Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1763

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon began surveying the Mason-Dixon line.

1777

The Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, precursor to the U.S. Constitution and sends them to the states for ratification.

1806

Explorer Zebulon Pike spotted the mountaintop now known as Pikes Peak.

1837

Isaac Pitman's system of shorthand was published, under the title "Stenographic Sound-Hand."

1881

The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was founded.

1889

A military coup forces Brazilian emperor Pedro II from the throne and a democratic republic is proclaimed.

1922

Dr. Alexis Carrel reported the discovery of white corpuscles.

1926

The National Broadcasting Co. debuted with a radio network of 24 stations.

1939

President Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1940

The first 75,000 men were called to Armed Forces duty under peacetime conscription.

1960

The first submarine with nuclear missiles, USS George Washington, went to sea.

1965

Craig Breedlove reaches a speed of over 600 miles per hour in his jet-powered Spirit of America, setting a new land speed record.

1968

RMS Queen Elizabeth, in its day the largest ocean liner ever built, retired from service.

1969

A Vietnam War moratorium rally at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., draws a crowd of 600,000 protestors.

1982

Funeral services were held in Moscow's Red Square for the late Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev.

1985

Britain and Ireland signed an accord giving Dublin an official consultative role in governing Northern Ireland.

1986

A government tribunal in Nicaragua convicted American Eugene Hasenfus of charges related to his role in delivering arms to Contra rebels, and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. He was pardoned a month later.

1986

The SEC fined Ivan F. Boesky $100 million for insider stock trading.

1987

Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a Douglas DC-9-14 jetliner, crashes in a snowstorm at Denver, Colorado Stapleton International Airport, killing 28 occupants, while 54 survive the crash.

1988

The Palestine National Council, the legislative body of the PLO, proclaimed the establishment of an independent Palestinian state at the close of a four-day conference in Algiers.

1990

Producers acknowledge that Milli Vanilli, who won the 1990 "Best New Artist" Grammy Award, did not sing on their album.

1993

A judge in Mineola, N.Y., sentenced Joey Buttafuoco to six months in jail for the statutory rape of Amy Fisher, who shot and wounded Buttafuoco's wife, Mary Jo.

2002

Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as China's Communist Party leader.

2004

New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey leaves office, three months after resigning due to a gay extra-marital affair. State Senator Richard Codey takes over as interim governor.

2006

The Al Jazeera English news channel is launched.

1708

William Pitt, the Elder, British statesman

1738

Sir William Herschel, German-born British astronomer

1862

Gerhart Hauptmann, German dramatist, novelist, and poet

1887

Georgia O'Keeffe, American artist.

1891

Erwin Rommel, German field marshal

1891

W. Averell Harriman, American financier

1891

W. Averell Harriman, American diplomat.

1934

Petula Clark, British singer and actress.

1957

Kevin Eubanks, American jazz guitarist who has been the leader of the Tonight Show band since 1995.

1954

Lionel Barrymore, American actor and member of the celebrated Barrymore family of actors.

1958

Tyrone Power, American film actor.

1978

Margaret Mead, American anthropologist.

1991

Former State Department official Alger Hiss, who fell from grace in a Communist spy scandal, died in New York at age 91.

1998

Kwame Ture, the civil rights activist formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, died in Guinea at age 57.