Sing to the LORD, bless His name; Proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day.


Psalm 96:2 

660BC: Traditional founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu Tenno.

0680: Death of Caedmon

0731: Death of Pope Gregory II

0821: Death of St. Benidict of Aniane

0824: Death of St. Pashal I, Pope

1250: Death of William de Sonnac, 18th Master of the Templars

1252: Marriage of Ottakar I, King of Bohemia, to Margaret, widow of King Henry VII of Germany

1498: Savonerola resumes preaching in defiance of his excommunication

1503: Death of Elizabeth of York, Queen to Henry VII of England

1525: The monks of Glastonbury meet to elect a new Abbot; no vote is taken

1531: Henry VIII is recognized as the supreme head of the Church of England.

1575: King Frederick of Denmark offers island of Hveen to Tycho Brahe

1628: A special tax is levied in England to raise a fleet against the French

1650: Death of Rene Descartes, philosopher (end of the Renaissance)

1752: Through the efforts of Benjamin Franklin, the first American hospital opened, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1808: Judge Jesse Fell experimented by burning anthracite coal to keep his house warm on a winter day in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

1809: Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.

1812: The Massachusetts Legislature, at the behest of Governor Elbridge Gerry, passed a re-districting law that favored Gerry's party, a political maneuver that resulted in the term "gerrymandering."

1858: A French girl, Bernadette Soubirous, claimed for the first time to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary near Lourdes.

1861: President-elect Lincoln departed Springfield, Illinois, for Washington.

1903: Congress passes the Expedition Act, giving antitrust cases priority in the courts.

1904: President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims strict neutrality for the U.S. in the Russo-Japanese War.

1910: Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Eleanor Alexander announce their wedding date--June 20, 1910. President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill creating Mesa Verde National Park.

1916: The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presented its first concert. The symphony was the first by a municipal orchestra to be supported by taxes.

1926: The Mexican government nationalizes all church property.

1929: The Lateran Treaty was signed, with Italy recognizing the independence and sovereignty of Vatican City.

1936: The Reich arrests 150 Catholic youth leaders in Berlin. When the war was over many of the leaders of the Reich were put on trial for the atrocities that had been committed.

1937: A sit-down strike against General Motors ended, with the company agreeing to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union. 1939: The Negrin government returns to Madrid, Spain.

1943: General Dwight David Eisenhower was selected to command the allied armies in Europe.

1945: President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement during World War Two.

1949: Willie Pep recaptured the world featherweight boxing title by defeating Sany Sadler in New York City.

1953: Walt Disney’s "Peter Pan" premiers.

1954: A 75,000-watt light bulb is lit at the Rockefeller Center in New York, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Edison’s first light bulb.

1955: Nationalist Chinese complete the evacuation of the Tachen Islands.

1957: The National Hockey League Players Association was formed in New York City.

1958: Ruth Carol Taylor became the first black woman to become a stewardess by making her initial flight on Mohawk Airlines from Ithaca, New York, to New York City.

1959: Iran turns down Soviet aid in favor of a U.S. proposal for aid.

1960: After censors cut a 4-minute segment from the Tonight Show on the previous night's show, at 11:51 p.m. host Jack Paar walked off the air. The censored material was part of the monologue about a "water closet."

1964: Cambodian Prince Sihanouk blames the U.S. for a South Vietnamese air raid on a village in his country.

1965: U.S. and South Vietnamese war planes made their first bombing raids on North Vietnam.

1965: The Johnson administration orders air strikes against targets in North Vietnam, in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on the American military in South Vietnam.

1966: Vice President Hubert Humphrey begins a tour of Vietnam.

1966: Willie Mays became the highest-paid baseball player in either league as he signed a two-year contract with the San Francisco Giants for a salary of about $130,000 a year.

1968: The new 20,000 seat Madison Square Garden officially opened in New York. It was the fourth arena to be named Madison Square Garden.

1972: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company and "Life" magazine canceled plans to publish what had turned out to be a fake autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.

1974: Communist-led rebels shower artillery fire into a crowded area of Phnom Pehn, killing 139 and injuring 46 others.

1975: Margaret Thatcher became the first female leader of a British political party when she was elected leader of the Conservatives.

1979: Followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, nine days after the religious leader returned to his home country following 15 years of exile.

1983: Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resigned his post, but was offered the chance by Prime Minister Menachem Begin to remain in the Cabinet as a minister without portfolio. (Sharon accepted two days later.)

1985: Saudi Arabia's King Fahd met in Washington with President Reagan to discuss Middle East peace prospects.

1986: After nine years of captivity, Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky was released by the Soviet Union as part of an East-West prisoner exchange.

1987: President Reagan met in the Oval Office with members of the Tower Commission, who asked him questions about the Iran-Contra affair.

1987: North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith got his 600th career coaching win as the Tar Heels defeated Wake Forest 94-85.

1987: The U.S. All Stars beat the Soviet hockey team 4-3, in Quebec.

1988: President Reagan's onetime political director, Lyn Nofziger, was convicted of illegally lobbying top White House aides. (However, the US Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned Nofziger's conviction, and the US Supreme Court refused to reinstate it.)

1989: Reverend Barbara C. Harris became the first woman consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal Church.

1990: South African black activist Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison. Mandela walked through the gate of Victor Verster prison outside Cape Town, setting off celebrations among his followers.

1990: In a stunning upset, heavyweight champion Mike Tyson was knocked out in the tenth round of his fight with Buster Douglas in Tokyo.

1991: President Bush met with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell, who had just returned from the Gulf region. Afterward, Bush said he would hold off on a ground war against Iraq for the time being, saying allied air strikes had been "very, very effective." 

1992: Secretary of State James A. Baker III, on a tour of six former Soviet republics, visited Armenia, where he heard an appeal from the republic's president for U.S. help in resolving a bloody feud with neighboring Azerbaijan.

1992: A study said drinking three cups of coffee a day does not raise the risk of heart disease.

1993: President Clinton announced his choice of Miami prosecutor Janet Reno to be the nation's first female attorney general, after two earlier candidates stumbled because they'd hired illegal aliens.

1994: President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, meeting at the White House, failed to resolve key differences on trade.

1994: A judge in Fort Worth, Texas, ordered Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson acquitted of ethics charges after prosecutors refused to present their case.

1994: The space shuttle Discovery returned from an eight-day mission.

1994: Actor William Conrad died in Los Angeles at age 73.

1995: The space shuttle Discovery landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, ending a historic rendezvous mission with Russia's Mir space station.

1995: President Clinton, in his weekly radio address, threatened to veto any attempt by Republicans to scrap plans to put 100,000 additional police officers on the streets.

1996: A day after losing to an IBM computer dubbed "Deep Blue," world chess champion Gary Kasparov rebounded to defeat the machine and even their six-game series in Philadelphia at one victory apiece.

1997: In a display of bipartisan unity, President Clinton and congressional leaders agreed to focus the new Congress on balancing the budget and other issues, ranging from cutting taxes to solving the capital city's myriad problems.

1997: Space shuttle "Discovery" was launched on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

1998: Skier Jonny Moseley won the first US gold medal at Nagano, in men's moguls freestyle; Picabo Street won the women's super-G. Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for marijuana (his medal was later reinstated).

1998: The first helicopter carrying humanitarian aid reached survivors of devastating earthquakes in northern Afghanistan a week after the first quake struck. Families walked miles, some barefoot, through the snow from remote mountain villages where thousands of their relatives and neighbors were killed, to the regional center of Rustaq where aid was coordinated.

1998: All 33 crewmembers of a crab boat were rescued after it was struck by a cargo ship, the Hanjin Barcelona, and sank in the icy Bering Sea. The crew members of the Seattle-based fishing boat, the Alaska-1, had time to escape into life rafts before it sank 34 miles north of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. They were later picked up by a nearby fishing boat.

1998: The Church of England's general synod, voted to eliminate the reference to temptation in the Lord's Prayer. Senior clerics decided to delete the words "Lead us not into temptation" and substitute "Save us from the time of trial" in a modern version of the prayer. The prayer is to be introduced in church services in the new millennium. The change must go to a revision committee and then be approved again by the general synod. If finally approved congregations will have a choice of whether to use the traditional version of the prayer or the modern one.

1999: A federal jury in New York found several gun makers responsible in three area shootings for letting guns fall into the hands of criminals; other manufacturers were cleared.

2000: Britain stripped Northern Ireland's Protestant-Catholic government of power in a bid to prevent its collapse over the IRA's refusal to disarm.  

2000: The space shuttle "Endeavour" thundered away from Cape Canaveral on a mission to map the world as never before.

2000: French movie director Roger Vadim died in Paris at age 72.