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


Psalm 96:2 

0881: Coronation of Charles III "the Fat," last Emperor of the Franks

1111: Henry V, uncrowned Holy Roman Emperor, kidnaps the Pope

1209: Death of Philippe de Plessiez, 13th Master of the Templars

1242: Death of Henry VII, King of Germany

1294: Death of Kublai Khan

1424: Marriage of James I of Scotland to Jane Beaufort

1502: Castile expels all unbaptized Moors

1541: Founding of Santiago, Chile, by Pedro de Valdivia

1541: Santiago, Chile founded.

1554: Lady Jane Grey, who'd claimed the throne of England for nine days, was beheaded after being charged with treason. She was about the age of 16.

1631: John Donne preaches his sermon "Death's Duel" in St. Paul's of London

1733: English colonists led by James Oglethorpe founded Savannah, Georgia. He named the new colony Georgia for England's King George II.

1793: The first fugitive slave law is passed. This requires the return of all escaped slaves.

1797: the German national anthem, "Deutschland uber alles," was written by Haydn. He didn't write it for Germany, the Germans took the melody for their own after Haydn composed it as a national anthem for Austria.

1818: Chile gains independence from Spain.

1851: Edward Hargraves discovered gold at Summerhill Creek in New South Wales, triggering the Australian gold rush.

1870: Women in the Utah Territory gained the right to vote.

1878: Frederick W. Thayer, the captain of the Harvard University Baseball Club, patented the baseball catcher's mask.

1880: The National Croquet League was organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1892: President Lincoln's birthday was declared a national holiday.

1907: More than 300 people died when the steamer "Larchmont" collided with a schooner off New England's Block Island.

1908: The first round-the-world automobile race began in New York. (It ended in Paris the following August.)

1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded.

1913: A New York commission reports that there is widespread violation of child labor laws.

1915: The cornerstone for the Lincoln Memorial was laid in Washington D.C.

1918: All theaters in New York City were shut down in an effort to conserve coal.

1921: Winston Churchill of London is appointed colonial secretary.

1924: George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" premiered in New York.

1924: Calvin Coolidge, known by many as the 'silent President', made the first presidential political speech on radio. The speech originated from New York City and was broadcast on five radio stations. An audience estimated to be some five-million people listened in to hear the President speak.

1929: Charles Lindbergh announces his engagement to Anne Morrow. The Guggenheims helped aviators like Lindbergh, Curtiss, and the Wright Brothers.

1931: Japan’s first television broadcast is a baseball game.

1935: The Macon, the last U.S. Navy dirigible, crashes off the coast of California, killing two people.

1938: Japan refuses to reveal naval data requested by the U.S. and Britain. The rise of militaristic nationalism led Japan down the road to Pearl Harbor and World War II.

1940: The U.S.S.R. signs a trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.

1940: The radio play "The Adventures of Superman" debuted on the Mutual network with Bud Collyer as the Man of Steel.

1944: Wendell Wilkie enters the American presidential race.

1949: Moslem Brotherhood chief Hassan el Banna is shot to death in Cairo.

1953: The Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with Israel after a bomb exploded at the Soviet Legation in Tel Aviv.

1964: The Beatles played two concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City, concluding a very successful American tour.

1966: The South Vietnamese win two big battles in the Mekong Delta. In Vietnam's Mekong Delta, Navy SEALs were the military's eyes and ears, providing vital intelligence on enemy operations.

1968: "Soul on Ice" by Eldridge Cleaver was first published.

1972: Senator Kennedy advocates amnesty for Vietnam draft resisters.

1973: The first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict took place.

1973: The State of Ohio went metric on this day, becoming the first in the U.S. to post metric distance signs along Interstate 71. These new signs showed the distance in both miles and kilometers.

1974: Symbionese Liberation Army asks the Hearst family for $230 million in food for the poor.

1980: The Lake Placid Winter Olympics open in New York.

