde crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground; it was the first-ever crash of the supersonic jet.
-
2000: Under the lack of leadership provided by President
Clinton, the Middle East summit at Camp David collapsed.
-
2000: Texas Governor George W. Bush selected Dick Cheney to be his running mate.
Send Mail to pbower@neo.rr.com
