On This Day
Every day of the year is a day on which someone of interest was born or died or some event of interest occurred…
June 19
June 21
Ernst, Duke of Coburg (1818), Reinhold Niebuhr (1892), Al Hirschfeld (1903), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905), Jane Russell (1921), Judy Holliday (1921), Maureen Stapleton (1925), Carl Stokes (1927), Judith Raskin (1928), Bernie Kopell (1933), Françoise Sagan [Quoirez] (1935), Mariette Hartley (1940), Marjorie Margolies Medzvinsky (1942), William Bradford Reynolds (1942), Malcolm Rifkiind (1946), Maurice Saatchi (1946), Dana Rohrbacher (1947), Shirin Ebadi (1947), Benazir Bhutto (1953), Joko Widodo (1961), Gretchen Carlson (1966), Chris Pratt (1979), Prince William (1982), Jussie Smollett (1982), Edward Snowden (1983) & Lana Del Rey [Elizabeth Grant] (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Wenceslaus II of Bohemia & Poland (1305), Edward III of England (1377), Niccolo Machiavelli (1527), Oda Nobunaga (1582), Jon Smith (1631), Inigo Jones (1652), Antonio López de Santa Anna (1876), Leland Stanford (1893), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1908), Édouard Vuillard (1940), Andrew Goodman, James Chaney & Michael Schwerner (1964), Bernard Baruch (1965), Sukarno (1970), Alan Hovhaness (2000), CArroll O’Connor (2001), Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila (2005) & Charles Krauthammer (2018) died on this day. Vespasian led Roman troops into Jericho during the Great Jewish Revolt (68), Catherine of Aragon’s appearance before the Blackfriars Legatine Court (1529), great fire in Moscow (1547), St. Paul’s Cathedral foundation stone laid (1675), New Hampshire ratified the Constitution(1788), Louis XVI captured at Varennes (1791), Richard Wagner’s opera “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” premiered in Munich (1868), Frank Woolworth opened his first store (1879), Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee (1887), Theodore Roosevelt nominated by Republicans (1904), Arthur Miller refused to name Communists (1956), Andrew Goodman, James Chaney & Michael Schwerner murdered in Mississippi (1964), “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” released (1966), Menachim Begin elected prime minister of Israel (1977), Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice’s musical “Evita” premiered in London (1978), Socialist/Communist majority elected in France’s parliamentary elections (1981), JK Rowling’s fifth book “Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix” published (2003) on this day.
June 22
George Vancouver (1757), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767), Giuseppe Mazzini (1805), Frank Damrosch (1859), Erich Maria Remarque (1898), Jennie Tourel (1900), John Dillinger (1903), Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906), Billy Wilder (1906), Peter Pears (1910), Joseph Papp (1921), Bill Blass (1922), Prunella Scales (1932), Dianne Feinstein (1933), Kris Kristofferson (1936), Ed Bradley (1941), Michael Lerner (1941), Klaus Maria Brandauer (1944), Jerry Rawlings (1947), Lindsay Wagner (1949), Meryl Streep (1949), Elizabeth Warren (1949), Graham Greene (1952), Cyndi Lauper (1953), Erin Brockovich (1960), Dan Brown (1964), Carson Daly (1973) & Bob the Drag Queen [Christopher Caldwell] (1986) were born #OnThisDay. Bishop John Fisher (1535), Vladimir Köppen (1940), David O. Selznick (1965), Judy Garland [Frances Gumm] (1969), Darius Milhaud (1974), Joseph Losey (1984), Fred Astaire [Austerlitz] (1987), Pat Nixon (1993) & Ann Landers [Eppie Lederer] (2002) died on this day. Bilbo Baggins returned to Bag End after his great adventure in “The Hobbit” (1342 in the reckoning of the shire), richard II succeeded Edward II as king of England (1377), Battle of Morat/Murten (1476), Bishop John Fisher executed (1535), Henry Hudson set adrift in Hudson Bay by mutineers (1611), Galileo Galilei forced to recant by the Inquisition (1633), Royal Greenwich Observatory established by Charles II (1675), Frederick the Great decreed freedom of religion & the press & the end of torture (1740), Zong slave ship trial (1783), Napoleon’s second abdication (1815), June uprising in Paris (1848), Haakon VII crowned king of Norway (1906), George V crowned king of England (1911), France’s surrender to Nazi Germany (1940), Nazi German invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa) (1941), FDR signed the GI Bill into law (1944), Battle of Okinawa ended (1945) & musicians & film industry professionals were named as Communists (1950) on this day.
June 23
Oda Nobunaga (1534), Johan Banér (1596), Justus Schottel (Schottelius) (1612), Maria Leszczyńska, queen of France (1703), Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763), Ernest Guiraud (1837), Anna Akhmatova (1889), Alfred Kinsey (1894), Edward VIII of England (1894), Jean Anouilh (1910), Alan Turing (1912), William P. Rogers (1913), Jean, Grand Duc du Luxembourg (1921), Bob Fosse (1927), Michael Shaara (1928), June Carter Cash (1929), James Levine (1943), Clarence Thomas (1948), Frances McDormand (1957), Selma Blair (1972) & Zinedine Zidane (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Emperor Vespasian (79), Cecil Sharp (1924), Reinhold Glière (1956), Sanjay Gandhi (1980), Vincent Chin (1982), Jonas Salk (1995), Andreas Papandreou (1996), Betty Shabazz (1997), Maureen O’Sullivan (1998) & Peter Falk (2011) died on this day. The Alþingi established in Iceland (930), William Penn’s treaty of friendship with the Lenni Lenape (1683), French Acadians ordered to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia (1713), Louis XVI rejected the demands of the Third Estate (National Assembly) (1789), Catherine the Great granted Jews permission to settle in Kiev (1794), Adolf Hitler toured Paris (1940), Gamel Abdel Nasser elected president of Egypt (1956) & a Thai soccer team became trapped in a cave (2018) on this day.
June 24
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1533), St. John of the Cross [Juan de Yepes y Álvarez] (1542), Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771), Horatio Kitchener (1850), Agrippina Vaganova (1879), Gerrit Rietveld (1888), Pierre Fournier (1906), John Ciardi (1916), Albert ‘Al’ Molinaro (1919), Pete Hamiill (1935), Julia Kristeva (1941), Michele Lee (1942), George Pataki (1945), Robert Reich (1946) & Mindy Kaling (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Lucrezia Borgia (1519), Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1604), Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia (1860), Grover Cleveland (1908), John Herbert ‘Jackie’ Gleason (1987), Rufino Tamayo (1991), Brian Keit (1997) & Patsy Ramsey (2006) died on this day. Battle of Bannockburn (1314), St. John’s Dance in Aachen (1374), Henry VIII crowned king of England (1509), Gustav Vasa initiated the Reformation in Sweden, seizing Catholic church property (1527), King Philip’s War began (1675), France’s first republican constitution adopted (1793), Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand Armée began its invasion of Russia (1812), Battle of Solferino (1859), Adolf Hitler began a month-long prison sentence (1922), Soviet blockade of West Berlin began (1948), US Senate repealed the Gul of Tonkin resolution (1970) & Chinatown garment workers launched a strike in NYC (1982) on this day.
June 25
Antoni Gaudí (1852), Gustave Charpentier (1860), Louis Mountbatten (1900), George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903), Sidney Lumet (1924), June Lockhart (1925), James Meredith (1933), Larry Kramer (1935), Marabel Morgan (1937), Carly Simon (1945), Jimmy Walker (1947), Phyllis George (1949), Sonia Sotomayor (1954), Anthony Bourdain (1956), Ricky Gervais (1961), George Michael [Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou] (1963) & Rain [Jung Ji-hoon] (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Mary Tudor, queen of France (1533), George Armstrong Custer (1876), Jonny Mercer (1976), Michel Foucault (1984), Warren Burger (1995), Jacques Cousteau (1997), Lester Maddox (2003), Michael Jackson (2009) & Farah Fawcett (2009) died on this day. Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to received a Ph.D. (1678), Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876), Igor Stravinsky’s ballet “The Firebird” premiered at the Opéra de Paris (1910), Korean War (1950), Madagascar declared its independence from France (1960), Prince’s “Purple Rain” album released (1984), Vigdis Finnbogadóttir elected president of Iceland (1988), & Kim Campbell was elected prime minister of Canada (1993) on this day.
June 26
Charles Messier (1730), Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817), Abner Doubleday (1819), William Thomson, Fist Baron Kelvin (1824), George Herbert, 5th Earl Carnarvon (1866), Pearl Buck (1892), Willy Messerschmmitt (1898), Hugues Cuénod (1902), Peter Lorre (1904), Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911), Aimé Césaire (1913), Wolfgang Windgassen (1914), Claudio Abbado (1933), Chuck Robb (1939), Greg Le Mond (1961), Mikhail Khodorkovsky (1963), Sean Hayes (1970) & Ariana Grande (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Julian the Apostate, Francisco Pizarro (1541), George IV (1830), Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1836), Strom Thurmond (2003), Dennis Thatcher (2003), Liz Claiborne (2007) & Nora Ephron (2012) died on this day. Roman Emperor Julian killed in battle (363), Pied Piper of Hamelin (Lüneburg manuscript) (1284), Duke of Gloucester becomes Richard III of England (1483), Swedish troops under Gustaf Adolf landed at Peenemunde (1630), Hong Kong proclaimed a British crown colony (1843), Richard Wagner’s opera “Die Walküre” premiered in Munich (1870), Victoria & Albert Museum opened in London (1909), Gustav Mahler’s 9th Symphony premiered in Vienna (1912), US troops arrived in France (1917), FDR signed the Federal Credit Union Act in to law (1934), United Nations Charter signed by 50 member states in San Francisco (1945), US airlift to Berlin began (1948), St. Lawrence Seaway opened (1959), JFK’s speech in Berlin (1963), Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India (1975), Elvis Presley’s last live performance (1977), Nelson Mandela addressed Congress (1991), Bill Clinton launched Cruise missile strikes on Iraq (1993), “Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone” published (1997), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) on this day.
June 27
Henry VIII (1491), Peter Paul Rubens (1577), John Wesley (1703), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712), Étienne François, duc de Choiseul (1719), Joseph Joachim (1831), Luigi Pirandello (1867), Pierre Laval (1883), Richard Rodgers (1902), Sergiu Celibidache (1912), Mel Brooks (1926), Hans Blix (1928), Noriyuki ‘Pat’ Morita (1932), Leon Panetta (1938), Muhammad Yunus (1940), Gilda Radner (1946), Kathy Bates (1948), Thomas Hampson (1955) & Elon Musk (1971) were born #OnThisDay. Abraham Ortelius (1598), James Madison (1836), Franz Ferdinand (1914), Rod Serling (1975), José Iturbi (1980), Helen Gahagan Douglas (1980), Boris Christoff (1993), Mortimer Adler (2001), Brenda Howard (2005) & Robert Byrd (2010) died on this day. Battle of Kosovo (1389), Edward IV crowned king of England (1461), Charles V elected Holy Roman Emperor (1519), Catherine the Great seized power in a coup d’état (1762), Victoria crowned queen of England (1838), “Giselle” premiered at the Théâtre de l’Académie Royale de Musique in Paris (1841), Adolphe Sax patented the saxophone (1846), Treaty of Versailles signed (1919 of Versailles signed (1919), Night of the Long Knives (1934), Daniel Ellsberg indicted for leaking the Pentagton Papers (1968) & the Stonewall Riots began (1969) on this day.
June 29
Giacomo Leopardi (1798), Sergei Witte (1849), George Washington Goethals (1858), William James Mayo (1861), George Ellery Hale (1868), Robert Schuman (1886), Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900), Nelson Eddy (1901), Paul O’Dwyer (1907), Leroy Anderson (1908), Frank Loesser (1910), Prince Bernhard (1911), Rafael Kubelik (1914), Kwame Toure [Stokely Carmichael] (1941), Fred Grandy (1948) & Anne-Sophie Mutter (1963) were born #OnThisDay. Margaret Beaufort (1509), Henry Clay (1852), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1861), Ferdinand I of Austria (1875), Paul Klee (1940), Igancy Jan Padereski (1941), Jayne Mansfield (1967), Lana Turner (1995), Rosemary Clooney (2002), Katharine Hepburn (2003) & Carl Reiner (2020) died on this day. The Globe Theatre burnt down during a performance of “Henry VIII” (1613), Sofia declared herself regent of Russia (1682), first known recording of classical music Handel’s “Israel in Egypt” on wax cylinder) (1888), imperial decree against foreigners in China (1900), Goethals Bridge & Outerbridge Crossing opened on Staten Island (1928), Civil Rights Act passed the Senate (1964) & Isabel Martinez de Perón succeeded Juan Domingo Perón as president of Argentina (1974) on this day.
June 30
Charles VIII of France (1470), Johann Friedrich I, Elector of Saxony (1503), John Gay (1685), Jean-Dominique, Comte de Cassini (1748), Harold Laski (1893), Walter Ulbricht (1893), Willie Sutton (1901), Lena Horne (1917), Susan Hayward (1917), Thomas Sowell (1930), Esa-Pekka Salonen (1958), Rupert Graves (1963), Mike Tyson (1966) & Michael Phelps (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Aztec emperor Moctezuma II (1520), Jacob Israel de Haan (1924), Ernst Röhm (1934), Gregor Strasser (1934), Karl Ernst (1934), Kurt von Schleiger (1934), Gustav Ritter von Kahr (1934), Nancy Mitford (1973), Alberta King (1974), Lillian Hellman (1984), Federico Mompou (1987), Gale Gordon [Charles Thomas Aldrich, Jr] (1995), Buddy Hackett (2003), Christopher Fry (2005), Pina Bausche (2009), Harve Presnell (2009) & Yitzhak Shamir (2012) died on this day. Union of Kalmar concluded (1397), Hernán Cortés & Spanish Conquistadores expelled during ‘La Noche Triste’ (the Night of Sadness) (1520), Henri II of France mortally wounded in a joust (1559), Philip II moved into El Escorial (1598), Nazi ‘Night of the Long Knives’ (1934), Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” published (1936), the Congo independent from Belgium (1960), Rwanda & Burundi independent from Belgium (1962), Leopoldville renamed Kinshasa (1966), Mikhail Baryshnikov defected (1974), the CCP denounced Mao Zedong (1981), the Equal Rights Amendment failed by three states (1982), Pierre Elliott Trudeau resigned as prime minister of Canada (1984), Bowers v. Evans (1986), Margaret Thatcher elevated to the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven (1992), same-sex marriage recognized in Spain (2005), Mohamed Morsi sworn in as president of Egypt (2012), Misty Copeland the first African American principal dancer of the American Ballet Theatre (2015) & same-sex marriage recognized in Germany (2017) on this day.
July 1
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646), Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau (1725), George Sand [Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dudevant] (1804), William Strunk, Jr. (1869), Walter Francis White (1893), Charles Laughton (1899), William Wyler (1902), Estée Lauder [Josephine Esther Mentzer] (1906), Olivia de Havilland (1916), Farley Granger (1925), Leslie Caron (1931), Jamie Farr (1934), Jean Marsh (1934), Sydney Pollack (1934), Claude Berri (1934), Twyla Tharp (1941), Geneviève Bujold (1942), David Duke (1950), Dan Aykroyd (1952), Diana Spencer (1961), Patrick McEnroe (1966), Pamela Anderson (1967) & Liv Tyler (1977) were born #OnThisDay. Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquis of Rockingham (1782), Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1784), Mikhail Bakunin (1876), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1896), Marius Petipa (1910), Erik Satie (1925), Pierre Monteux (1964), Juan Domingo Perón (1974), R. Buckminster Fuller (1983), Margaux Hemingway (1996), Marlon Brandon (2004), Karl Malden (2009) & Hugh Downs (2020) died on this day. Vespasian proclaimed Roman emperor by troops in Egypt (69), Titus set up battering rams as part of the Roman siege of Jerusalem (70), sunglasses invented in China (1200), Alfonso the Wise crowned king of Castile & Leon (1252), first burning of Protestants in the Netherlands (1517), Sir Thomas More’s treason trial (1535), William of Orange defeated James II at the Battle of the Boyne (1690), Battle of Gettysburg (first day) (1863), Dominion of Canada formed (Canada Day) (1867), Zanzibar-Helgoland Treaty (1890), Wilfrid Laurier sworn in as the first French-speaking prime minister of Canada (1896), Theodore Roosevelt & the Rough Riders in the Battle of San Juan Hill (1898), first Tour de France in Montgeron (1903), Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity (1905), German gunboat Panther arrived at Agadir (1911), Battle of the Somme (1916), Chinese Communist Party founded (1921), Franklin Delano Roosevelt nominated for president at the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago (1932), Richard Strauss opera “Arabella” premiered in Dresden (1933), Rev. Martin Niemöller arrested by the Nazis (1937), Spanish bishops supported Francisco Franco & his fascist movement (1937), Battle of El Alamein (1942), Bretton Woods conference (1944), George Kennan’s ‘X’ article published in “Foreign Affairs” (1947), Rwanda & Burundi independent from Belgium (1962), Medicare went into effect (1966), Prince Charles investiture as Prince of Wales (1969), Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile (1974), Isabel Peron president of Argentina (1974), “O, Canada” Canada’s national anthem (1980), the Deutsche Mark replaced the Ostmark as East Germany’s official currency (1990), Hong Kong reverted to China (1997), Oresund Bridge (2000), Vermont’s civil unions law in effect (2000), Cassini-Huygens tracking of Saturn’s orbit (2004), Ford produced its last Thunderbird (2005), and William & Harry unveiled a statue of Diana (2021) on this day.
July 2
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (1489), Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714), Hermann Hesse (1877), Alec Douglas-Home (1903), Olav V of Norway (1903), Thurgood Marshall (1908), Pierre Cardin (1922), Patrice Lumumba (1925), Medgar Evers (1925), Imelda Marcos (1929), Carlos Menem (1930), John Sununu (1939), Vicente Fox (1942), Larry David (1947), Luci Baines Johnson Nugent Turpin (1947), Sylvia Rivera (1951) & Lindsay Lohan (1986) were born #OnThisDay. Nostradamus [Michel de Nostre-Dam] (1566), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1778), Robert Peel (1850), Ernest Hemingway (1961), Betty Grable (1973), Vladimir Nabokov (1977), Michael Bennett (1987), James Stewart (1997), Beverly Sills [Belle Miriam Silverman] (1978), Elie Wiesel (2016), Michel Rocard (2016) & Lee Iacocca (2019) died on this day. Martin Luther promised St. Anne to become a monk if he survived a violent storm (1505), Chief Tecumseh urged Native Americans to unite against white settlers (1809), Bahia Independence Day (end of Portuguese colonial rule in Brazil) (1823), Amistad revolt (1839), alligator fell from the sky (1843), partial emancipation of Russian serfs (1858), Battle of Gettysbury (2nd day) (1863), James Garfield shot by Charles Guiteau (1881), Sherman Act enacted by Congress (1890) Jean Sibelius’ “Finlandia” premiered in Helsinki (1900), Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific (1937), Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” premiered in London (1941), South Vietnam recognized with Bảo Đại as head of state (1949), Kinkakuji in Kyoto burned down (1950), LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act into law (1964), Imelda Marcos & Adnan Khashoggi found not guilty of racketeering (1990), “Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets” published in the UK (1998), Ingrid Betancourt & 14 other FARC hostabes resued by the Colombian army (2008), GlaxoSmithKline settled the largest healthcare fraud case in history for $3 billion (2012) & Nicolas Sarkozy was charged with corruption (2014) on this day.
July 3
July 4
July 5
Sarah Kemble Siddons (1755), David Farragut (1801), P.T. Barnum (1810), Cecil Rhodes (1853), A.E. Douglass (1867), Édouard Herriot (1872), Wanda Landowska (1879), Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (1902), Andrei Gromyko (1909), Georges Pompidou (1911), Pierre Mauroy (1928), Katherine Helmond (1929), Nita Lowey (1937), Julie Nixon Eisenhower (1948), Edie Falco (1963), Meghan Rapinoe (1985) & Dolly the Sheep (1996) were born #OnThisDay. Stamford Raffles (1826), Walter Gropius (1969), Wilhelm Backhaus (1969), Harrison Salisbury (1993) & Régine Crespin (2007) died on this day. Scotland & France formed the Auld Alliance against England (1295), Isaac Newton’s “Principia” published by the Royal Society (1687), Napoléon’s victory over the Archduke Charles in the Battle of Wagram (1809), Venezuela’s Declaration of Independence (1811), France’s invasion of Algeria (1830), Thomas Cook opened the first travel agency (1841), Frederick Douglass delivered his “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech in Rochester (1852), Salvation Army founded (1865), Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany gave Austria-Hungary a ‘blank check’ of support (1914), António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo dictatorship (1932), National Labor Relations Act signed into law by FDR (1935), Clement Attlee led the Labour Party to victory in the British general election (1945), Philippines liberation declared (1945), Louis Réard introduced the bikini (1946), first US fatality in the Korean War (1950), Gen. Juvénal Habyarimana military coup d’état in Rwanda (1973), Arthur Ashe the first black man to win at Wimbledon (1975), Amazon.com founded by Jeff Bezos (1994), Dolly the sheep cloned (1996) & Babylon declared a World Heritage Site (2019) on this day.
July 6
John Paul Jones (1747), Stamford Raffles (1781), Nicholas I of Russia (1796), Maximilian von Habsburg, emperor of Mexico (1832), Marc Chagall (1887), Frida Kahlo (1907), Dorothy Kirsten (1910), Sebastian Cabot (1918), Nancy Reagan (1921), Bill Haley (1925), Merv Griffin (1925), Janet Leigh [Jeanetta Morrison] (1927), Pat Paulsen (1927), Della Reese (1932), Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama (1935), Ned Beatty (1937), Vladimir Ashkenazy (1937), George W. Bush (1946), Jamie Wyeth (1946), Sylvester Stallone (1946), Peter Singer (1946), Geoffrey Rush (1951), Hilary Mantel (1952), Jennifer Saunders (1958) & Kevin Hart (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Henry II of England (1189), Jan Hus (1415), Sir Thomas More (1535), Edward VI of England (1553), John Marshall (1835), Guy de Maupassant (1893), Kenneth Grahame (1932), George Grosz (1959), William Faulkner (1962), Louis Armstrong (1971), Otto Klemperer (1973), Marsha P. Johnson (1992), ruth Lady Fermoy (1993), Roy Rogers (1998), Joaquín Rodrigo (1999), Robert McNamara (2009) & Ennio Morricone (2020) died on this day. Richard the Lioneart crowned king of England (1189), Richard III crowned king of England (1483), Swedish troops under Gustavus Adolphus landed at Peenemunde (1630), Captain William Kidd captured in Boston (1699), Battle of Chesme (1770), Louis Pasteur successfully used a rabies vaccine (1885), Dadabhai Naoroji first Indian elected to the British House of Commons (1892), T.E. Lawrence captured the port of Aqaba (1917), Magnus Hirschfeld opened the Institute for Sexual Science (1919), Anne Frank’s family went into hiding in the After House in Amsterdam (1942), AK-47 first produced in USSR (1947), Harry S. Truman Presidential Library established (1957), John Lennon met Paul McCartney for the first time (1957), Althea Gibson first African American to win at Wimbledon (1957), Beatles film “Hard Day’s Night” premiered in London (1964), civil war in Nigeria (1967), Carlos Salinas de Gortari elected president of Mexico (1988), “Forrest Gump” released (1994), US Army Private Barry Winchell died from attack over his relationship with Calpernia Addams (1999), Chilcot Report criticized Tony Blair for exaggerating the case for war in Iraq (2016) & Pokémon Go released (2016) on this day.
July 7
Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752), Gustav Mahler (1860), George Cukor (1899), Vittorio De Sica (1901), Satchel Paige (1906), Gian-Carlo Menotti (1911), Ringo Starr (1940), Michael Howard (1941), Matti Salminen (1945) & Michelle Kwan (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Edward I of England (1307), Thomas Gray (1771), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1816), Mary Surratt (1865), Henri Nestlé (1890), Arthur Conan Doyle (1930), Max Horkheimer (1973), Veronica Lake [Constance Ockleman], Flora Robson (1984), Moshood Abiola (1998) & Jon Money (2006) died on this day. Joan of Arc exonerated of heresy at a retrial 25 years after her death (1456), Henri III & the Duc de Guise signed the Treaty of Nemours stripping France’s Huguenots of all their freedoms (1585), premiere of George Frideric Handel’s “Te Deum” & “Jubilate” (1713), British Jews granted citizenship (1753) Columbia U. founded as King’s College (1754), Toussaint L’Ouverture declared Haiti’s independence (1801), First Treaty of Tilsit signed by Napoleon & Alexander I of Russia (1807), Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold & George Atzerodt are executed for Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (1865), Hoover Dam construction began (1930), Heinrich Himmler ordered medical experiments on Auschwitz camp inmates (1942), Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini canonized as the first American saint (1946), Jimmy Carter married Rosalynn Smith (1946), Alaska statehood bill signed into law by Dwight Eisenhower (1958), “All You Need Is Love” album released by the Beatles (1967), US troops began a drawdown from South Vietnam (1969), French recognized as co-equal in Canada (1969), Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to the US Supreme Court (1981), 1st ‘Three Tenors’ concert featuring Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti at Baths of Caracalla in Rome (1990), Nelson Mandel stepped down as president of South Africa (1996), “Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows part 2” — the last Harry Potter film — premiered in London (2011) & Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro announced he’d tested positive for COVID-19 (2020) on this day.
July 8
Don Carlos of Spain (1545), Artemisia Gentileschi (1593), Jean de la Fontaine (1621), John Pemberton (1831), Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838), John D. Rockefeller (1830), Kathe Kollwitz (1867), Percy Grainger (1882), Philip Johnson (1906), Nelson Rockefeller (1908), Walter Scheel (1919), Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926), John Dingell (1926), Phil Gramm (1942), Jeffrey Tambor (1944), Cynthia Gregory (1946), Wolfgang Puck (1949), Anjelica Huston (1951), Anna Quindlen (1952), Marianne Williamson (1952), Kevin Bacon (1958) & Tzipi Livni (1958) were born #OnThisDay. Diego de Almagro (1538), Christian Huygens (1695), Ellihu Yale (1721), Percy Bysshe Shelley 91822), Oscar I of Sweden (1859), Havelock Ellis (1939), Jean Moulin (1943), Georges Bataille (1962), Vivian Leigh (1967), Fatima Jinnah (1967), Kim Il-Sung (1994), Betty Ford (2011), Ernest Borgnine (2012), Tab Hunter [Arthur Andrew Kelm] (2018) & Oliver Knussen (2018) died on this day. Battle of Malta in the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282), Charles II of England granted a royal charter to Rhode Island (1663), Battle of Poltava (1709), Battle of Dynekilen (1716), Liberty Bell tolled to announce the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence (1776), slavery banned in Vermont’s constitution (1777), France declared war on Prussia (1792), US State Department issued the first US passport (1796), Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s blackship Susquehanna sailed into Tokyo Bay (1853), Charles XV Gustaf acceded to the throne of Sweden & Norway (1859), Wall Street Journal began publishing (1889), William Jennings Bryan’s ‘Cross of Gold’ speech at the Democratic convention in Chicago (1896), Gen. Douglas MacArthur named commander-in-chief of UN forces in Korea (1950), 2,000th birthday of Paris (1951), Col. Castillo Armas elected president of Guatemala by the military junta (1954), first Americans killed in South Vietnam (1959), nationalization of French banks, steel & aviation by prime minister Pierre Mauroy (1981), US Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O’Connor confirmed by the Senate 99-0 (1981), “Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban” (the 3rd book of the series by J. K. Rowling) published by Bloomsbury in the UK (1999), “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (the 4th book of the series by J. K. Rowling) published by Bloomsbury in the UK (2000), Enrique Peña Nieto’s win in the country’s presidential election prompts massive demonstrations in Mexico City (2012), Jeffrey Epstein indicted on sex trafficking charges (2019)
July 9
Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (1578), Ottorino Respighi (1879), Barbara Cartland (1901), Edward Heath (1916), Mathilde Krim (1926), Donald Rumsfeld (1932), Michael Graves (1934), David Hockney (1937), O.J. Simpson (1947), Viktor Yanukovych (1950), Jimmy Smits (1955), Tom Hanks (1956) & Fred Savage (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Jan van Eyck (1441), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand IV (1654), Philip V of Spain (1746), Catherine the Great’s coup (1762), Edmund Burke (1797), Gilbert Stuart (1828), Zachary Taylor (1850), King Gillette (1932), Benjamin Cardozo (1938), Earl Warren (1974), Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (1985), Barbara Woodhouse (1988), Melvin Belli (1996), Rod Steiger (2002), Isabel Sanford (2004), Eileen Ford (2014), Peter Carrington, 6th Baron Carrington (2018), Rip Torn (2019) & Ross Perot (2019) died on this day. Battle of Hwangsanbeol (660), Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV laid the foundation stone for the Charles Bridge in Prague (1357), Tamerlane (Timur) sacked Baghdad (1401), New York elected George Clinton its first governor (1777), the Second Treaty of Tilsit (1807), Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord became the first Prime Minister of France (1815), Argentina declared independence from Spain at the Congress of Tucumán (1816), the US seized Yerba Buena (San Francisco) from Mexico (1846), Zachary Taylor died after only 16 months in office (1850), Commodore Matthew Perry’s warships in Tokyo Bay (1853), first Wimbledon tournament (1877), Germany surrendered Southwest Africa to South Africa (1915), the Enigma code broken (1941), Henry Kissinger’s trip to Beijing (1971), Michael Fagan’s visit to Buckingham Palace (1982), massive demonstration against Chun Doo-hwan (1987), Oliver North admitted to shredding Iran-Contra documents (1987), Romanov family remains identified using DNA (1993), F.W. de Klerk indicted (1995), the African Union established (2002), South Sudan’s secession & independence from Sudan (2011) & Jokko Widodo elected president of Indonesia (2014) on this day.
