Significant Events
- 1520 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan begins crossing the Pacific Ocean
- 1814 The Times of London first printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer - makes newspapers available to a mass audience
- 1893 Women vote in a national election for the first time, in the New Zealand general election
- 1919 US-born Lady Astor elected first female member of British House of Commons
- 1967 1st radio pulsars detected by British postgraduate Jocelyn Burnell and her supervisor Antony Hewish at Cambridge University\
Birthday
1757 William Blake, English poet and artist (Songs of Innocence & Experience), born in London, England (d. 1827)
1866 Henry Bacon, American architect (Lincoln Memorial), born in Watseka, Illinois (d. 1924)
1929 Berry Gordy, record company owner (Motown), born in Detroit, Michigan
1950 Ed Harris, American actor (Right Stuff, Swing Shift, Walker, Coma), born in Englewood, New Jersey
1958 Dave Righetti, baseball pitcher (Yankees, Giants), born in San Jose, California
Deaths
1680 Giovanni Bernini, Italian sculptor/painter, dies at 81
1794 Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, Prussian-American military officer (major general of the Continental Army), dies at 64
1859 Washington Irving, American author (Legend of Sleepy Hollow), dies of a heart attack at 76
1939 James Naismith, Canadian-American physical educator and inventor (basketball, football helmet), dies at 78
1954 Enrico Fermi, Italian-American nuclear physicist (Nobel 1938), dies of stomach cancer at 53
1994 Jeffrey Dahmer, American serial killer (Milwaukee Cannibal), killed in prison at 34
Interesting Historical Facts
1520 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan begins crossing the Pacific Ocean
1717 Blackbeard attacks a French merchant vessel called "La Concorde", which he would capture and rename as the "Queen Anne's Revenge"
1720 Anne Bonny and Mary Read are tried, found guilty of pirating, and sentenced to death in Spanish Town, Jamaica, although their discovered pregnancies won them stays of execution
1833 Charles Darwin rides through Las Pietras, returning to Montevideo
1906 Tommy Burns & Jack O'Brien fight to a draw in 20 for heavyweight boxing title
1918 Kaiser Wilhelm II of Prussia & Germany abdicates
1925 NHL goalie Georges Vezina collapses & dies 4 months later of TB
1929 Richard E. Byrd makes his 1st South Pole flight
1930 Howard Hanson's 2nd Symphony "Romantic" premieres
1931 Bradman scores 226, the 1st Test Cricket century at Gabba, v South Africa
1932 Groucho Marx performs on radio for the first time
1933 A Dallas grand jury delivers a murder indictment against Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow for the January 1933 killing of Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis
1934 Winston Churchill tells British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin not to under estimate German air power
1943 FDR, Churchill & Stalin met at Tehran to map out strategy
1957 "Look Homeward, Angel" with Anthony Perkins premieres in NYC
1959 Pope John XXIII publishes encyclical Princeps Pastorum
1974 Bowie Kuhn suspends George Steinbrenner for 2 years
1974 John Lennon's last concert appearance (Elton John concert in Madison Square Garden NYC)
1975 Bobby Orr plays his last game for the Boston Bruins
1978 Reds fire manager Sparky Anderson after 9 years
1979 Pope John Paul II's first papal visit to Turkey, almost 1 1/2 years before Turkish native Mehmet Ali Agca attempts to kill him
1984 Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States
1986 US Reagan administration exceeds SALT II arms limitations for 1st time
1988 Picasso's "Acrobat & Harlequin" sells for $38.46 million
1989 Rickey Henderson signs record $3,000,000 per year Oak A's contract
1990 Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew resigns, ending his term as Singapore's longest-serving Prime Minister
1990 Conservative Party chooses John Major to succeed Margaret Thatcher as leader and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1994 In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death by an inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium.
2012 "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" 1st of the Hobbit film series, directed by Peter Jackson, starring Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen, premieres in Wellington, New Zealand
Weddings
1582 Playwright & poet William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway
1936 Paleoanthropologist Raymond Arthur Dart (43) weds librarian Marjorie Gordon Frew
1938 Chinese politician Mao Zedong (44) weds Jiang Qing (24) in a small private ceremony
1962 Artist and peace activist Yoko Ono (30) weds film producer Anthony Cox
1998 Actor and martial arts expert Chuck Norris (58) weds former model Gena O'Kelley (30) at The North Church in Carrolton, Texas
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