AD 65 – The freedman Milichus betrays Piso’s plot to kill the Emperor Nero and all the conspirators are arrested.
1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa (not actually born until 1717).
1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI of France in a proxy wedding.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: The war begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.
1782 – John Adams secures the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague, Netherlands becomes the first American embassy.
1861 – American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861: A pro-Secession mob in Baltimore attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.
1892 – Charles Duryea was the engineer of the first-ever working American gasoline-powered car and co-founder of Duryea Motor Wagon Company.
Charles Duryea and his brother Frank (1869-1967) were initially bicycle makers in Washington, D.C., but later became world-renowned as the first American gasoline-powered car manufacturers, headquartered in Springfield, Massachusetts. The Duryea’s “motor wagon” was a used horse drawn buggy that the brothers had purchased for $70 and into which they had installed a 4 HP, single cylinder gasoline engine.
On November 28, 1895 in Chicago, their vehicle, driven by brother Frank, had won America’s first car race. It ran to Evanston, Illinois and back. The only other finisher was one of three Benz cars mostly made in Germany. After Frank won, demand grew for the Duryea Motor Wagon. In 1896, the Duryea Brothers produced 13 cars by hand – in their garage at 47 Taylor Street – and thus Duryea became the first-ever commercially produced vehicle, and also the largest automobile factory in the United States
A Duryea car was involved in the world’s first known auto accident. New York City motorist Henry Wells hit a bicyclist with his new Duryea. The rider suffered a broken leg, Wells spent a night in jail and the nation’s first traffic accident was recorded. Charles Duryea died of a heart attack in Philadelphia on September 28, 1938 and was buried in Ivy Hill Cemetery, West Oak Lane.
“When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.”
“When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.”
1927 – Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex. Mary Jane “Mae” West was an American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, comedian, and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades.
1948 – Burma joins the United Nations.
1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment) for conspiracy in the Tate-LaBianca murders.
1987 – The Simpsons first appear as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show
1989 – A gun turret explodes on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.
1993 – The 51-day FBI siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, , ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168.
2013 – Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar is later captured hiding in a boat inside a backyard in the suburb of Watertown.
Births
1903 – Eliot Ness, American law enforcement agent (d. 1957)
1912 – Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
1933 – Jayne Mansfield, American model and actress (d. 1967)
1949 – Paloma Picasso, French-Spanish fashion designer
1962 – Al Unser Jr., American race car driver
Deaths
1882 – Charles Darwin, English biologist and theorist (b. 1809)
1906 – Pierre Curie, physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1859)
1967 – Konrad Adenauer, First Chancellor of Germany (b. 1876)
1993 – David Koresh, American religious cult leader (b. 1959)
2004 – John Maynard Smith, English biologist and geneticist (b. 1920)
2013 – Allan Arbus, American actor and photographer (b. 1918)
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches