451 – Attila’s Huns plunder Metz
529 – First draft of Corpus Juris Civilis (“Body of Civil Law”) is issued by order of Justinian I, Eastern Roman Emperor.
1348 – Prague U, 1st university in central Europe, formed by Charles IV
1712 – Slave revolt in New York City. The Revolt was an uprising by 23 enslaved Africans who killed nine whites and injured another six. Seventy blacks were arrested and twenty-one of whom were convicted and sentenced
to death. Twenty were burned at the stake and one was executed on a breaking wheel. The Wheel was a device providing a painful slow death used in the Middle Ages into the 18th century and apparently here in early Manhattan This was a form of punishment no longer used on whites at the time. The severity of punishment was in reaction to white slaveowners’ fear of insurrection by slaves.
1827 – English chemist John Walker invents wooden matches
1891 – Nebraska introduces 8 hour work day
1923 – First brain tumor operation under local anesthetic performed at Beth Israel Hospital by Dr K Winfield Ney
1953 – First west-to-east jet transatlantic nonstop flight
1959 – Radar first bounced off Sun, Stanford California.
In 1947 the Army Signal Corps bounced a radar beam off the moon and received an echo. In 1958, MIT scientists sent a pulse to Venus and got a bounce back, a journey of 56 million miles,The Stanford transmitter sent out 30 second bursts of energy of 40,000 watts. They said less than 100 watts reached the sun. On the trip back the signal was estimated to be .00000000000000001 of a watt.
1966 – US recovers lost H-bomb from Mediterranean floor
1969 – Supreme Court strikes down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material
1978 – Guttenberg Bible sold for $2,000,000 in NYC
1988 – Russia announced it would withdraw its troops from Afghanistan
1990 – John Poindexter, National Security Advisor found guilty on Iran-Contra scandal
1994 – Vatican acknowledges Holocaust for first time
2003 – U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein’s regime falls two days later.
Birthdays
1506 – Francis Xavier, saint/Jesuit missionary to India, Malaya, & Japan
1770 – William Wordsworth, England, poet laureate (Prelude)
1893 – Allen Dulles, Central Intelligence Agency director (d. 1969)
1897 – Walter Winchell, Harlem NYC, newscaster/columnist
1915 – Billie Holiday, Eleanora Fagan, Philadelphia, jazz singer
1920 – Ravi Shankar, Varanasi, British India, musician (the Pandit), (d. 2012)
1931 – Daniel Ellsberg, (Pentagon Papers)
1938 – Jerry Brown, ex-California governor
1939 – Francis Ford Coppola, Detroit, (Godfather, Apocalypse Now
Deaths
1663 – Francis Cooke, Mayflower pilgrim (b. c. 1583)
1891 – Phineas T Barnum, US circus promoter (B & Bailey), dies at 88
1968 – Jim Clark, two-time F1 World Champion and winner of the Indianapolis 500, dies in a racing accident during a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim, Germany at age 32. Born in 1936 his racing record
attests to his skills ~ 2 World Championships in 73 races, 25 wins, 32 podiums, 33 pole positions, 28 fastest laps. A youtube link from his last race.
1972 – “Crazy” Joe Gallo, mobster, killed at his 43rd birthday party
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches