Today In The Past
Events
1086 – Abbott Dauferio/Desiderius becomes Pope Victor III
1153 – Malcolm IV becomes King of Scots
1218 – The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt.
1276 – Magnus Ladulås is crowned King of Sweden in Uppsala Cathedral.
1300 – King Philip IV occupies Flanders, Earl Gwijde captured
1370 – Hanzesteden signs peace treaty with Danish king Waldemar IV
1487 – Imposter Lambert Simnel ceremony crowned as King Edward VI of Dublin
1595 – Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library.
1621 – The Protestant Union is formally dissolved.
1658 – Battle of Dunes (Spanish-French War) fought
1689 – English Parliament guarantees freedom of religion for Protestants
1738 – John Wesley is converted, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.
1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen against British rule begins.
1809 – Dartmoor Prison opens to house French prisoners of war
1818 – Gen Andrew Jackson captures Pensacola Florida
1822 – Battle of Pichincha, Bolívar secures independence of Quito from Spain
1830 – “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” is published
1830 – 1st passenger rail service in US (Baltimore & Elliots Mill, Maryland)
1844 – Samuel Morse taps out “What hath God wrought” (1st telegraph message)
1854 – Lincoln University, Penn, 1st Black college in US founded by John Miller Dickey and Sarah Emlen Cresson
1856 – Pottawatomie Massacre took place in Kansas
1861 – Alexandria, VA occupied by Federal troops
1861 – Maj Gen Benjamin Butler declares slaves “contraband of war”
1862 – Beardslee field telegraph used for 1st time
1862 – Westminster Bridge across Thames opens
1877 – 5th Preakness: C Holloway aboard Cloverbrook wins in 2:45.5
1878 – CA Parker (Harvard) wins 1st American bike race, Beacon Park Boston
1879 – 7th Preakness: L Hughes aboard Harold wins in 2:40.5
1881 – Canadian ferry Princess Victoria sinks near London Ontario, 200 die
1883 – Brooklyn Bridge opened by Pres Arthur & Gov Cleveland
1884 – Anti-Monopoly party & Greenback Party forms People’s Party in US
1890 – Geo Train & Sam Wall circle world in record 67 days, Tacoma-Tacoma
1899 – 1st auto repair shop opens (Boston)
1900 – 34th Belmont: Nash Turner aboard Ildrim wins in 2:21¼
1901 – Seventy-eight miners die in the Caerphilly pit disaster in South Wales.
1902 – Cleve’s Bill Bradley is 1st ALer to hit a HR run in 4 consecutive games, not duplicated until Babe Ruth does it June 25, 1918
1905 – 39th Belmont: Eugene Hildebrand aboard Tanya wins in 2:08
1915 – Thomas Edison invents telescribe to record telephone conversations
1916 – Conscription begins in Britain
1916 – French driven out of Fort Douaumont after 500 killed or injured
1916 – US pilot William Thaw shoots down a German Fokker
1926 – Paavo Nurmi runs world record 3000 m (8:25.4)
1928 – Record 12 future Hall of Famers take the field, as Yanks beat A’s 9-7
1930 – 1st woman to fly from England to Australia solo, lands (Amy Johnson)
1930 – Ruth homers in both games of a doubleheader, giving him 9 in one week
1931 – 1st air-conditioned train installed-B&O Railroad
1935 – 1st major league night baseball game, in Cincinnati (Reds 2, Phil 1)
1936 – Tony Lazerri 2 grand slams (11 RBIs); Ben Chapman sets record reaching 1st 7 times safely, Yanks beat A’s 25-2
1941 – Bismarck sinks British battle cruiser HMS Hood, 1,416 die 3 survive
1943 – Admiral Donitz stops U-boat in Atlantic Ocean
1943 – U-441 shoots Sunderland seaplane down over Gulf of Biskaje
1951 – Racial segregation in Wash DC restaurants ruled illegal
1954 – 1st rocket attains 150 mi (241 km) altitude, White Sands, NM
1954 – Dr Peter Murray Marshall becomes 1st black to head an AMA unit
1954 – German airline Lufthansa forms
1954 – IBM announces vacuum tube “electronic” brain that could perform 10 million operations an hour
1956 – Conclusion of the Sixth Buddhist Council on Vesak Day, marking the 2,500 year anniversary after the Lord Buddha’s Parinibbāna.
1958 – Pres Batista opens offensive against Fidel Castro’s rebellion
1958 – UP & International News Service merge into United Press International
1959 – 1st house with built-in bomb shelter exhibited (Pleasant Hills Pa)
1960 – 1 millionth Dutch telephone installed
1961 – 27 Freedom Riders arrested in Jackson, Mississippi
1962 – M Scott Carpenter aboard Aurora 7 launched into Earth orbit
1963 – 1st Lockheed A-12 to crash, CIA pilot Ken Collins ejects safely
1964 – Longest HR (471′) in Balt Memorial Stadium (Harmon Killebrew, Minn)
1964 – Panic in Lima Peru soccer stadium, kills 300
1966 – “Mame” opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 1508 performances
1967 – AFL grants a franchise to Cincinnati Bengals
1968 – FLQ separatists bomb the U.S. consulate in Quebec City.
1969 – Beatles’ “Get Back,” single goes #1 & stays #1 for 5 weeks
1970 – Peter Green quits Fleetwood Mac to join a religious cult
1970 – The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the Soviet Union.
1971 – A commuter bus plunges into Panama Canal, killing 38 of 43 aboard
1974 – Dean Martin Show, last airs on NBC-TV
1976 – 1st commercial SST flight to North America (Concorde to Wash DC)
1976 – In the Judgment of Paris, wine testers rate wines from California higher than their French counterparts, challenging the notion of France being the foremost producer of the world’s best wines.
1980 – “Rock Lobster” by B-52’s hits #56
1980 – Iran rejects a call to World Court to release US hostages
1981 – Bobby Unser wins, loses, & wins a controversial Indy 500
1981 – Hostage situation ends at Central Bank in Barcelona Spain
1982 – Liberation of Khorramshahr, Iranians recapture of the port city of Khorramshahr from the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq War.
1985 – “View to a Kill” premieres in US
1985 – -25) cyclone hits Bangladesh; about 10,000 die
1986 – Margaret Thatcher becomes 1st British PM to visit Israel
1987 – Al Unser Sr, 47, wins his 4th Indy 500
1988 – John Moschitta set record for fast talking: 586 words per minute
1989 – “Indiana Jones & Last Crusade” premieres
1989 – French war criminal Paul Touvier arrested in monastery in Nice
1989 – Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, is awarded £600,000 in damages (later reduced to £60,000 on appeal) after winning a libel action against Private Eye.
1990 – Andre Dawson receives a record 5 intentional walks in a game
1990 – A car carrying American Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney explodes in Oakland, California, critically injuring both.
1992 – Al Unser Jr wins Indy 500
1993 – Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia after 30-year civil war
1993 – Kim Basinger files for bankruptcy to avoid paying $7.4M settlement
1993 – Kurd rebellion kills 33 soldiers & 5 citizens in Turkey
1994 – Poison singer Bret Michaels gets into a car crash
1996 – “Spy Hard,” starring Leslie Nielsen is released
2001 – Mountain climbing: 15-year-old Sherpa Temba Tsheri becomes the youngest person to climb to the top of Mount Everest.
2001 – The Versailles wedding hall disaster in Jerusalem, Israel, kills 23 and injures over 200 in Israel’s worst-ever civil disaster.
2001 – The Democrats gain control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1994 when Senator James Jeffords of Vermont abandons the Republican Party and declares himself an independent.
2004 – Communications in North Korea: North Korea bans mobile phones.
