49 BC – Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, signalling the start of civil war.
1645 – Archbishop William Laud is beheaded at the Tower of London.
1776 – Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet Common Sense.
1863 – The London Underground, the world’s oldest underground railway, opens between London Paddington station and Farringdon station.
1870 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.
1901 – The first great Texas oil gusher is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
1920 – The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War I.
1927 – Fritz Lang’s futuristic film Metropolis is released in Germany.
1946 – The United States Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the Moon and receiving the reflected signals.
1954 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1, explodes and falls into the Tyrrhenian Sea killing 35 people.
Births
1802 – Carl Ritter von Ghega, Italian-Austrian engineer, designed the Semmering railway (d. 1860)
1883 – Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Russian journalist, author, and poet (d. 1945)
1887 – Robinson Jeffers, American poet and philosopher (d. 1962)
1904 – Ray Bolger, American actor and dancer (d. 1987)
1924 – Max Roach, American drummer and composer (d. 2007)
1945 – Rod Stewart, English singer-songwriter
Deaths
1778 – Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist and physician (b. 1707)
1917 – Buffalo Bill, American soldier and hunter (b. 1846)
William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody was an American scout, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Le Claire, Iowa, and lived for several years in his father’s hometown in Toronto, Ontario, Canada before the family again moved to the Kansas Territory.
1951 – Sinclair Lewis, American author and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1885)
1971 – Coco Chanel, French fashion designer, founded Chanel (b. 1883)
2000 – Sam Jaffe, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1901)
2004 – Spalding Gray, American actor and screenwriter (b. 1941)
2014 – Larry Speakes, American journalist, 16th White House Press Secretary (b. 1939)
2016 – David Bowie, singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (b. 1947)
