0479: Death of St. Lupus of Troyes
1014: Basil II captures & blinds a Bulgarian army in the Pass of
Kleidion
1030: King Olav Haraldsson, patron saint of Norway, is killed in the
battle of Stiklestad. His wholehearted (and often harsh) support for Christianity in that
country was decisive in establishing the religion there.
1095: Death of St. Ladislaus I, King of Hungary
1099: Death of St. Urban II, Pope
1187: Sidon falls to Saladin
1192: Saladin takes Jaffa, again
1214: Birth of Sturla Thordsson, Law Man, and Skald
1284: Death of Sturla Thordsson, Law Man, and Skald
1432: Hamburg, Germany spared by the Hussites
1492: First Almanac printed
1506: Death of Martin Behaim, constructor of the first known world
globe
1565: Marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, to Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley
1567: James VI crowned King of Scots
1602: Execution of the Duke of Biron
1603: Bartholomew Gilbert killed by Indians in North Carolina
1644: Death of Pope Urban VIII
1645: Matthew Hopkins, "Witch-finder General," charges 29
persons for witchcraft; all were condemned
1833: English abolitionist William Wilberforce dies a mere three days
after England abolishes slavery.
1835: First sugar plantation in Hawaii begun.
1858: First commercial treaty between US and Japan is signed.
1914: First transcontinental phone link made. Between NYC and San
Francisco
1920: First transcontinental airmail flight from New York to San
Francisco
1948: Britain's King George VI opened the Olympic Games in London.
1950: RKO Pictures released the Walt Disney adaptation of the Robert
Louis Stevenson literary classic "Treasure Island."
1957: The International Atomic Energy Commission was established.
1957: Jack Paar made his debut as host of NBC's "Tonight
Show.""
1958: President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space
Act, which created "NASA."
1967: Fire swept the USS Forrestal, stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin,
killing 134 servicemen.
1968: Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's stance
against artificial birth control.
1975: President Ford became the first U.S. president to visit the site
of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland as he paid tribute to the victims.
1980: A state funeral was held in Cairo, Egypt, for the deposed Shah of
Iran, who had died two days earlier at age 60.
1981: Britain's Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in an
elaborate ceremony televised worldwide from St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
1983: Death claimed actor David Niven in Switzerland at age 73; movie
director Luis Bunuel in Mexico at age 83; and actor Raymond Massey in Beverly Hills,
California, at age 86.
1984: On the first day of competition at the Summer Olympics in Los
Angeles, Americans won six gold medals in swimming and cycling events.
1985: The space shuttle Challenger began an eight-day mission that got
off to a shaky start -- the spacecraft achieved a safe orbit even though one of its main
engines had shut down prematurely after lift-off.
1985: Spring Hill, Tennessee, was selected as the new home of the
Saturn automobile assembly plant. General Motors announced that it expected to produce up
to 500,000 of the compact cars a year beginning in 1989.
1986: A federal jury in New York found that the NFL had committed an
antitrust violation against the rival United States Football League. But in a hollow
victory for the USFL, the jury ordered the NFL to pay $3.
1987: Testifying for a second day before the Iran-Contra congressional
committees, Attorney general Edwin Meese strongly defended his inquiry into the affair.
1988: NASA officials delayed a critical launch-pad test-firing of the
space shuttle Discovery's main engines, scheduled for Aug. 1, another three days. (The
test finally took place August tenth, and was judged a success.)
1989: Poland's newly elected president, Wojciech Jaruzelski resigned
his post as Communist Party general secretary, and was succeeded by Mieczyelaw Rakowski.
1990: Bruno Kreisky, Austria's longest-serving chancellor and an
architect of its policy of neutrality, died at age 79.
1991: President Bush arrived in Moscow for a superpower summit with
Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev that included the signing of the Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty.
1991: The Federal Reserve sought a $200 million penalty against BCCI
for violating U.S. banking laws. It was the largest fine in the Federal Reserve's history.
1991: Jack Nicklaus became the second golfer to win the U.S. Amateur,
the U.S. Open and the U.S. Senior Open golf tournaments.
1992: Former East German leader Erich Honecker was arrested on his
return to his homeland and charged with manslaughter. He was later permitted to leave
after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
1992: The U.S. 400-meter freestyle relay team won the gold medal at the
Barcelona Summer Olympics.
1992: Former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and his law partner,
Robert Altman, were indicted on charges of lying about their roles in the BCCI scandal.
1993: The Israeli Supreme Court acquitted retired Ohio autoworker John
Demjanjuk of being Nazi death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible," and threw out his
death sentence; Demjanjuk was set free.
1993: The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved Judge Ruth
Bader Ginsburg's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
1993: Morihiro Hosokawa was chosen prime minister by the majority
political coalition in the Japanese Diet (parliament).
1994: Anti-abortion activist Paul Hill shot and killed Dr. John Bayard
Britton and Britton's bodyguard, James H. Barrett, outside the Ladies Center clinic in
Pensacola, Fla. (Hill was later convicted and sentenced to death).
1994: President Clinton ordered U.S. troops to Rwanda's capital to
provide airport security for relief flights.
1994: Supreme Court nominee Stephen G. Breyer won Senate approval.
1995: President Clinton and Republicans marked the 30th anniversary of
Medicare by accusing one another of putting the program's future at risk.
1996: China detonated a nuclear test explosion that it promised would
be its last, just hours before international negotiators in Geneva began discussing a
global ban on such testing.
1996: At the Atlanta Olympics, Carl Lewis won the gold medal in the
long jump, becoming only the fifth Olympian to win gold medals in four straight games.
Michael Johnson won the 400-meter dash, Allen Johnson the 110-meter hurdles.
1997: Members of Congress from both parties embraced compromise
legislation designed to balance the budget while cutting taxes.
1997: Minamata Bay, Japan, once a worldwide symbol of industrial
pollution, was declared free of mercury 40 years after contaminated food fish were blamed
for deaths and birth defects.
1998: President Clinton reached an agreement with Kenneth Starr to
provide grand jury testimony via closed-circuit television in the Monica Lewinsky case.
1998: Jerome Robbins, one of modern ballet's master choreographers and
one of Broadway's major innovators, died in New York at age 79.
1999: A day trader, apparently upset over stock losses, opened fire in
two Atlanta brokerage offices, killing nine people and wounding 13 before shooting himself
to death; authorities say Mark O. Barton also killed his wife and two children.
1999: California Govenor Gray Davis abandoned the state's effort to
preserve Proposition 187, a divisive voter-approved ban on schooling and other public
benefits for illegal immigrants.
2000: Yasser Arafat set off on a multi-country tour to
drum up support for the Palestinians in the Middle East peace process.
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