532 – Nika riots continue in Constantinople.
1435 – Sicut Dudum, forbidding the enslavement of the Guanche natives in Canary Islands by the Spanish, is promulgated by Pope Eugene IV.
1793 – Nicolas Jean Hugon de Bassville, representative of Revolutionary France, lynched by a mob in Rome
1840 – The steamship Lexington burns and sinks four miles off the coast of Long Island with the loss of 139 lives.
1842 – Dr. William Brydon, an assistant surgeon in the British East India Company Army during the First Anglo-Afghan War, becomes famous for being the sole survivor of an army of 4,500 men and 12,000 camp followers when he reaches the safety of a garrison in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
1898 – Émile Zola’s J’accuse…! exposes the Dreyfus affair.
1939 – The Black Friday bush fires burn 20,000 square kilometers of land in Australia, claiming the lives of 71 people.
1942 – Henry Ford patents a plastic automobile, which is 30% lighter than a regular car.The frame, made of tubular steel, had 14 plastic panels attached to it. The car weighed 2000 lbs., 1000 lbs. lighter than a steel car. The exact ingredients of the plastic panels are unknown because no record of the formula exists today. One article claims that they were made from a chemical formula that, among many other ingredients, included soybeans, wheat, hemp, flax and ramie; while the man who was instrumental in creating the car, Lowell E. Overly, claims it was “…soybean fiber in a phenolic resin with formaldehyde used in the impregnation. ( wikipedia )
1953 – An article appears in Pravda accusing some of the most prestigious and prominent doctors, mostly Jews, in the Soviet Union of taking part in a vast plot to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership.
1978 – United States Food and Drug Administration requires all blood donations to be labeled “paid” or “volunteer” donors.
1982 – Shortly after takeoff, Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737 jet, crashes into Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge and falls into the Potomac River, killing 78, including four motorists.
1990 – Douglas Wilder becomes the first elected African American governor as he takes office in Richmond, Virginia.
2012 – The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia sinks off the coast of Italy due to the captain’s negligence and irresponsibility. There are 32 confirmed deaths.
Births
1683 – Christoph Graupner, German harpsichord player and composer (d. 1760)
1832 – Horatio Alger, Jr., American journalist and author (d. 1899)
1887 – George Gurdjieff, Russian-French mystic and philosopher (d. 1949)
1949 – Brandon Tartikoff, American screenwriter and producer (d. 1997)
1961 – Julia Louis-Dreyfus, American actress, comedian, and producer
Deaths
888 – Charles the Fat, Carolingian emperor (b. 839)
1177 – Henry II, Duke of Austria (b. 1107)
1860 – William Mason, American surgeon and politician (b. 1786)
1864 – Stephen Foster, American composer and songwriter (b. 1826)
1941 – James Joyce, Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet (b. 1882)
1978 – Hubert Humphrey, American pharmacist, academic, and politician, 38th Vice President of the United States (b. 1911)
