0388: Death of Maximus
0450: Death of Theodosius II, Emperor of the East
0570: Death of Pope Victor II
1148: Crusaders outside of Damascus retreat - end of the 2nd Crusade
1330: Serbians defeat Bulgarians, and kill Czar Michael Sisman of
Bulgaria
1458: Death of Jacopo Sannazaro (given 6,000 Crowns for 6 lines of
poetry)
1480: Turks make a sneak attack on Rhodes
1540: King Henry the Eighth's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, was
executed, the same day Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard.
1565: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, orders her heralds to publish that
Lord Darnley is to be "named and styled King"
1576: Frobisher's expedition reaches Labrador
1586: Sir Thomas Harriot introduces potatoes to Europe
1588: English fireships burn the Spanish Armada
1609: Bermuda discovered by Admiral George Somers
1611: Surrender of Kalmar Castle, Sweden
1615: Champlain discovers Lake Huron
1637: Riot in St. Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, in protest against the
use of the Book of Common Prayer
1650: Cromwell reaches Edinburgh
1750: Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig of a stroke. Bach had gone
blind about a year before, but had reported some return of vision in his last 10 days.
Musical fashion was passing Bach by, and though he was widely mourned it was as a
top-flight organist. German composer Johann Sebastian Bach was a devout Lutheran.
1794: Maximilien Robespierre, a leading figure of the French
Revolution, was sent to the guillotine.
1821: Peru declared its independence from Spain.
1865: The American Dental Association proposed its first code of ethics
this day.
1866: The metric system was authorized for the standardization of
weights and measures throughout the United States this day. And we still don't have it
figured out.
1868: The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing due
process of law, was declared in effect.
1868: The U.S. Department of Education was established on this day.
1896: The city of Miami, Florida, was incorporated. The newly
incorporated city had a population of 260. Today, not counting suburbs, Miami boasts a
population of nearly 400,000.
1896: Gustav Mahler finished composing his Third Symphony on this day
in 1896. Alma Mahler reported that this was a relief. Mahler composed in the countryside
and demanded silence. He even got farmhands to muffle the bells on nearby cows.
1900: The Hamburger is created by Louis Lassing in Connecticut
1914: Austria declared war on Serbia, marking the start of World War I.
1931: Congress makes "The Star-Spangled Banner" our 2nd
National Anthem.
1932: Federal troops forcibly dispersed the so-called "Bonus
Army" of World War One veterans who had gathered in Washington to demand money they
weren't scheduled to receive until 1945.
1933: The singing telegram was introduced on this day. The first person
to receive a singing telegram was singer, Rudy Vallee, in honor of his 32nd birthday.
1939: Judy Garland sang one of the most famous songs of the century
with the Victor Young Orchestra. The tune became her signature song and will forever be
associated with the singer-actress. Garland recorded Over the Rainbow on this day for
Decca Records. It was the musical highlight of the film, The Wizard of Oz.
1943: President Roosevelt announced the end of coffee rationing.
1945: A US Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New York's Empire
State Building, killing 14 people.
1945: The U.S. Senate ratified the United Nations Charter by a vote of
89-2.
1951: The Walt Disney film, Alice in Wonderland, was released by RKO
Pictures.
1954: The first press interview with Elvis Presley was published in
"The Memphis Press-Scimitar."
1959: In preparation for statehood, Hawaiians voted to send the first
Chinese-American, Hiram L. Fong, to the US Senate and the first Japanese-American, Daniel
K. Inouye, to the US House of Representatives.
1965: President Johnson announced he was increasing the number of
American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.
1973: On this day, exactly a year after their first date, TV's Six
Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors, married one of Charlie's Angels, Farrah Fawcett. The new
Farrah Fawcett-Majors was named one of the 10 most beautiful women on the campus of the
University of Texas.
1973: The Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers and the Band, among
others, played to 600,000 people at Watkins Glen, New York.
1976: An earthquake devastated northern China, killing at least 242,000
people, according to an official estimate. Other estimates have the death toll as high as
one million people killed.
1977: Roy Wilkins turned over leadership of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People to Benjamin L. Hooks.
