Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1789

Father John Carroll was appointed as the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States of America.

1860

Former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln defeated three other candidates for the United States presidency.

1861

Jefferson Davis was elected president of the Confederacy.

1869

The first official intercollegiate football game was played in New Brunswick, NJ.

1888

Benjamin Harrison of Indiana won the presidential election, beating incumbent Grover Cleveland on electoral votes although Cleveland led in the popular vote.

1900

President McKinley was re-elected, beating Democrat William Jennings Bryan.

1913

Mohandas K. Gandhi was arrested as he led a march of Indian miners in South Africa.

1917

During World War I, Candian forces take the village of Passchendaele, Belgium, in the Third Battle of Ypres.

1923

Jacob Schick was granted a patent for the electric shaver.

1928

In a first, presidential election results were flashed on an electronic sign outside the New York Times building; Herbert Hoover beat Alfred E. Smith.

1935

Edwin H. Armstrong announced his development of FM broadcasting.

1952

The first hydrogen bomb was exploded at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1956

President Eisenhower was re-elected, beating Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson.

1962

The U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution that condemned South Africa's racist apartheid policies. The resolution also called for all member states to terminate military and economic relations with South Africa.

1965

The Freedom Flights program began which would allow 250,000 Cubans to come to the United States by 1971.

1967

Phil Donahue began a TV talk show in Dayton, OH. The show was on the air for 29 years.

1975

King Hassan II of Morocco launches the Green March, a mass migration of 300,000 unarmed Moroccans, that march into the nation of Western Sahara.

1977

39 people were killed when an earthen dam burst, sending a wall of water through the campus of Toccoa Falls Bible College in Georgia.

1983

U.S. Army choppers dropped hundreds of leaflets over northern and central Grenada. The leaflets urged residents to cooperate in locating any Grenadian army or Cuban resisters to the U.S-led invasion.

1984

For the first time in 193 years, the New York Stock Exchange remained open during a presidential election day.

1985

Leftist guerrillas belonging to Columbia's April 19 Movement seized control of the Palace of Justice in Bogota.

1986

U.S. intelligence sources confirmed a story run by the Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa that reported the U.S. had been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages.

1986

Former Navy radioman John A. Walker Jr., was sentenced in Baltimore to life imprisonment. Walker had admitted to being the head of a family spy ring.

1989

In the hopes of freeing U.S. hostages held in Iran, the U.S. announced that it would unfreeze $567 million in Iranian assets that had been held since 1979.

1990

About 20% of the Universal Studios backlot in southern California was destroyed in an arson fire.

1991

Kuwait celebrated the dousing of the last of the oil fires ignited by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.

1995

Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell announced plans to move his team to Baltimore.

1996

Michael Jordan scored 50 points for the 29th time in his NBA career.

1997

Former President George Bush opened his presidential library at Texas A&M University.

1998

The Islamic militant group Hamas exploded a car bomb killing the two attackers and injuring 21 civilians.

1999

Australians rejected a referendum to drop Britain's queen as their head of state.

2001

Ten people were executed in Beijing, China. The state newspaper of China said that all of the people executed were robbers and killers aged 20-23.

2001

In Madrid, Spain, a car bomb injured about 60 people. The bomb was blamed on Basque separatists.

1832

Joseph Smith, III, was born. He was the first president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He was also the son of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

1854

John Philip Sousa, the king of American march music, was born in Washington, D.C.

1861

The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, was born.

1893

Composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age 53.