1500 – Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil.
1531 – The Lisbon earthquake kills about thirty thousand people.
1564 – The Council of Trent establishes an official distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
1700 – The Cascadia earthquake takes place off the west coast of North America, as evidenced by Japanese records.
1838 – Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States
1856 – First Battle of Seattle. Marines from the USS Decatur drive off American Indian attackers after all day battle with settlers.
1905 – The world’s largest diamond ever, the Cullinan weighing 3,106.75 carats (0.621350 kg), is found at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in South Africa.
1911 – Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane.
1926 – The first demonstration of the television by John Logie Baird.
1952 – Black Saturday in Egypt: rioters burn Cairo’s central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses.
1961 – John F. Kennedy appoints Janet G. Travell to be the first woman Physician to the President.
1980 – Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations.
1992 – Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia will stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
1998 – Lewinsky scandal: On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denies having had “sexual relations” with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Births
1495 – Emperor Go-Nara of Japan (d. 1557)
1880 – Douglas MacArthur, American general, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1964)
1905 – Maria von Trapp, Austrian-American singer (d. 1987)
1913 – Jimmy Van Heusen, American pianist and composer (d. 1990)
1925 – Paul Newman, American actor, activist, director, race car driver, and businessman, co-founded Newman’s Own (d. 2008)
1929 – Jules Feiffer, cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, and educator
Deaths
1630 – Henry Briggs, English mathematician and astronomer (b. 1556)
1779 – Thomas Hudson, English painter (b. 1701)
1795 – Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, German harpsichord player and composer (b. 1732)
1932 – William Wrigley, Jr., American businessman, founded the Wrigley Company (b. 1861)
1979 – Nelson Rockefeller, American businessman and politician, 41st Vice President of the United States (b. 1908)
1990 – Lewis Mumford, American sociologist and historian (b. 1895)
tress, dancer, and producer (b. 1936)
