Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1770

James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.

1808

Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.

1831

Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, which will claim the lives of 55 to 65 whites and about twice that number of blacks.

1858

The famous debates between senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas began in Ottawa, Illinois.

1863

Lawrence, Kansas is destroyed by pro-Confederate guerrillas known as Quantrill's Raiders.

1878

The American Bar Association was founded in Saratoga Springs, New York.

1879

The locals of Knock, County Mayo, Ireland report their having seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary. The apparition is later named "Our Lady of Knock" and the spot transformed into a Catholic pilgrimage site.

1888

The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs.

1945

President Truman ended the Lend-Lease program that had shipped some $50 billion in aid to America's allies during World War II.

1945

Physicist Harry Daghlian is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1957

The Soviet Union successfully conducts a long-range test flight of the R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile.

1959

United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Hawaii's admission is currently commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day.

1968

James Anderson Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

1982

Lebanese Civil War: The first troops of a multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestine Liberation Organization's withdrawal from Lebanon.

1986

Toxic gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos the West African nation of Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range.

1987

Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the first Marine ever court-martialed for spying, was convicted in Quantico, Va., of passing secrets to the KGB. Lonetree served eight years in a military prison.

1991

A hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.

1991

Latvia declares renewal of its full independence after its occupation by the Soviet Union since 1940.

1994

Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 crashes in Douar Izounine, Morocco, killing all 44 people on board.

1995

Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia, attempts to divert to West Georgia Regional Airport after the left engine fails, but the aircraft crashes in Carroll County near Carrollton, Georgia, killing nine of the 29 people on board.

1997

Hudson Foods Co. closed a plant in Nebraska, agreeing to destroy some 25 million pounds of hamburger after the largest meat recall in U.S. history.

1998

Samuel Bowers, a 73-year-old former Ku Klux Klan leader, was convicted in Hattiesburg, Miss., of ordering a 1966 firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer.

2000

American golfer Tiger Woods wins the 82nd PGA Championship and becomes the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in a calendar year.

2013

Hundreds of people are reported killed by alleged chemical attacks in the Ghouta region of Syria.

1973

Sergey Brin, Russian-American computer scientist and businessman, co-founded Google

1986

Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter

1940

Exiled Communist revolutionary, Russian theorist and politician Leon Trotsky who founded the Red Army, died in Mexico City from wounds inflicted by an assassin. (b. 1879)

1983

Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., ending a self-imposed exile in the United States, was shot dead moments after stepping off a plane at Manila International Airport. (b. 1932)