1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urgin
1312 – 2nd council of Vienna
1764 – Austrian archduke Jozef crowned himself Roman Catholic king
1776 – Washington receives honorary degree from Harvard College
1856 – Gunpowder in church explodes killing 4,000 in Rhodos
1922 – Stalin appointed General Secretary of Communist Party
1929 – Persia agrees to Litvinov Pact
1929 – RMS Queen Mary is ordered from John Brown & Company Shipbuilding and Engineering by Cunard Line.
1933 – First airplane flight over Mt Everest
1941 – Churchill warns Stalin of German invasion
1955 – The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges.
1960 – Earthquake at Havre, Belgium
1965 – First atomic powered spacecraft launched
1973 – The first portable cell phone call is made in New York City
1986 – US national debt hits $2,000,000,000,000
2004 – Islamic terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.
2009 – Australia formally adopts the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Birthdays
1783 – Washington Irving, writer (Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
Washington Irving was an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century
1823 – William Macy “Boss” Tweed, corrupt political boss (NYC)
1893 – Princess Maud of Fife (d. 1945)
1898 – Henry R Luce, Tengchow China, publisher (Time, Fortune, Life)
1924 – Doris Day, Cincinnati Oh, “girl next door” actress (Pillow Talk)
1924 – Marlon Brando, Omaha Neb, actor (Last Tango in Paris, Godfather)
1926 – Virgil Grissom, astronaut (Merc 4, Gemini 3)
1934 – Jane Goodall, London England, ethologist (studied African chimps)
Deaths
1882 – Jesse James, outlaw, shot dead at 34, in St Joseph Mo by Robert Ford
1936 – Bruno Hauptmann, convicted Lindbergh baby killer, executed
1950 – Kurt Julian Weill, German composer (Dreigroschenoper), dies at 50
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches