0221BC: Chu Yuan, Chinese poet, drowns
0709: Boniface and his party are murdered by German heathens
0754: Death of Abul'-Abbas, Caliph of Bagdad
1099: Knights and their families on the First Crusade witness an
eclipse of the moon and interpret it as a sign from God that they will recapture Jerusalem
1191: Richard I of England sets sail for Acre
1249: The Seventh Crusade captures Daimetta
1291: Bruce, Baliol, and seven others acknowledge Edward I of England
as sovereign over Scotland
1316: Death of Louis X, King of France
1455: Poet Franáois Villon kills a priest in a brawl, is banished from
Paris
1510: Michelangelo commissioned to make 15 statues of saints for the
Duomo of Siena, Italy
1568: 10,000 Spanishunder Ferdinand, the Duke of Alba, crushes the
Calvinist insurrection in Ghent.
1568: Egmont and Hoorne beheaded at Brussels, with 18 other patriots
1595: Henry IV's army defeats the Spanish at the Battle of
Fontaine-Francaise.
1602: The first expedition of the British East India Company reaches
Achin, Sumatra
1607: Marriage of Dr. John Hall to Susannah Shakespeare, daughter of
William and Anne Shakespeare
1625: Death of Orlando Gibbons, composer
1637: 500 Peqot Indians killed at Mystic, Connecticut by the English
1783: Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier publicly demonstrated their
hot-air balloon in a ten-minute flight over Annonay, France.
1794: The U.S. Congress prohibits citizens from serving in any foreign
armed forces.
1826: Carl Maria von Weber died, he was 39. Weber suffered from
tuberculosis so bad that the man who did the autopsy must have wondered how the composer
lived as long as he did.
1827: Athens falls to the Ottomans.
1833: Ada Lovelace (future 1st computer programmer) meets Charles
Babbage.
1849: Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy.
1851: Harriet Beecher Stow publishes the first installment of Uncle
Tom's Cabin in The National Era
1872: The Republican National Convention, the first major political
party convention to includes blacks, commences.
1884: Civil War hero General William T. Sherman refused the Republican
presidential nomination, saying, "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve
if elected."
1900: In South Africa, British troops under Lord Roberts seize Pretoria
from the Boars.
1917: About 10,000,000 American men began registering for the draft in
World War One.
1933: President Roosevelt signed a bill abolishing the gold standard.
1940: The Battle of France began during World War Two.
1944: The first B-29 bombing raid strikes the Japanese rail line in
Bangkok, Thailand.
1947: Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave a speech at Harvard
University in which he outlined an aid program for Europe that came to be known as
"The Marshall Plan."
1956: Premier Nikita Khrushchev denounces Josef Stalin to the Soviet
Communist Party Congress.
1961: The critic Hans Keller played a hoax, he recorded a bunch of
random noises and claimed it was a new piece by a composer named Piotr Zak. He broadcast
it on the BBC and sat back to see what critics would say.
1967: War erupted in the Middle East as Israel, convinced an Arab
attack was imminent, raided Egyptian military targets. Syria, Jordan and Iraq entered the
conflict.
1968: Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded just
after claiming victory in California's Democratic presidential primary. Gunman Sirhan
Bishara Sirhan was immediately arrested.
1975: Egypt reopened the Suez Canal to international shipping, eight
years after it was closed because of the 1967 war with Israel.
1985: General Motors agreed to buy Hughes Aircraft for more than $5
billion. At the time, it was the biggest corporate purchase outside the oil industry.
1986: A federal jury in Baltimore convicted Ronald W. Pelton of selling
secrets to the Soviet Union. (Pelton was sentenced to three life prison terms plus ten
years.)
1987: President Reagan, in Venice for an upcoming economic summit,
called for an end to government agriculture subsidies by the year 2000 in a televised
address carried in Europe by the United States Information Agency.
1988: Clarence Pendleton, chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission,
died at age 57. "The Phantom of the Opera" won seven Tony Awards, including best
musical; "M. Butterfly" won best play.
1989: Chinese soldiers slaughter pro-democracy students at Tiananmen
Square in Beijing, China.
1990: Authorities in Oakland County, Mich., moved to prevent further
use of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's suicide device that Janet Adkins, an Oregon woman diagnosed
with Alzheimer's disease, had used a day earlier to take her own life.
1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev delivered his delayed Nobel Peace lecture in Oslo, Norway, warning that Western failure to heed his call for economic aid could dash hopes for a peaceful new world order.
1991: The space shuttle "Columbia" blasted off with seven astronauts on a nine-day mission.
1992: The government announced the nation's unemployment rate had
jumped to seven-point-five percent the month before, the highest level in nearly eight
years.
1993: In Somalia, militiamen loyal to Mohamed Farrah Aidid killed 24
Pakistani soldiers.
1993: In Texas, Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison won the US Senate seat
vacated by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen.
1993: "Colonial Affair," ridden by Julie Krone, won the
Belmont Stakes.
1993: Country star Conway Twitty died in Springfield, Missouri, at age
59.
1994: President Clinton headed across the English Channel aboard the
USS George Washington, en route to the 50th anniversary commemoration of D-Day in
Normandy.
1994: At least 264 Indonesian villagers in East Java were killed by an
earthquake.
1995: Hurricane Allison buffeted the Gulf Coast with 75 mph winds,
swamping streets and spinning off tornadoes but causing no major damage.
1996: Joseph Waldholtz, the ex-husband of -S Representative Enid Greene
(Republican, Utah), pleaded guilty to providing his wife false information for her taxes
and to falsifying spending reports from her congressional campaign.
1997: Harold J. Nicholson, the highest-ranking CIA officer ever caught
spying against his own country, was sentenced to 23 and a-half years in prison for selling
defense secrets to Russia after the Cold War.
1998: Volkswagen AG won approval to buy Rolls-Royce Motor Cars for $700
million (however, BMW later got to purchase the Rolls-Royce brand name and logo).
1998: A strike at a General Motors parts factory near Detroit closed
five assembly plants and idled workers nationwide; the walkout lasted seven weeks.
1999: Jazz and pop singer Mel Torme died in Los Angeles at age 73.
1999: Pope John Paul II began a 13-day pilgrimage to his native Poland.
1999: Charismatic failed in his bid to win thoroughbred racing's Triple
Crown, finishing third behind Lemon Drop Kid and Vision and Verse in the Belmont Stakes.
1999: Steffi Graf won her sixth French Open tennis title, beating
top-ranked Martina Hingis 4-6, 7-5, 6-2.
2000: President Clinton visited the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, the last stop in his weeklong European tour, where he dispensed $80 million in American aid to help entomb the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, scene of the world's worst nuclear accident.
2000: Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count under an agreement that dropped murder charges in the stabbing deaths of two men outside a Super Bowl party in Atlanta.
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