0579: Benedict I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
0657: St Vitalian begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1178: Fredrick "Barbarossa" crowned King of Burgundy
1233: Assassination of Conrad of Marburg and Gerhard Lutelholb
1291: Haifa falls to the Mameluks
1371: Massacre of the Compagnia del Bruco in Florence, Italy
1419: Anti-Catholic Hussites, followers of executed reformer Jan Hus,
stormed the town hall in Prague and threw Catholic councillors out of the windows. Thus
began the Hussite Wars.
1538: Newfoundland reached by Sir Humphrey Gilbert
1609: Iroquois Indians defeated by their first sight of firearms
1619: The first representative assembly in America convened in
Jamestown, Virginia (House of Burgesses).
1629: The Puritans of Salem, Mass. appointed Francis Higginson as their
teacher and Samuel Skelton as their pastor. The church covenant, composed afterward by
these two men,allowed into communion only those who could prove a sound doctrinal
knowledge and an experience of grace in their lives.
1656: Charles X of Sweden defeated the Poles at the Battle of Warsaw,
two days after invading the country.
1718: William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania as a colony for Quakers to
experience religious liberty, dies.
1729: The city of Baltimore was founded.
1733: The Society of Freemasons opened their first lodge in Boston.
1739: Caspar Wistar first manufactured glass.
1775: The U.S. Army founds its chaplaincy, making it the Army's oldest
division after the infantry.
1863: President Lincoln gave an order to shoot a rebel prisoner for
every black prisoner that was shot; it became known as the "eye-for-eye" order.
1864: During the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg,
Virginia, by exploding a mine under Confederate defense lines:- the attack failed.
1898: Scientific America carried the first magazine automobile ad. The
Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH, invited readers to dispense with a horse this
day.
1919: Federal troops are called out to put down Chicago race riots.
1928: George Eastman showed the first color motion pictures in the U.S.
1932: The Summer Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.
1934: Kurt von Schuschnigg was named Austrian chancellor following the
assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss.
1935: The first Penguin book was published, starting the paperback
revolution. The idea came from Sir Allen Lane who wanted to provide a "whole book for
the price of 10 cigarettes."
1937: The American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA) was organized
this day. It was part of the American Federation of Labor. The union was for all radio
performers except musicians. The union later became The American Federation of Television
and Radio Artists (AFTRA) to include TV performers.
1942: President Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women's auxiliary
agency in the Navy known as "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service":-
WAVES for short.
1945: The USS "Indianapolis," which had just delivered key
components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, was torpedoed by
a Japanese submarine. Only 316 out of 1,196 men survived the sinking and shark-infested
waters.
1956: The phrase, In God We Trust, was adopted as the U.S. national
motto.
1956: Singer Brenda Lee recorded her first hit for Decca Records.
"Jambalaya" and "Bigelow 6-500" started a new career for the petite
11-year-old from Lithgonia, Georgia. Brenda Mae Tarpley had been singing professionally
since age six. She recorded 29 hit songs in the 1960s and became a successful country
singer in 1971.
1960: More than 60,000 Buddhists march in protest against the Diem
government in South Vietnam.
1965: President Johnson signed into law the Medicare bill, which went
into effect the following year.
1967: General William Westmoreland claims that he is winning the war in
Vietnam but needs more men.
1968: The Apple boutique opened by Apple Corps, the company formed by
The Beatles, closed its doors.
1976: Rudolf Bultmann, 92, German Bible scholar and one of the three
major pioneers of modern form 'criticism'of the New Testament Gospels died.
1973: The 11-year battle for the victims of the drug Thalidomide ended
with compensation payments of 20 million pounds sterling.
1974: Eleven women become the first ordained females in the Episcopal
Church.
1974: The House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 21-17, approved a
third article of impeachment against President Nixon, charging him with ignoring
congressional subpoenas. Nixon resigned before the issue came to trial.
1975: Former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in
suburban Detroit:- although presumed dead, his remains have never been found.
1975: Representatives of 35 countries convened in Helsinki, Finland,
for a conference on security and human rights that resulted in the "Helsinki
Accords." The conference was aimed at ensuring peace in Europe.
1980: The Israeli Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as
the capital of the Jewish state.
1983: Lynn Fontanne, one of Broadway's premier actresses and the widow
of actor Alfred Lunt, died in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, at age 95.
1984: West German swimmer Michael Gross became the first double gold
winner of the 1984 Summer Olympics, while the United States picked up three gold medals in
swimming and shooting.
1984: Reggie Jackson hit his 494th home run of his career this day,
passing the Yankees' Lou Gehrig and taking over 13th place on the all-time home run list.
Larry Sorenson was the pitcher who gave up Reggie's 494th homer.
1985: Indiana's Western Schools Corporation Superintendent James O.
Smith said AIDS sufferer Ryan White was officially barred from school. Smith said the
health risk for other children was too great.
1985: South Africa recalled its Washington ambassador-designate
following the recall of the U.S. ambassador from Pretoria.
1986: At his confirmation hearing to become chief justice of the United
States, Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist denied allegations he had challenged
the qualifications of minority voters at polling places in Phoenix in the 1960's.
1986: Boy George was fined 250 pounds ($400) for possession of heroin.
1987: Former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan told the
Iran-Contra congressional committees he had repeatedly urged President Reagan to break off
arms sales to Iran.
1987: NBC's L.A. Law was nominated for 20 Emmy Awards this day:- one
shy of the record for nominations. Hill Street Blues was the recordholder (in the 1981-'82
season). L.A. Law had only been on the air a year when it earned four out of the 20 Emmys.
1988: Jordan's King Hussein dissolved his country's lower house of
Parliament, half of whose 60 members were from the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
1989: In Lebanon, the pro-Iranian group Organization for the Oppressed
on Earth threatened to kill an American hostage, Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins,
unless Israel released Sheik Abdul-Karim Obeid, a cleric seized by Israeli commandos.
1990: British Conservative Party lawmaker Ian Gow was killed in a
bombing claimed by the Irish Republican Army.
1990: George Steinbrenner, under investigation by Baseball Commissioner
Fay Vincent for making a $40,000 payment to a known gambler, agreed to be permanently
barred from operation of the New York Yankees.
1991: President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev began
their face-to-face meetings in Moscow.
1991: A special U.N. commission to Iraq announced it had found 46,000
chemical shells and warheads and 3,000 tons of raw materials for weapons.
1992: A TWA Lockheed L-1011 caught fire during takeoff from New York's
Kennedy International Airport; all 292 people aboard survived.
1992: At the Barcelona Summer Olympics, Shannon Miller won the silver
medal in the women's all-around gymnastics event.
1993: Bosnia's outgunned Muslim-led government abandoned its efforts to
hold the region together, agreeing to a preliminary accord to divide the former Yugoslav
republic into three ethnic states.
1993: Tap water was declared safe to drink again in flood-ravaged Des
Moines, Iowa.
1994: The first U.S. troops landed in the Rwandan capital of Kigali to
secure the airport for an expanded international aid effort.
1994: The world community shut down air service to Haiti, leaving the
army-ruled nation more isolated than ever.
1995: Russian and Chechen rebels signed an agreement calling for a
gradual withdrawal of Russian troops and the disarmament of rebel fighters.
1996: A federal law enforcement source said security guard Richard
Jewell had become a focus of the investigation into the bombing at Centennial Olympic
Park. (In October, Jewell was cleared as a suspect by the Justice Department.)
1996: The US Olympic softball team defeated China, 3-to-1, to win the
gold medal.
1996: Actress Claudette Colbert died in Barbados at age 92.
1997: Two men bombed Jerusalem's most crowded outdoor market, killing
themselves and 16 others.
1997: Eighteen people, including two Americans, were killed in a
landslide that swept one ski lodge onto another at the Thredbo Alpine Village in southeast
Australia.
1998: Japan's Parliament declared Keizo Obuchi the country's next prime
minister.
1998: "Buffalo Bob" Smith, the cowboy-suited host of
"The Howdy Doody Show," died in Hendersonville, North Carolina, at age 80.
1998: A group of 13 Ohio machinists stepped forward to claim the $295.7
million Powerball jackpot. (The workers opted to take the cash option -- one payment of
about $161.5 million.)
1999: Linda Tripp, whose secretly recorded phone conversations with
Monica Lewinsky led to the impeachment of President Clinton, was charged in Maryland with
illegal wiretapping (prosecutors later dropped the charges).
1999: Republicans pushed their $792 billion-dollar tax cut through the
Senate.
1999: The leaders of some 40 nations gathered in Sarajevo,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, pledging to push economic and democratic reforms for the war-torn
Balkans.
2000: President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela won a fresh
six-year term in a landslide re-election.
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