536 – Gothic War: The Byzantine general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed; the Gothic garrison flee the capital.
1793 – New York City’s first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.
1856 – The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces.
1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
1917 – World War I: Field Marshal Allenby captures Jerusalem, Palestine.
1935 – Walter Liggett, American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder.
1935 – The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, is awarded for the first time. The winner is halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.
1946 – The “Subsequent Nuremberg trials” begin with the “Doctors’ trial”, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.
1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as “The Mother of All Demos”, publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).
1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making Smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (Rinderpest in 2011 being the other).
Births
1447 – Chenghua Emperor of China (d. 1487)
1608 – John Milton, English poet and philosopher (d. 1674)
1779 – Tabitha Babbitt, American tool maker and inventor (d. 1853)
1883 – Joseph Pilates, German-American fitness expert, developed Pilates (d. 1967)
1886 – Clarence Birdseye, American businessman, founded Birds Eye (d. 1956)
1898 – Emmett Kelly, American clown and actor (d. 1979)
1930 – Buck Henry, American actor, director, and screenwriter
1934 – Judi Dench, English actress
1942 – Joe McGinniss, American journalist and author (d. 2014)
1953 – John Malkovich, American actor and producer
Deaths
1165 – Malcolm IV of Scotland (b. 1141)
1437 – Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1368)
1798 – Johann Reinhold Forster, German pastor, botanist, and ornithologist (b. 1729)
1982 – Leon Jaworski, American lawyer and politician (b. 1905)
1991 – Berenice Abbott, American photographer (b. 1898)