1059 – Henri I crowns his son King Philip I of France
1430 – Joan of Arc is captured at Compiegne and sold to the English
1493 – King Charles VIII and Maximilian I of Austria signs Peace of Senlis
1568 – The Netherlands declare independence from Spain.
1701 – Captain William Kidd is hanged in London after being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore.
1785 – Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals
1861 – Virginia citizens vote 3 to 1 in favor of secession from the Union
1862 – Battle at Front Royal, Virginia
1867 – Jesse James gang robs bank in Richmond, Missouri (2 die, $4,000 taken)
1887 – First transcontinental train arrives in Vancouver, BC
1903 – First automobile trip from SF to NY ended. It began 64 days earlier in San Francisco. Horatio Nelson Jackson was a physician and married to the daughter of one of the richest men in Vermont. With the increasing popularity of the automobile at the turn of the century, there was much discussion about the feasibility of a transcontinental auto crossing. Dr. Jackson decided to give it a try. On the advice of his mechanic and contracted travel companion, Sewall Crocker, he purchased a used 1903 Winton touring car, and named it “Vermont.” They set out from San Franciscio instead due east to the dessert, as an earlier attempt by the Winton Autobmobile founder ended in failure. They traveled along trails and alongside rivers and for a portion of the west, the Union Pacific Railroad railbed. 64 days later they arrived in New York. As they made their way across America, the press took interest and gave the public the opportunity to think that long distance travel was possible by automobile.
1911 – NY Public Library building at 5th Avenue dedicated by President Howard Taft.
1960 – Israel announces capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina
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John D Rockefeller |
1962 – Scott Carpenter orbits Earth three times in Aurora 7
1977 – Supreme Court refuses to hear appeals of Watergatewrong doers H R Halderman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell
1992 – President Bush orders Coast Guard to intercept boats with Haitian refugees
2004 – Part of Charles de Gaulle Airport’s Terminal 2E collapses, killing four people and injuring three others.
Birthdays
1707 – Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish botanist and the Father of Taxonomy (d. 1778)
1875 – Alfred P. Sloan, American president and chairman of General Motors (d. 1966)
1908 – John Bardeen, US, physicist (transistor, Nobel 1956, 1972)
1910 – Franz Jozef Kline, US expressionist painter
1951 – Anatoli Karpov, USSR, world chess champion (1975-85)
Deaths
1498 – Girolamo Savonarola, dictator of Florence (1494-98), hanged at 45
1701 – William Kidd, Scottish pirate, hanged at London’s Execution Dock
1752 – William Bradford, English-born printer (b. 1663)
1868 – Kit Carson, American trapper, scout, and Indian agent (b. 1809)
1934 – Bonnie Parker, outlaw, killed in police ambush at 23
1934 – Clyde Barrow, outlaw, killed in police ambush
1937 – John D Rockefeller, American industrialist and philanthropist, dies at 97 |
