1519 – Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration.
1917 – The first Council of People’s Commissars is formed, including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
1923 – Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.
1933 – Great Depression: New Deal: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed.
1939 – In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes the assassination attempt of Georg Elser while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Hilter left the event early and the bomb went off 13 minutes later. Elser was a German worker who planned and carried out an elaborate assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi leaders.
1950 – Korean War: United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown, while piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight in history.
1960 – John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century to become the 35th president of the United States.
1973 – The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million.
1994 – Republican Revolution: On the night of the 1994 United States midterm elections, Republicans make historic electoral gains by securing massive majorities in both houses of congress (54 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate, additionally). Thus bringing a close to four decades of Democratic domination.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences”.
2004 – War in Iraq: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
2011 – The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passes 0.85 lunar distances from Earth (about 201,700 miles), the closest known approach by an asteroid of its brightness since 2010 XC15 in 1976.
If an asteroid the size of 2005 YU55 (~400 m across) were to hit land, it would create a crater 3.9 miles across, 1,699 feet deep and generate a seven-magnitude-equivalent-earthquake. The chances of an actual collision with an asteroid like 2005 YU55 is about 1 percent in the next thousand years.
Births
1656 – Edmond Halley, English astronomer and mathematician (d. 1742)
1836 – Milton Bradley, founded the Milton Bradley Company (d. 1911)
1883 – Charles Demuth, American painter (d. 1935)
1884 – Hermann Rorschach, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (d. 1922)
1931 – Morley Safer, Canadian-American journalist and author (d. 2016)
1949 – Bonnie Raitt, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
One of the last works by Norman Rockwell, was the cover art for the album The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper
Deaths
1226 – Louis VIII of France (b. 1187)
1674 – John Milton, English poet and philosopher (b. 1608)
1978 – Born in 1894, Norman Perceval Rockwell was a 20th-century American author, painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal for their reflection of American culture.