1984: The 23rd Summer Olympic Games opened at the Los Angeles Coliseum
in Southern California this day. Peter V. Uberroth, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee,
welcomed 7,800 athletes from 140 nations during the 3-1/2 hour opening ceremonies.
1985: Lou Brock, Enos Slaughter, Hoyt Wilhelm and Arky Vaughn were
inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York on this day.
1986: ''NASA'' released a transcript of a recording from the doomed
space shuttle ''Challenger'' in which pilot Michael J. Smith could be heard saying,
''Uh-oh!'' as the spacecraft disintegrated.
1987: Attorney General Edwin Meese told the congressional Iran-Contra
committees that President Reagan was "quite surprised" the previous November
when Meese told him about the diversion of Iran arms-sales profits for use by the Contra
rebels.
1988: Both houses of Congress overwhelmingly approved some $6 billion
in aid for drought-stricken farmers.
1989: Israeli commandos abducted a pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim cleric,
Sheik Abdul-Karim Obeid from his home in south Lebanon.
1990: The collision of a freighter and two barges spilled 500,000
gallons of oil in the Houston Ship Channel near Galveston, Texas.
1990: Political newcomer and upset winner Alberto Fujimori was sworn in
as president of Peru.
1991: President Bush warned Iraq it would be making ''an enormous
mistake'' if it failed to disclose its nuclear weapons program to United Nations
inspectors.
1991: Dennis Martinez pitched the 15th perfect game in major-league
baseball history as the Montreal Expos beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 2-0.
1992: Democrats counterattacked a day after aides to President Bush had
accused Democrat Bill Clinton of lacking foreign policy expertise.
1992: Iraq opened its Agricultural Ministry to UN weapons experts after
a three-week standoff.
1992: Pop star Michael Jackson sued the British tabloid Daily Mirror
over photos and an article that said he was left a "scarface" from numerous
plastic surgeries.
1992: At the Barcelona Olympics, the US women's 400-meter freestyle
relay team won the gold medal.
1993: President Clinton declared himself ready to provide air power
quickly to protect peacekeepers in Bosnia once he received a request from the United
Nations.
1994: Congressional negotiators agreed on a crime-fighting package that
included hiring 100,000 new police officers, banning assault-style weapons, vastly
expanding the death penalty and putting third-time felons behind bars for life.
1995: A jury in Union, S.C., rejected the death penalty for Susan
Smith, sentencing her instead to life in prison for drowning her two young sons (Smith
will be eligible for parole after 30 years).
1995: The Senate, caught up in the reform fervor in Washington, voted
unanimously to bar senators and their staffers from accepting vacation trips and other
expensive gifts from anyone other than close friends and family.
1996: Federal investigators reported "very good leads" in the
hunt for the Olympic bomber, a day after the explosion in Centennial Olympic Park in
Atlanta that killed a Georgia woman.
1996: President Clinton, addressing a veterans convention in New
Orleans, called on Congress to pass expanded anti-terrorism measures.
1996: The Daily Miscellany first appears on
Imperium. If you would like to see the very first Daily Miscellany - I have placed
it online for you to see. The links won't work, but I thought you might like to see it.
Daily Miscellany Day One
1997: The Clinton administration and congressional leaders reached a
tentative agreement on balancing the budget by 2002 while slicing taxes for millions of
families, students and investors.
1997: Five people were killed in a flash flood that tore through Fort
Collins, Colorado.
1998: During a day of official mourning, President Clinton praised two
slain police officers at the US Capitol as heroes whose sacrifice "consecrated this
house of freedom."
1998: Monica Lewinsky received blanket immunity in exchange for
providing "full and truthful testimony" to a grand jury investigating President
Clinton.
1998: General Motors reached a tentative agreement with the United Auto
Workers to end an almost two-month strike.
1998: Bell Atlantic and GTE announced a $52 billion deal to create the
second-biggest phone company.
1999: The Senate opened debate on the Republicans' $792 billion tax cut
bill. Surgeon General David Satcher declared suicide a serious national threat, saying,
"People should not be afraid or ashamed to seek help."
2000: Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sworn in for an unprecedented third term of office, infuriating demonstrators who set government buildings ablaze.
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