Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1746

The College of New Jersey was officially chartered. It later became known as Princeton University.

1797

French balloonist Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first parachute descent, landing safely from a height of about 3,000 feet.

1836

Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first constitutionally elected president of the Republic of Texas.

1844

This day is recognized as "The Great Disappointment" among those who practiced Millerism. The world was expected to come to an end according to the followers of William Miller.

1879

Thomas Edison conducted his first successful experiment with a high-resistance carbon filament.

1883

The original Metropolitan Opera House in New York held its grand opening with a performance of Gounod's ''Faust.''

1883

The New York Horse show opened. The first national horse show was formed by the newly organized National Horse Show Association of America.

1907

The Panic of 1907 began when depositors began withdrawing money from many New York banks.

1928

Republican presidential nominee Herbert Hoover spoke of the ''American system of rugged individualism'' in a speech at New York's Madison Square Garden.

1934

Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, the notorious bank robber, was shot and killed by Federal agents at a farm in East Liverpool, Ohio.

1939

The first televised pro football game was telecast from New York. Brooklyn defeated Philadelphia 23-14.

1950

The Los Angeles Rams set an NFL record by defeating the Baltimore Colts 70-27. It was a record score at the time for a regular season game.

1954

West Germany joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

1962

U.S. President Kennedy went on radio and television to inform the United States about his order to send U.S. forces to blockade Cuba. The blockade was in response to the discovery of Soviet missile bases on the island.

1968

Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft had orbited the Earth 163 times.

1975

Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was discharged after publicly declaring his homosexuality. His tombstone reads "A gay Vietnam Veteran. When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."

1979

The U.S. government allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to travel to New York for medical treatment - a decision that precipitated the Iran hostage crisis.

1981

The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization was decertified by the federal government for its strike the previous August.

1983

At the Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia, an armed man crashed a truck through front gates and demanded to speak with U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1986

U.S. President Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 into law.

1991

The European Community and the European Free Trade Association agreed to create a free trade zone of 19 nations by the year 1993.

1995

The 50th anniversary of the United Nations was marked by a record number of world leaders gathering.

1998

Pakistan's carpet weaving industry announced that they would begin to phase out child labor.

1998

The United Nations announced that over 2 million children had been killed in war as innocent victims since 1987.

1999

The U.N. Security Council voted to send 6,000 troops to Sierra Leone to oversee a peace plan that had been signed in July.

1999

China ended its first-ever human rights conference in which it defied Western definitions of civil liberties.

2010

The Internation Space Station set the record (3641 days) for the longest continuous human occupation of space. It had been continously inhabited since November 2, 2000.

1844

Legendary stage actress Sarah Bernhardt was born in Paris.

1973

Pablo Casals, Spanish cellist, conductor and composer, died in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, at age 96.

1986

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi passed away at Woods Hole, Massachusetts at age 93. A Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937, he is credited with discovering vitamin C and components and reactions of the citric acid cycle.

1995

British writer Sir Kingsley Amis died at the age of 73.