771 – Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman.
1456 – Earthquake strikes Naples; about 35,000 die
1492 – Columbus discovers Hispaniola (El Espanola/Haiti)
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
1879 – First automatic telephone switching system patented
1893 – First electric car (built in Toronto) could go 15 miles between charge
1918 – Oil refinery on Curacao opens
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 – NYC is first city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in housing market (Fair Housing Practices Law)
1957 – Sukarno expels all Dutch people from Indonesia.
1967 – Benjamin Spock and Allen Ginsberg arrested protesting Vietnam war
1968 – Rolling Stones release “Beggar’s Banquet” LP album
1969 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1974 – Monty Python’s final episode airs on BBC
1976 – Buffalo Bill OJ Simpson rushes 203 yards
1977 – Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen
1978 – Free agent Pete Rose signs 4-year, $32 million contract with Phillies
1978 – Pioneer Venus 1 begins orbiting Venus
1985 – Dow Jones rose above 1,500 level for 1st time
1988 – Shuttle Atlantis launches world’s first nuclear-war-fighting satellite
1989 – France TGV train reaches world record speed of 482.4 kph
1990 – Salman Rushdie, author, ordered to death by Iran for blasphemy, appears in public for first time in 2 years
1991 – Charles Keating Jr (Lincoln Savings & Loan fraud), found guilty
1991 – NY Daily News files for protection under chapter 11
1993 – Astronauts begin repair of Hubble telescope
2008 – Human remains previously found in 1991 are finally identified by Russian and American scientists as those of Tsar Nicholas II.
2008 – OJ Simpson is sentenced to 33 years in prison for kidnapping and armed robbery
