1370 – Building begins of the Bastille in Paris
1500 – Pedro Alvarez Cabral discovers Brazil and claims it for Portugal
1838 – English steamship Sirius docks in New York after Atlantic crossing. The journey lasted longer than expected, and when coal ran low the crew burned cabin furniture, spare yards, and even one mast.
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Home of the Jewish newspaper The Jewish Forward, located in the Upper East Side |
1897 – The Jewish Daily Forward begins publishing in New York City as a nonprofit Yiddish-language daily loosely associated with the Socialist Party of America.
1898 – President McKinley orders the blockade of Cuban harbors
1964 – World’s Fair opens in Flushing Meadow, Corona Park.
1969 – First billed human eye transplant performed at the Methodist Hospital in Houston. Although the transplant failed to restore Madden’s sight, it was considered a medical miracle at the time.
1981 – Almost one-million metalworkers in West Germany go on strike
1981 – Largest bank robbery in the United States is carried out in Tucson, with more than three million stolen from the First National Bank of Arizona. Douglas Fenimore, John Anthony Oliver, Douglas Wayne Brown, and David Lee Grandstaff, who were previously charged with the theft of two-million dollars’ worth of jewels, were accused of this heist.
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Julius Robert Oppenheimer, born in New York, is often referred to as the
“father of the atomic bomb”
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Birthdays
1904 – Julius Robert Oppenheimer, born in
New York City
Oppenheimer is among those deemed “the father of the atomic bomb” for his involvement in the Manhattan Project. After WWII he was granted the position of chief advisor to the United States Atomic Energy Commission, which he used to lobby for international control of nuclear power. Though stripped of his security clearance during the Second Red Scare, he continued to lecture and work in physics.
Deaths
1833 – Richard Trevithick, inventor of the steam locomotive, dies at sixty-two
1933 – Sir Frederick Henry Royce, motorcar pioneer, dies
1989 – Huey Newton, Black Panther leader, shot dead at forty-seven