0656: Caliph Uthman hacked to death by rebels
0900: Fulk, Archbishop of Rheims, killed by the Count of Flanders
0956: Death of Hugh, "the Great" of France
1094: Valencia taken by Don Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar "El Cid"
1128: Marriage of Geoffrey V (Plantagenet) of Anjou to Matilda,
daughter of King Henry of England and widow of Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor
1191: Philip II of France lauches an attack on Acre, which fails
1252: Pierre de Grandson granted a pension by Henry III, King of
England
1391: William Huntingfield brought to trial for the robberies of
Geoffrey Chaucer in September of 1390, and found guilty
1397: Coronation of Eric, King of Norway, Denmark and Sweden
1442: Coronation of Frederick IV as King of Germany
1579: Sir Francis Drake lands on the coast of California.
1775: The Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill took place near
Boston.
1789: Third Estate in France declared itself a national assembly.
1856: Republican Party opened its first convention in Philadelphia.
1885: Statue of Liberty arrived in NYC aboard the French ship `Isere'.
1928: Amelia Earhart embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from
Newfoundland to Wales -- the first by a woman.
1937: The Marx Brothers' "A Day At The Races" opens in NY.
1940: France asks Germany for terms of surrender in WW II.
1942: First American expeditionary force to land in Africa (WW II).
1944: Republic of Iceland proclaimed at Thingvallir, Iceland.
1945: German Federal Republic National Day.
1947: First round-the-world civil air service left N.Y. city.
1953: Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stayed executions of
spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg scheduled for the next day (it was their 14th wedding
anniversary).
1954: Televised Senate Army McCarthy hearings ended.
1963: Supreme Court strikes down rule requiring recitation of the
Lord's Prayer or reading of Biblical verses in public schools.
1969: The raunchy musical review"`Oh! Calcutta!" opened in
New York.
1971: U.S. returns control of Okinawa to the Japanese.
1972: President Nixon's eventual downfall began with the arrest of five
burglars inside Democratic national headquarters in Washington DC's Watergate complex.
1978: Ron Guidry sets Yankee record with 18 strike outs.
1982: President Galtieri resigns in Argentina.
1982: Ronald Reagan gives the "evil empire" speech.
1985: Eighteenth Space Shuttle Mission - Discovery 5 is launched.
1986: Singer Kate Smith died in Raleigh NC at age 79.
1986: Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger resigns Antonin Scalia
nominated.
1987: NY Yankee and KC Royal Mgr Dick Howser dies at 51 of brain
cancer.
1989: In China, eight people were sentenced to death for allegedly
beating soldiers and burning vehicles in Beijing at the start of the crackdown on the
pro-democracy movement.
1990: South African black nationalist Nelson Mandela and his wife,
Winnie, arrived in Ottawa, Canada, en route to an 11-day tour of the United States.
1991: The South African Parliament abolished the Population Registration Act, the last major apartheid law still in effect.
1991: The remains of President Zachary Taylor were briefly exhumed in Louisville, Kentucky, to test a theory that Taylor had died of arsenic poisoning (results showed death was from natural causes).
1991: Payne Stewart won the US Open golf tournament.
1992: President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a
breakthrough arms-reduction agreement.
1992: In addressing the U.S. Congress, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
pledged to find any American prisoners of war still being held in Russia.
1992: Two German relief workers, the last of Western hostages held in
Lebanon, were released.
1993: U.N. forces in Somalia searched in vain for warlord Mohamed
Farrah Aidid.
1993: President Clinton told a news conference his economic package was
making "remarkable progress."
1993: The Food and Drug Administration said no reports of tampering
with Diet Pepsi-Cola cans at the manufacturing level had been confirmed, despite reports
of foreign objects turning up in containers.
1994: After leading police on a slow-speed chase on Southern California
freeways, O.J. Simpson was arrested and charged with murder in the slayings of his
ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. (Simpson was later acquitted in a
criminal trial, but held liable in a civil trial.)
1995: Russian commandos stormed a hospital where Chechen rebels were
holding more than 1,000 hostages, but the Chechens beat the Russians back.
1996: ValuJet Airlines suspended its flight schedule indefinitely after
a federal inspection found "several serious deficiencies" in the discount
carrier's operation. (ValuJet resumed operations 15 weeks later.)
1998: The Senate snuffed out Congress' first bill to curb teen smoking,
with Democrats accusing Republicans of being owned by Big Tobacco, and Republicans
charging the measure was laden with too many amendments.
1998: Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto welcomed a rare US
intervention in currency markets to support the sinking yen.
1999: The Republican-controlled House narrowly voted to loosen
restrictions on sales at gun shows, marking a victory for the National Rifle Association.
1999: Joseph Stanley Faulder, a former auto mechanic who killed a woman
during a 1975 burglary, was lethally injected in Huntsville, Texas and became the first
Canadian to be executed in the United States in almost 50 years.
2000: In Cuba, more than 300,000 people turned out to protest the continued stay of Elian Gonzalez in the United States; it was the largest such demonstration since the previous December, when Cuba launched a national campaign of mass gatherings demanding the boy's return.
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