1002 – English king Ethelred II launches massacre of Danish settlers
1775 – American Revolutionary forces capture Montreal
1789 – Ben Franklin writes “Nothing . . . certain but death & taxes”
1839 – First US anti-slavery party, Liberty Party, convenes in New York
1841 – James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnosis.
1851 – Telegraph connection between London-Paris linked
1854 – “New Era” sinks off NJ coast with loss of 300
1865 – PT Barnum’s New American museum opens in Bridgeport
1895 – First shipment of canned pineapple from Hawaii
1909 – Collier’s magazine accuses U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of questionable dealings in Alaskan coal fields.
1913 – First modern elastic brassiere patented by Mary Phelps Jacob
1920 – Hudson River frozen at Albany
1927 – Holland Tunnel, first twin-tube underwater auto tunnel, opens
1935 – Anti-British riots in Egypt
1940 – Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” released
1952 – False fingernails on the market
1956 – Supreme Court strikes down segregation of races on public buses in Alabama
1964 – Pope Paul VI gives tiara to poor
1970 – Cyclone kills estimated 300,000 in Chittagong Bangladesh
1970 – Flooding ravages Ganges delta, 200,000-1 million killed
1970 – Hafez al-Assad becomes PM of Syria following military coup
1970 – VP Spiro Agnew calls TV executives “impudent snobs”
1971 – Mariner 9, first to orbit another planet (Mars)
1980 – US spacecraft Voyager I sends back first close-up pictures of Saturn
1980 – Gabriella Brum, 18, of West Germany crowned 30th Miss World, she resigns the next day, because she wants to marry her 52 year old boyfriend
1982 – Vietnam War Memorial dedicated in Washington DC
1985 – Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts in Colombia, kills 25,000
1986 – President Reagan confesses weapon sales to Iran
1990 – The World Wide Web first began
1996 – Joel Armengaud discovers 2^1398269 – 1 (35th known Mersenne prime)
2001 – War on Terrorism: In the first such act since World War II, US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.
