771 – Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman.
1456 – Earthquake strikes Naples; about 35,000 die
1766 – London auctioneers Christie’s hold their first sale
1792 – George Washington re-elected president
1876 – Fire at Brooklyn Theater kills 295, trampled or burned to death
1893 – First electric car, built in Toronto could go 15 miles between charge
1926 – Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin,” debuts
1929 – First US nudist organization (American League for Physical Culture, NYC)
1932 – German physicist Albert Einstein granted a visa to enter America
1945 – “Lost Squadron” crashes east of Florida (Bermuda Triangle)
1955 – Historic bus boycott begins in Montgomery Alabama by Rosa Parks
1957 – Sukarno expels all Dutch people from Indonesia.
1967 – Benjamin Spock & Allen Ginsberg arrested protesting Vietnam war
1978 – Pioneer Venus 1 begins orbiting Venus
1985 – Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 1,500 level
1988 – Shuttle Atlantis launches world’s 1st nuclear-war-fighting satellite
1990 – Salman Rushdie, author, ordered to death by Iran for blasphemy, appears in public for first time in 2 years
1991 – NY Daily News files for protection under chapter 11
2008 – Human remains previously found in 1991 are finally identified by Russian and American scientists as those of Tsar Nicholas II.
Births
852 – Zhu Wen, Chinese emperor (d. 912)
1537 – Ashikaga Yoshiaki, Japanese shogun (d. 1597)
1666 – Francesco Scarlatti, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1741)
1782 – Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United States (d. 1862)
He also served as VP and Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson and was a founder of the Democratic Party.
Watch how Kramer had a lucky escape from the street gang
the Van Buren Boys
Of Dutch descent he is the only president who spoke English as a second language. He was a supporter of Abraham Lincoln’s abolitionist policies during the Civil War.
Watch how Kramer had a lucky escape from the street gang the Van Buren Boys
1839 – George Armstrong Custer, American general (d. 1876)
1890 – Fritz Lang, Austrian-American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1976)
1901 – Walt Disney, American animator, director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (d. 1966)
1902 – Strom Thurmond, American educator, general, and politician, 103rd Governor of South Carolina (d. 2003)
1905 – Otto Preminger, Austrian-American actor, director, and producer (d. 1986)
1934 – Joan Didion, American novelist and screenwriter
1935 – Calvin Trillin, American novelist, humorist, and journalist
Deaths
1560 – Francis II of France (b. 1544)
1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer and musician (b. 1756)
1926 – Claude Monet, French painter (b. 1840)
2002 – Roone Arledge, American sportscaster and producer (b. 1931)