1983: Composer-pianist Eubie Blake, who wrote such songs as "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "Memories of You," died in New York City, five days after turning 100.

1987: Three Wall Street brokers - Robert Freeman, Richard B. Wigton and Timothy L. Tabor - were arrested on charges of insider-trading. (The charges against Wigton and Tabor were dropped. Freeman pled guilty to one felony.)

1987: A Court in Texas upholds $8.5 billion of a fine imposed on Texaco for the illegal takeover of Getty Oil.

1988: The Pentagon charged that two Soviet Navy vessels deliberately bumped two US warships in the Black Sea as the American vessels sailed through waters claimed by the Soviet Union.

1988: Alexander M. Haig dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

1989: The special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra case and the Justice Department reached an agreement on protecting classified materials aimed at allowing the trial of Oliver North to proceed.

1990: President Bush rejected Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's new initiative for troop reductions in Europe, but predicted a "major success" on arms control at the superpower summit in June.

1991: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein met with Soviet envoy Yevgeny Primakov, who brought with him a message from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

1991: In China, two longtime democracy activists, Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, were sentenced to 13 years in prison.

1991: Former New York City Mayor Robert Wagner died at age 80.

1992: Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton released a letter he had written in 1969 in which he said he had decided to give up a draft deferment in order to "maintain my political viability."

1992: President Bush formally announced his bid for re-election.

1993: In a crime that shocked Britons, two ten-year-old boys lured two-year-old James Bulger from his mother at a shopping mall in Liverpool, England, then beat him to death.

1994: President Clinton signed an $8.6 billion relief package for victims of the Northridge earthquake in southern California.

1994: The XVII Winter Olympic Games opened in Lillehammer, Norway.

1995: Jurors from the O.J. Simpson murder trial toured the scene where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman had been slain, then visited the estate of the former football star.

1996: Bob Dole eked out a victory in Iowa's Republican presidential caucuses, while Pat Buchanan came in a surprisingly strong second.

1997: The highest-ranking official to flee communist North Korea, Hwang Jang Yop, asked for political asylum at South Korea's consulate in Beijing.

1997: The Clinton administration gave permission to ten US news organizations to open bureaus in Cuba.

1998: A federal judge threw out President Clinton's new line-item veto authority. U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled that the law - which gives the president the power to strike items from tax and spending measures without vetoing the entire bill - violates the traditional balance of powers between the various branches of government.

1998: The American Medical Association called for a voluntary five-year moratorium on human cloning, rather than the outright ban President Clinton has backed. The board of trustees of the largest U.S. doctors' group said it supports research that is important to human health. It urged Congress not to interfere with current human, animal or cellular cloning research that is not directly aimed at producing a human being.

1998: At Nagano, Norwegian Bjorn Daehlie became the first man to win six Winter Olympic gold medals, as he placed first in the ten-kilometer classical cross-country race.

1998: A minor earthquake occurred early in the New Madrid, Mo., region, but no damage or injuries were reported, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Spokeswoman Kathleen Gohn said preliminary data showed the quake had a magnitude of 3.0 on the Richter scale and occurred at 4:38 ET a.m. Gohn said the epicenter was about 15 miles northeast of Blytheville, Ark., or about 70 miles north-northeast of Memphis, Tenn., and was felt in the towns of Hayti and Steele, Mo.

1998: An appeals panel reinstated Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati's gold medal, a day after he was stripped of the honor for testing positive for marijuana.

1999: Swarms of anxious travelers were left stranded when American Airlines again scrubbed more than 1,000 flights after its pilots defied a court order and continued their mass sickout.

2000: Charles M. Schulz, creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip, died in Santa Rosa, California, at age 77. 

2000: Hall-of-Fame football coach Tom Landry, who led the Dallas Cowboys to five Super Bowls, died in Irving, Texas, at age 75. 

2000: Michelle Kwan won her third straight US Figure Skating Championships crown, while Michael Weiss successfully defended the men's title.