609 – Pope Boniface I turns Pantheon in Rome into a Catholic church
1110 – Crusaders march into Beirut causing a bloodbath
1497 – Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola, Italian Dominican friar and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence. He vehemently preached against the moral corruption of much of the clergy at the time, and his main opponent was Rodrigo Borgia).
1559 – Exhumed corpse of heretic David Jorisz burned in Basel
1607 – English colonists, led by John Smith, land near James River in Virginia
1643 – Heavy earthquake strikes Santiago Chile; kills one third of the population
1787 – Arthur Phillip sets sails with 11 ships of criminals to Botany Bay, Australia
1913 – First four engine aircraft built and flown (Igor Sikorsky, Russia)
1940 – Winston Churchill says, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”
1950 – Diner’s Club issues its first credit cards
1950 – The first round of the Formula 1 World Championship is held at Silverstone.
1965 – Rolling Stones record “Satisfaction”
1979 – Shah of Iran and his family sentenced to death in Teheran
1981 – Pope John Paul II is shot and critically wounded by Turkish gunman Mehemet Ali Agca in St Peter’s Square, Vatican City
1992 – Three astronauts simultaneous walked in space for the first time
Birthdays
1729 – Henry William (Baron) Stiegel, early American glassmaker
1856 – Peter Henry Emerson, first to promote photography as an independent art
1882 – Georges Braque, Argenteuil, Val-d’Oise, French cubist painter and sculptor
1914 – Joe Louis, world heavyweight boxingchampion (1937-49)
1931 – Jim Jones, Leader of Peoples Temple cult, (Jonestown Massacre)
1939 – Harvey Keitel, Tribecan actor (Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs)
1950 – Stevie Wonder, Saginaw, Michigan, American singer-songwriter
Deaths
1835 – John Nash, British town planner/architect (Regent’s Park)
1884 – Cyrus Hall McCormick, inventor
1882 – Jules-Nicolas Crevaux, French explorer, murdered at 35
1930 – Fridtjof Nansen, Arctic explorer/diplomat (Nobel 1922), dies at 68
1962 – Franz Jozef Kline, US expressionist painter, dies at 51
1962 – H Trendley Dean, doctor (introduced fluoridation into water) |
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