141 – 6th recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet
1345 – Saturn/Jupiter/Mars-conjunction: thought to be the cause of plague epidemic
1760 – Great Fire of Boston destroys 349 buildings
1815 – Napoleon enters Paris after escape from Elba, begins 100-day rule
1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” published
1861 – An earthquake completely destroys Mendoza, Argentina.
1890 – German emperor Wilhelm II fires republic chancellor Otto Von Bismarck
1896 – Marines land in Nicaragua to protect US citizens
1920 – First aeroplane flight from London to South Africa lands (took 1½ months)
1934 – Rudolf Kuhnold demonstrates radar in Kiel, Germany
1944 – Mount Vesuvius erupts
1947 – 180 tonne blue whale (a record) caught in South Atlantic
1954 – First newspaper vending machine used (Columbia, Pennsylvania)
1958 – 50″ snow across the Mason-Dixon line
1968 – LBJ signs a bill removing gold backing from US paper money
1969 – US president Nixon proclaims he will end Vietnam war in 1970
1976 – Patricia Hearst convicted of armed robbery
1995 – Dow-Jones hits 4083.68, a record
1997 – Liggett admits cigarettes are addictive
Births
43 BC – Ovid, Roman poet (d. 17)
1828 – Henrik Ibsen, Norway, playwright (Peer Gynt, Hedda Gabler)
1873 – Sergei V Rachmaninov, Russian/US pianist/composer
1906 – Abraham Beame, Mayor of NYC
1922 – Carl Reiner, Bronx, (2000 Year Old Man, Dick Van Dyke Show)
1925 – John D Erlichman, Nixon aide during Watergate
1952 – Geoff Brabham, Australian racing driver
Anniversaries
1969 – Beatle John Lennon marries Yoko Ono in Gibraltar
Deaths
1413 – King Henry IV of England (1399-1413) dies at 45
1933 – Giuseppe [Joe] Zangara, electrocuted for assassination attempt on FDR
1962 – Andrew E Douglass, Dendrochronologer (Study of Tree Rings)
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches
