Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1652

The Massachusetts Bay Colony proclaimed itself to be an independent commonwealth.

1682

The founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, landed at what is now Chester, Pa.

1863

The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded.

1923

Turkey formally became a republic after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The first president was Mustafa Kemal, later known as Kemal Ataturk.

1929

Black Tuesday descended upon the New York Stock Exchange. Prices collapsed amid panic selling and thousands of investors were wiped out as America's Great Depression began.

1940

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number - 158 - in America's first peacetime military draft.

1945

The first ballpoint pens to be made commercially went on sale at Gimbels Department Store in New York at the price of $12.50 each.

1956

During the Suez Canal crisis, Israel launched an invasion of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

1956

"The Huntley-Brinkley Report" premiered as NBC's nightly television newscast, replacing "The Camel News Caravan."

1959

General Mills became the first corporation to use close-circuit television.

1960

Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) won his first professional fight.

1964

Thieves made off with the Star of India and other gems from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The Star and most of the other gems were recovered; three men were convicted of stealing them.

1966

The National Organization for Women was founded.

1967

The counter-culture musical ''Hair'' opened off-Broadway.

1969

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered an immediate end to all school segregation.

1973

O.J. Simpson, of the Buffalo Bills, set two NFL records. He carried the ball 39 times and he ran 157 yards putting him over 1,000 yards at the seventh game of the season.

1974

U.S. President Gerald Ford signed a new law forbidding discrimination in credit applications on the basis of sex or marital status.

1985

It was announced that Maj. Gen. Samuel K. Doe had won the first multiparty election in Liberia.

1989

A public mourning, involving over 20,000 East Berliners, was observed with a minute of silence for the people who had been killed while trying to flee over the Berlin Wall.

1990

The U.N. Security Council voted to hold Saddam Hussein's regime liable for human rights abuses and war damages during its occupation of Kuwait.

1991

Trade sanctions were imposed on Haiti by the U.S. to pressure the new leaders to restore the ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.

1991

The U.S. Galileo spacecraft became the first to visit an asteroid (Gaspra).

1994

Francisco Martin Duran fired more than two dozen shots at the White House while standing on Pennsylvania Ave. Duran was later convicted of trying to kill U.S. President Clinton.

1995

Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers became the NFL's career leader in receiving yards with 14,040 yards.

1996

An auction was held to sell the artwork that had been stolen by the Nazis during the German occupation of Austria during World War II.

1998

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemned both apartheid and violence committed by the African National Congress.

1998

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the moon, returned to space 36 years later, at age 77.

1998

The oldest known copy of Archimedes' work sold for $2 million at a New York auction.

1998

A dance hall in Goteborg, Sweden, was gutted with fire killing 60 people. 173 were also injured in the fire.

1998

In Freehold, NJ, Melissa Drexler was sentenced to 15 years in prison for strangling her baby after giving birth in the bathroom at her senior prom.

1998

A Turkish Airlines flight was hijacked and ordered to fly to the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. The plane had 39 people on board.

2001

KTLA broadcasted the first coast to coast HDTV network telecast.

1618

Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded under a sentence that had been brought against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I.

1901

Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President McKinley, was electrocuted.

1911

American newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer died in Charleston, S.C.

1947

Former first lady Frances Cleveland Preston died in Baltimore at age 83.

1987

Jazz great Woody Herman died in Los Angeles at age 74.

2024

Teri Garr, American actress and star of 'Young Frankenstein' and 'Tootsie'. She frequently appeared in comedic roles throughout her career, which spanned four decades and includes over 140 credits in film and television. (b. 1944)