1054 – Emperor Henry III crowns his son Henry IV king
1203 – Siege of Constantinople begins during the fourth Crusade, Crusaders aboad a Venetian fleet attack the city
1762 – Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III
1821 – Spain cedes Florida to US
1841 – British humor magazine Punch first published
Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term “cartoon” in its modern sense as a humorous illustration. It became a British institution, but after the 1940s, when its circulation peaked, it went into a long decline, closing in 1992. It was revived in 1996, but closed again in 2002.
1863 – Battle of Honey Springs – largest battle in Indian Territory
1951 – King Leopold III of Belgium gives up throne to son Boudouin I
1955 – Arco, Idaho becomes first US city lit by nuclear power
1959 – Dr Leakey discovers oldest human skull (600,000 years old)
In 1931, Louis Leakey found Olduvai fossils in Berlin and thought Olduvai Gorge held information on human origins, and thus began excavating there. Louis and Mary Leakey are the archaeologists responsible for most of the excavations and discoveries of the hominid fossils in Olduvai Gorge. Their finds, when added to the prior work of Raymond Dart and Robert Broom, convinced most paleoanthropologists that humans originally evolved in Africa.
In 1959, Louis S. B. and Mary Leakey discovered the skull of a large Australopithecus robustus at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. They named their discovery Zinjanthropus boisei (“Zinj” also known as Nutcracker man or East Africa man), because they believed the hominid was sufficiently different from the
australopithecines that it represented a different species; it was later reclassified as one of the robust australopithecines. It was the first australopithecine found outside South Africa and the first to be reliably dated, at 1.8 million years old.
1967 – Monkees perform at Forest Hills NY, Jimi Hendrix is opening act
1975 – Apollo 18 & Soyuz 19 make first US/USSR linkup in space
1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.
1998 – Russia buries Tsar Nicholas II and family, 80 years after they died
2004 – Martha Stewart is sentenced to five months in prison plus five months in home confinement for lying to federal investigators
Birthdays
1763 – John Jacob Astor, Germany, richest man in US, banker/fur trader
1839 – Ephraim Shay, American inventor (d. 1916)
1898 – Berenice Abbott, Springfield Oh, photographer (World of Atget)
1920 – Gordon Gould, inventor of the laser (d. 2005)
1928 – Vince Guaraldi, American musician and composer (d. 1976)
1954 – Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
Anniversaries
 |
 |
|
Groucho Marx and
Eden Hartford
|
1954 – Master of quick wit and widely considered one of the best comedians of the modern era Groucho Marx (63) weds actress Eden Hartford (24)
Groucho was the subject of an urban legend about a supposed response to a contestant who had nine children which supposedly brought down the house. In response to Marx asking in disbelief why she had so many children, the contestant replied, “I love my husband.” To this, Marx responded, “I love my cigar, too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.”
Groucho often asserted in interviews that this exchange never took place, but it remains one of the most often quoted “Groucho-isms” nonetheless.
Marx stated that he was born in a room above a butcher’s shop on 78th Street in New York City. The Marx children grew up on East 93rd Street off Lexington Avenue in a neighborhood now known as Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side
1990 – Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (56) weds Suha Tawil (27)