Births
15 BC – Julius Caesar Germanicus, Roman commander (d. 19)
1522 – John Jewel, English bishop (d. 1571)
1544 – William Gilbert, Essex England, physicist (researcher into magnetism)
1605 – Nikon, [Nikita Minin], patriarch of Russian-orthodox church
1650 – John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough, English general strategist
1671 – Gian Gastone de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1737)
1738 – George III, King of Great Britain (1760-1820)
1743 – Jean-Paul Marat, France , physician , revolutionary
1753 – Oliver Cromwell, Burlington NJ, decorated black soldier who served with Washington in US War of Independence
1794 – William Whewell, British philosopher (History of Inductive Science)
1811 – Charles Clark, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1877
1816 – Emanuel Leutze, US, painter (Washington Crossing the Delaware)
1816 – Robert Seaman Granger, (Union Army Bvt Major general, died in 1894)
1819 – Victoria Alexandrine, Queen of Great Britain (1837-1901)
1854 – Louis Mountbatten, admiral (WW I)
1854 – John Riley Banister, American law officer and cowboy (d. 1918)
1868 – Charles E. Taylor, First aircraft maintenance professional (d. 1956)
1870 – Benjamin Cardozo, American jurist (d. 1938)
1870 – Jan Christiaan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa and proponent of Commonwealth & League of Nations (d. 1950)
1878 – Lillian Moller Gilbreth, engineer (CIOS Gold Medal-1954)
1879 – H. B. Reese, American inventor of Reese’s and founder (d. 1956)
1882 – Creighton Hale, Cork Ireland, actor (Gorilla Man, Way Down East)
1887 – Edward “Mick” Mannock, Irish WWI flying ace (d. 1918)
1891 – Benedictus H Danser, Dutch botanist
1891 – William F Albright, US old testament scholar/archaeologist
1893 – W H Walter Baade, German/US astronomer (Andromeda)
1895 – Samuel I Newhouse, US millionaire publisher (Parade, Vogue, Glamour)
1903 – Aram Katchaturian, Armenian composer, (Earth)
1904 – Kenneth Buckley, British rear-admiral
1904 – Patrick Johnson, physicist
1905 – Mikhail Sholokhov, USSR, writer (And Quiet Flows the Don, Nobel 1965)
1909 – Wilbur Mills, (Rep-D-Ark)/involved with Fanne Foxe
1911 – Barbara West, English survivor of the Titanic sinking (d. 2007)
1913 – Audrey Brown, England, 4 X 100m runner (Olympic-silver-1936)
1914 – Lilli Palmer, [Peiser], Germany, actress (Gentle Sex, Lotte in Weimar)
1918 – Coleman A Young, civil rights leader (Mayor-D-Detroit)
1919 – Sid Couchey, Cleveland, Ohio, comic book artist (Richie Rich), (d. 2012)
1925 – Mai Zetterling, Vaeras Sweden, actress (Witches, Offbeat, Jet Storm)
1927 – John Kelly Jr, US, sculls (Oly-bronze-1956)/brother of Grace Kelly
1927 – Timothy Beven, CEO (Barclays Bank)
1928 – William Trevor, Brit writer (Children of Dynmouth, Fools of Fortune)
1938 – Glen Hall, cricket leg-spinner (South African in one Test v England 1964)
1938 – Tommy Chong, Edmonton, Alberta, comedian/actor (Cheech & Chong)
1940 – Gary Burghoff, Bristol CT, actor (Radar-M*A*S*H)
1941 – Bob Dylan, [Zimmerman], Minn, singer/songwriter (Blowin’ in Wind)
1942 – Derek Quinn, guitarist (Freddie & Dreamers-I’m Telling You Now)
1942 – Sarah Dash, Trenton NJ, rocker (LaBelle-Lady Marmalade)
1944 – Patti LaBelle, [Holt], Phila Pa, singer (LaBelle-Lady Marmalade)
1945 – Priscilla Presley, Bkln NY, actress (Jenna-Dallas, Naked Gun)
1946 – Irina Kirszenstein Szewinska, Lenningrad, long jumper (Oly-bron-1972)
1946 – Steve Upton, rock drummer (Wishbone Ash-There’s the Rub, Locked In)
1949 – John Illsley, rocker (Dire Straits)
1949 – Jim Broadbent, English actor
1951 – Rob Baker, rock drummer (Red Rider)
1955 – Rosanne Cash, Memphis Tn, country singer (Seven Year Ache, I Wonder)
1962 – Dorothy Trapp, equestrian 3-day (Olympics-96)
1963 – Ivan Capelli, Italian racing driver
1963 – Michael Chabon, American author
1965 – Shinichiro Watanabe, Japanese anime director
1966 – Ricky Craven, American NASCAR driver
1967 – Heavy D, rapper
1967 – Margaret Crowley, Australian 800m/1500m runner (Olympics-96)
1970 – Thomas Alden Page, Glenridge NJ, rocker (New Kids-Hangin’ Tough)
1973 – Ruslana, Ukrainian singer
1974 – Will Sasso, Canadian actor and comedian
1977 – Kym Valentine. Australian actress
1981 – Marketa Janska, Czech model and Playboy Playmate
1983 – Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, Anglo-Australian videogame creator and critic
1985 – Tim Bridgman, British racing driver
1990 – Joey Logano, American racecar driver
1996 – Matthew Eappen, Boston Mass, baby killed by nanny Louise Woodward
Deaths
1144 – Petronella, wife of earl Floris II the Vette of Holland/regent, dies
1153 – David I, King of Scots (1124-53), dies at about 68
1351 – Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali, Sultan of Morocco (b. circa 1297)
1408 – Taejo of Joseon, ruler of Korea (b. 1335)
1425 – Murdoch Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany, Scottish politician (b. 1362)
1456 – Ambroise de Loré, French military commander (b. 1396)
1543 – Nicolas Copernicus, astronomer, dies in Poland
1612 – Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury/PM (1598-1612), dies at 48
1734 – Georg Ernst Stahl, German physician and chemist (b. 1660)
1806 – John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll, British field marshal (b. 1723)
1843 – Sylvestre François Lacroix, French mathematician (b. 1765)
1861 – Elmer Ellsworth, US warrior (Chicago Zouaves), shot to death at 23
1861 – James T Jackson, US landlord (doodde EE Ellsworth), shot dead)
1876 – Georgi Benkovski, Bulgarian revolutionary (b. 1843)
1879 – William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist (Liberator), dies at 73
1908 – Old Tom Morris, Scottish golfer (b. 1821)
1941 – Lancelot Holland, British vice-admiral ((WW II/Hood), dies in battle
1949 – Aleksey Shchusev, Russian architect (b. 1873)
1950 – Archibald Wavell, British general (b. 1883)
1959 – John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State (1953-59), dies at 71
1963 – Elmore James, blues guitarist, dies at 45 of a heart attack
1974 – Duke Ellington, Jazz musician ,band leader, dies of cancer at 75
1984 – Vincent J. McMahon, American professional wrestling promoter (b. 1914)
1986 – Stephen D Thorne, Lt Cmdr USN/astronaut, dies in a plane crash at 33
1986 – Yakima Canutt, actor/director (Diary of a Young Comic), dies at 91
1987 – Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold, actress (Gigi, Music Man), dies at 89
1991 – Gene Clark, folk-rocker (Byrds-Tambourine Man), dies at 49
1993 – Milton O Thompson, astronaut (Dynasoar, X-15), dies at 66
1994 – Yehuda Mor-Mirkovsky, Israeli kibbutz-founder, dies at 96
1995 – Mike Pyne, jazz Pianist, dies at 54
1996 – Alexander Langsdorf, physicist, dies at 83
1996 – Jack McCarthy, kiddie show host (Popeye), dies of cancer at 81
1997 – Edward Mulhare, actor (Ghost & Mrs Muir), dies of lung cancer at 74
2004 – Henry Ries, American photographer (b. 1917)
2008 – Dick Martin , American comedian (b. 1922)
2009 – Jay Bennett, American guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, engineer, producer, and singer-songwriter (b. 1963)
2010 – Paul Gray, American bassist (Slipknot) (b. 1972)
2011 – Huguette Clark, Heiress of the Clark Copper fortune, life-long reclusion from society. (b. 1906)
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