597 BC – Babylonians capture Jerusalem, replace Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king.
1621 – Native American chief visits colony of Plymouth Mass
1830 – New York Stock Exchange slowest day ever (31 shares traded)
1850 – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” published
1861 – Arizona Territory votes to leave the Union (US Civil War)
1881 – Barnum & Bailey Circus debuts
1910 – Barney Oldfield uses a Mercedes Benz to break the existing records at Daytona Beach Road Course (131.25mph)
1916 – US & Canada sign migratory bird treaty
1926 – Robert Goddard launches 1st liquid fuel rocket, goes 184′ (56 meters)
1939 – Germany occupies Czechoslovakia
1945 – Allies secure Iwo Jima
1945 – Würzburg, Germany is 90% destroyed, with 5,000 dead, in only 20 minutes by British bombers
1968 – My Lai massacre occurs. Hundreds of non-combatant Vietnamese including women, children, and infants died at the hands of U. S. soldiers. Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.
1968 – Robert Kennedy announces his Presidential campaign
1968 – General Motors produces its 100 millionth automobile, the Oldsmobile Toronado.
1977 – US president Jimmy Carter pleads for Palestinian homeland
by Brancusi, which focuses on the movement of the bird, not its physical attributes.
1984 – Gunmen kidnap William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut
1998 – Pope John Paul II asks God for forgiveness for the inactivity and silence of some Roman Catholics during the Holocaust
Birthdays
1751 – James Madison, Port Conway Va, (D-R), 4th US president (1809-17)
1906 – Henny Youngman, comedian (Take my wife please), born in London, England
1927 – Daniel Patrick Moynihan, US ambassador to UN/(Sen-D-NY, 1977- )
1933 – Ruth Bader Ginsberg, justice (US Supreme Court)
1933 – Sandy Weill, American financier and philanthropist
1940 – Bernardo Bertolucci, Parma Italy, director (Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor)
Deaths
1957 – Constantin Brancusi, Romanian sculptor (b. 1876)