1272 – While traveling during the Ninth Crusade, Prince Edward becomes King of England upon Henry III of England’s death, but he will not return to England for nearly two years to assume the throne.
1793 – French Revolution: Ninety anti-republican Catholic priests are executed by drowning at Nantes.
1822 – American Old West: Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail.
1849 – A Russian court sentences writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor.
1904 – English engineer John Ambrose Fleming receives a patent for the thermionic valve (vacuum tube).
1907 – Cunard Line’s RMS Mauretania, sister ship of RMS Lusitania, sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England, to New York City.
1938 – LSD is first synthesized by Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel.
1940 – In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.
1940 – New York City’s “Mad Bomber” George Metesky places his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by Consolidated Edison.
1973 – President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.
1989 – A death squad composed of El Salvadoran army troops kills six Jesuit priests and two others at Jose Simeon Canas University.
Births
42 BC – Tiberius, Roman emperor (d. 37)
1892 – Guo Moruo, Chinese historian, author, and poet (d. 1978)
1892 – Tazio Nuvolari, Italian race car driver and motorcycle racer (d. 1953)
1922 – Gene Amdahl, American computer scientist, physicist, and engineer, founded the Amdahl Corporation (d. 2015)
1964 – Dwight Gooden, American baseball player
Deaths
1773 – John Hawkesworth, English journalist and author (b. 1715)
1779 – Pehr Kalm, Finnish botanist and explorer (b. 1716)
1802 – André Michaux, French botanist and explorer (b. 1746)
1808 – Mustafa IV, Ottoman sultan (b. 1779)
1950 – Bob Smith, American physician and surgeon, co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous (b. 1879)
1960 – Clark Gable, American actor and singer (b. 1901)
1961 – Sam Rayburn, American lawyer and politician, 48th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (b. 1882)
2013 – Charles Waterhouse, American painter, sculptor, and illustrator