52 BC – Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, surrenders to the Romans under Julius Caesar, ending the siege and Battle of Alesia.
1283 – Dafydd ap Gruffydd, was Prince of Wales from December 11 1282 until his execution on October 3 1283 by King Edward I of England. He was the last independent ruler of Wales. On 30 September, Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, was condemned to death, the first person known to have been tried and executed for what from that time onwards would be described as high treason against the King. Edward ensured that Dafydd’s death was to be slow and agonizing; he became the first prominent person to have been hanged, drawn and quartered. Dafydd was dragged through the streets of Shrewsbury attached to a horse’s tail then hanged alive, revived, then disembowelled and his entrails burned before him for “his sacrilege in committing his crimes in the week of Christ’s passion”, and then his body cut into four-quarters “for plotting the king’s death”. Geoffrey of Shrewsbury was paid 20 shillings for carrying out the gruesome task.
1789 – George Washington makes the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the national government of the United States
1849 – American author Edgar Allan Poe is found delirious in a gutter in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances; it is the last time he is seen in public before his death.
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
1872 – The Bloomingdale brothers open their first store at 938 Third Ave.
1932 – Iraq gains independence from the United Kingdom.
1952 – The United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon to become the world’s third nuclear power.
1957 – The California State Superior Court rules that Allen Ginsberg’sHowl and other poems is not obscene.
1962 – Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.
1985 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight.
1986 – TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories, is officially opened.
1990 – German reunification: The German Democratic Republic ceases to exist and its territory becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the European Community, which later became the European Union.
1995 – O. J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Births
85 BC – Gaius Cassius Longinus, Roman politician (d. 42 BC)
1797 – Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1870)
1804 – Townsend Harris, American merchant, politician, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Japan (d. 1878)
1896 – Gerardo Diego, Spanish poet and critic (d. 1987)
1900 – Thomas Wolfe, American author and academic (d. 1938)
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Gore Vidal |
1925 – Gore Vidal, American author, screenwriter, and actor (d. 2012)
“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”
1936 – Steve Reich, American composer
1941 – Chubby Checker, American singer-songwriter
Deaths
42 BC – Gaius Cassius Longinus, Roman politician (b. 85 BC)
1656 – Myles Standish, English-American captain (b. 1584)
1690 – Robert Barclay, Scottish theologian and politician, 2nd Governor of East Jersey (b. 1648)
1838 – Black Hawk, American tribal leader (b. 1767)
1867 – Elias Howe, American engineer, invented the sewing machine
1967 – Woody Guthrie, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1912) |
