690 – Empress Wu Zetian ascends to the throne of the Tang dynasty and proclaims herself ruler of the Chinese Empire.
1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.
1590 – Carlo Gesualdo, composer, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, murders his wife, Donna Maria d’Avalos, and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples.
1793 – Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.
1841 – Queen’s University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
1843 – Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
1846 – William T. G. Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.
1847 – The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is published in London.
1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is “discovered”.
1909 – William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz hold a summit, a first between a U.S. and a Mexican president, and they only narrowly escape assassination.
1916 – In Brooklyn, Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States.
1946 – Nuremberg trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.
1950 – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis is published, starting The Chronicles of Narnia series.
1964 – China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
1978 – Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1991 – Luby’s shooting: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby’s Cafeteria.
1995 – The Million Man March takes place in Washington, D.C.
Births
1535 – Niwa Nagahide, Japanese samurai (d. 1585)
1754 – Morgan Lewis, 3rd Governor of New York (d. 1844)
1758 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (d. 1843)
1831 – Lucy Stanton, American activist (d. 1910)
1854 – Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist, and poet (d. 1900)
1886 – David Ben-Gurion, First Prime Minister of Israel (d. 1973)
1888 – Eugene O’Neill, American playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)
1890 – Paul Strand, American photographer (d. 1975)
1897 – Louis de Cazenave, French soldier (d. 2008)
Deaths
1333 – Antipope Nicholas V (b. 1260)
1438 – Anne of Gloucester, English noblewoman (b. 1383)
1946 – Nuremberg trial executions of the Main Trial:
* 1946 – Hans Frank, German lawyer, politician and war criminal (b. 1900)
* 1946 – Wilhelm Frick, German lawyer and politician, German Minister of the Interior (b. 1877)
* 1946 – Alfred Jodl, German general (b. 1890)
* 1946 – Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Austrian SS officer (b. 1903)
* 1946 – Wilhelm Keitel, German field marshal (b. 1882)
* 1946 – Alfred Rosenberg, Estonian architect and politician (b. 1893)
* 1946 – Fritz Sauckel, German sailor and politician (b. 1894)
* 1946 – Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Austrian lawyer and politician, 16th Federal Chancellor of Austria (b. 1892)
* 1946 – Julius Streicher, German journalist and politician (b. 1887)
* 1946 – Joachim von Ribbentrop, German lieutenant and politician, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany (b. 1893)
1973 – Gene Krupa, American drummer, composer, and actor (b. 1909)
1990 – Art Blakey, American drummer and bandleader (b. 1919)
2004 – Pierre Salinger, American journalist and JFK’s Press Secretary (b. 1925)
