Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1701

The Collegiate School was founded in Killingworth, CT. The school moved to New Haven in 1745 and changed its name to Yale College.

1793

During the French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded.

1829

The first modern hotel in America opened. The Tremont Hotel had 170 rooms that rented for $2 a day and included four meals.

1846

Ether, the painkiller, was used for the first time. The drug was invented by dentist William T. Morton.

1859

Abolitionist John Brown led a group of about 20 men in a raid on Harper's Ferry.

1869

A hotel in Boston became the first in the U.S. to install indoor plumbing.

1916

Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic, in New York City.

1923

Walt Disney contracted with M.J. Winkler to distribute the Alice Comedies. This event is recognized as the start of the Disney Company.

1928

Marvin Pipkin received a patent for the frosted electric light bulb.

1941

The Nazis advanced to within 60 miles of Moscow. Romanians entered Odessa, USSR, and began exterminating 150,000 Jews.

1943

Chicago's new subway system was officially opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony.

1946

Ten Nazi war criminals condemned during the Nuremberg trials were hanged.

1955

Mrs. Jules Lederer replaced Ruth Crowley in newspapers using the name Ann Landers.

1962

U.S. President Kennedy was informed that there were missile bases in Cuba, beginning the Cuban missile crisis.

1964

China detonated its first atomic bomb.

1967

NATO headquarters opened in Brussels.

1970

Anwar Sadat was elected president of Egypt, succeeding the late Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1973

Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize; Tho declined the award.

1978

The College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church chose Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to be the new pope; he took the name John Paul II.

1982

China announced that it had successfully fired a ballistic missile from a submarine.

1987

Rescuers freed Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl trapped in an abandoned well for 58 hours in Midland, Texas.

1989

U.S. President George H.W. Bush signed the Gramm-Rudman budget reduction law that ordered federal programs be cut by $16.1 billion.

1991

George Hennard crashed his truck into a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, TX and began a shooting rampage in which he killed 23 people before taking his own life.

1993

The U.N. Security Council approved the deployment of U.S. warships to enforce a blockade on Haiti to increase pressure on the controlling military leaders.

1994

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was re-elected to a fourth term.

1994

In the Colombian city of Valledupar, a branch of the Colombian central bank Banco de la Republica (Bank of the Republic) was robbed. The amount stolen: COP$24,075 million of non emitted bills (some US$33 million) and came to be known as the "El Robo del Siglo" (The bank heist of the century).

1995

A vast throng of black men gathered in Washington for the ''Million Man March'' led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. About 837,000 attend.

1997

Charles M. Schulz and his wife Jeannie announced that they would give $1 million toward the construction of a D-Day memorial to be placed in Virginia.

1998

David Trimble and John Hume were named recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the Northern Ireland peace accord.

1998

British police arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London for questioning about allegations that he had murdered Spanish citizens during his years in power.

1999

A New York Air National Guard plane rescued Dr. Jerri Nielsen from a South Pole research center after she'd spent five months isolated by the Antarctic winter, which forced her to treat herself for a breast lump.

2000

It was announced that Chevron Corp. would buy Texaco Inc. for $35 billion. The combined company was called Chevron Texaco Corp. and became the 4th largest oil company in the world.

2002

It was reported that North Korea had told the U.S. that it had a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of an 1994 agreement with the U.S.

2002

The Arthur Andersen accounting firm was sentenced to five years probation and fined $500,000 for obstructing a federeal investigation of the energy company Enron.

2013

Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashes on approach to Pakse International Airport in Laos, killing 49 people.

1758

Author Noah Webster was born. He was a teacher and journalist whose name is associated with the word "dictionary."

1898

Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas was born. He served for 36 years on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1997

Author James Michener died in Austin, Texas, at age 90.

2000

Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan and his son were killed in a plane crash south of St. Louis while en route to a rally for Carnahan's U.S. Senate campaign.