1609 – Henry Hudson begins his exploration of the Hudson River while aboard the Halve Maen.
1683 – Austro-Ottoman War: Battle of Vienna: Several European armies join forces to defeat the Ottoman Empire.
1857 – The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship was carrying 13-15 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush.
1910 – Premiere performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in Munich, with a chorus of 852 singers and an orchestra of 171 players.
1938 – Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
1940 – Cave paintings are discovered in Lascaux, France.
1943 – World War II: Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, is rescued from house arrest on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzi, by German commando forces led by Otto Skorzeny.
1953 – John Fitzgerald Kennedy marries Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island.
1958 – Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments.
1959 – The Soviet Union launches a rocket, Lunik II, at the moon.
1962 – President John F. Kennedy reaffirms that the U.S. will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
1980 – Military coup in Turkey.
1983 – The USSR vetoes a United Nations Security Council Resolution deploring the Soviet destruction of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.
1988 – Hurricane Gilbert devastates Jamaica; it turns towards Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula two days later, causing an estimated $5 billion in damage.
1992 – NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission. On board are Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space.
1994 – Frank Eugene Corder fatally crashes a single-engine Cessna 150 into the White House’s south lawn, striking the West wing. There were no other casualties.
Photo by Jacques Henri Lartigue
Births
1492 – Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino (d. 1519)
1818 – Richard Jordan Gatling, inventor, invented the Gatling gun (d. 1903)
1880 – H. L. Mencken, American journalist and critic (d. 1956)
1888 – Maurice Chevalier, French actor, singer, and dancer (d. 1972)
1891 – Arthur Hays Sulzberger, American publisher (d. 1968)
1892 – Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., founded Alfred A. Knopf Inc. (d. 1984)
1898 – Ben Shahn, Lithuanian-American painter and photographer (d. 1969)
1939 – Phillip Ramey, American pianist and composer
1953 – Nan Goldin, American photographer
Deaths
1213 – Peter II of Aragon (b. 1174)
1362 – Pope Innocent VI (b. 1295)
1961 – Carl Hermann, German physicist and academic (b. 1898)
1977 – Steve Biko, South African activist (b. 1946)
1986 – Jacques Henri Lartigue, French painter and photographer (b. 1894)
2000 – Stanley Turrentine, American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader (b. 1934)
2003 – Johnny Cash, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (b. 1932)
2008 – David Foster Wallace, American novelist, short story writer, and essayist (b. 1962)