307 – Jin Huidi, Chinese Emperor of the Jin dynasty, is poisoned and succeeded by Jin Huaidi.
1297 – François Grimaldi, disguised as a monk, leads his men to capture the fortress protecting the Rock of Monaco, establishing his family as the rulers of Monaco.
1454 – The papal bull Romanus Pontifex awards the Kingdom of Portugal exclusive trade and colonization rights to all of Africa south of Cape Bojador.
1790 – George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York City.
1828 – The Democratic Party of the United States is organized.
1867 – African-American men are granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C.
1889 – Herman Hollerith is issued US patent #395,791 for the ‘Art of Applying Statistics’ – his punched card calculator. Hollerith has been called the world’s first statistical engineer and the father of modern information processing. He invented punched cards to record data and a tabulating machine and sorter to process the results electronically. Inspiration for the cards came as Hollerith observed a tram conductor punch holes in passenger tickets. He based his tabulating machine on the Jacquard loom, which controlled woven patterns through holes made in a series of cards. The resulting punch card technology was used in computers until the late 1970s.
1940 – World War II: Britain introduces food rationing.
1964 – Lyndon B. Johnson declares a “War on Poverty”.
1973 – Watergate: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.
1975 – Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States other than by succeeding her husband.
2004 – The RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
2005 – The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired.
2011 – The attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona, in which five people were shot dead.
Births
1735 – John Carroll, American archbishop, founder of Georgetown University (d. 1815)
1862 – Frank Nelson Doubleday, American publisher, founded the Doubleday Publishing Company (d. 1934)
1911 – Gypsy Rose Lee, American actress, dancer, and author (d. 1970)
1935 – Elvis Presley, American singer, guitarist, and actor (d. 1977)
1947 – David Bowie, English singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (d. 2016)
1958 – Betsy DeVos, American businesswoman and politician, 11th Secretary of Education
1984 – Kim Jong-un, 3rd Supreme Leader of North Korea
Deaths
1642 – Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher (b. 1564)
1825 – Eli Whitney, American engineer and theorist, invented the cotton gin (b. 1765) He was best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South
1948 – Kurt Schwitters, German painter and graphic designer (b. 1887)
1976 – Zhou Enlai, Chinese soldier and politician, 1st Premier of the People’s Republic of China (b. 1898)
1996 – François Mitterrand, 21st President of France (b. 1916)