1569 – First recorded lottery in England is drawn in St. Paul’s Cathedral
1599 – Jacob van Necks fleet leaves Bantam, Java with pepper, clove, and muskaat
1785 – Continental Congress convenes in New York City
1873 – The first livestock market newspaper published, in Drover’s Journal, Chicago
1879 – Zulu war against British colonial rule in South Africa begins
1927 – Royale Theater opens at 242 West 45th street
1935 – Amelia Earhart flies from Honolulu to Oakland California
1989 – Kindergarten student caught with loaded handgun at Bronx school
1996 – Haiti becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. The convention was developed Switzerland in 1886 at the instigation of Victor Hugo, thus the agreement was greatly influenced by the French “right of the author” rather than the Anglo-Saxon economically driven concept of “copyright”. The Berne Convention introduced the concept that a copyright is entitled to copyrights as soon as a work is “fixed” and required countries to recognize copyrights held by citizens of all other signatory countries
1997 – Telstar 401 Satellite fails due to a magnetic storm
Birthdays
1755 – Alexander Hamilton, Charlestown, Nevis, West Indies, first United States Secretary of the Treasury
1842 – William James, American psychologist and philosopher, born in New York, New York. James is associated with the philosophical school of pragmatism and is considered a founder of functional psychology
Deaths
1775 – Prithvi Narayan Shah, began the unification of modern Nepal
2008 – Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer who became the first to climb Mount Everest in 1953, dies from a heart attack at eighty-eight
Anniversaries
1924 – Novelist Hermann Hesse weds singer Ruth Wenger. Hesse’s most famous works, Steppenwolf Siddhartha and The Glass Bead Game, both explore an individual’s search for authenticity, self-knowledge, and spirituality