Some notable facts about this date, for more, visit http://www.onthisday.com
Facts
1850 Robert McClure sights the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time (from Banks Island towards Melville Island)
1861 Pony Express (Missouri to California) ends after 19 months
1863 International conference begins in Geneva aimed at improving medical conditions on battlefields - beginning of the Red Cross
1863 Football Association forms in England, standardizing soccer, splitting with rugby
1977 Last natural case of smallpox discovered in Merca district, Somalia. Considered the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination
Deaths
899 Alfred the Great, writer/king of Wessex (871-99), dies
1764 William Hogarth, British painter (b. 1697)
1902 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American women's rights activist, dies of heart failure at 86
1952 Hattie McDaniel, 1st African American actress to win an Oscar (Mammy-Gone With the Wind), dies of breast cancer at 57
1972 Igor Sikorsky, Russian-American aviation pioneer and helicopter builder, dies at 83
1995 Bernhard Heiliger, sculptor, dies at 79
2005 Keith Parkinson, American fantasy artist, dies of Leukemia at 47
2014 Jeff Robinson, American baseball player, dies at 52
Born on this day
1947 Hillary Rodham Clinton, US 1st Lady (1993-2001), Senator (NY, 2001-09), Secretary of State (2009-13) and 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee, born in Chicago, Illinois
Bernhard Heiliger
Hattie McDaniel