July 10
John Calvin [Jehan Cauvin](1509) William Blackstone (1723), Camille Pissarro (1830), Henry Wieniawski (1835), Adolphus Busch (1839), Nikola Tesla (1856), Marcel Proust (1871), Ima Hogg (1882), Giorgio de Chirico (1888), Carl Orff (1895), Ljuba Welitsch (1913), David Brinkley (1920), Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921), Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925), David Dinkins (1927), Jerry Herman (1933), Richard Hatcher (1933), Helen Donath (1940), Arthur Ashe (1943), Arlo Guthrie (1947), Cindy Sheehan (1957), Fiona Shaw (1958), Alec Mapa (1965) & Sofía Vergara (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Roman emperor Hadrian (138), Henri II of France (1559), William the Silent of Orange Nassau (1584), George Stubbs (1806), Louis-Jacques Daguerre (1851), Eugénie de Montijo, empress of France (1920), Donald Francis Tovey (1940), Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton [LeMothe] (1941), Arthur Fiedler (1979), Maria Jeritza [Jedlicka] (1982), Mel Blanc (1989), Roland Petit (2011), Omar Sharif [Michel Dimitri Shalhoub] (2015) & Jon [Jonathan Stewart] Vickers died on this day. Justin proclaimed Byzantine emperor in the Hippodrome (518), Dublin founded (988), Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets of Coventry (1040), Richard of York defeated Henry VI at Northampton (1460), Treaty of Calais (1520) signed by Henry VIII (1520), Lady Jane Grey proclaimed queen of England (1553), 1st Anglo-Dutch War (1652), George II authorized reprisals in the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739), Louis-François Roubiliac’s monument to George Frideric Handel unveiled in Westminster Abbey in London (1762) Louis XVI’s France declared war on Britain (1778), French forces under the Comte de Rochambeau landed at Newport (1780), Paul Verlaine wounded his lover Arthur Rimbaud with pistol (1873), Wyoming the 44th state (1890), Emma Goldman imprisoned for obstructing the draft (1917), Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic formed (1918), Italy banned all non-fascist parties (1923), Denmark took control of Greenland after Norway ended its claim (1924), Meher Baba’s Silence Day (1925), the Scopes Monkey Trial began in Tennessee (1925), Howard Hughes flew around the world in 91 hours (1938), Battle of Britain commenced (1940), failed assassination attempt on Hassan II of Morocco (1971), Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior sunk by France in Auckland harbor (1985), Boris Yeltsin sworn in as Russia’s first elected president (1991), Confederate flag lowered on the South Carolina capitol grounds (2015) & Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered the Hagia Sophia re-converted back into a mosque (2020) on this day.
July 11
Robert the Bruce (1274), Frederick I of Prussia (1657), John Quincy Adams (1767), E.B. White (1899), Gough Whitlam (1916), Yul Brynner (1920), Nicolai Gedda (1925), Hermann Prey (1929) & Giorgio Armani (1934) were born #OnThisDay. Elisabetta Farnese, queen of Spain (1766), George Gershwin (1937), Laurence Olivier (1989) & Claudia ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson (2007) died on this day. Antoninus Pius succeeded Hadrian as Roman emperor (138), Charles IV of Luxembourg elected Holy Roman Emperor (1346), Zheng He’s first major expedition to the Spice Islands 91405), Henry VIII of England excommunicated by Pope Clement VII (1533), Battle of the Boyne (1690), Battle of Oudenaarde (1708), France’s finance minister Jacques Necker dismissed by Louis XVI (1789), Alexander Hamilton killed by Aaron Burr in a duel (1804), Niagara Movement launched by W.E.B. Du Bois (1905), Battle of Verdun (1916), Prussian plebiscite on ‘Polish Corridor’ (1920), Mongolia independent from China (1921), Maréchal Philippe Pétain president of the Vichy régime (1940), USSR agreed to hand West Berlin to the US & UK (1945), Dwight Eisenhower Republican presidential nominee (1952), Ivory Coast, Dahomey (Benin) & Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) independent of France (1960), Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. (1960), Ross Perot’s ‘you people’ NAACP speech (1992), “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (the 5th film based on the books by J. K. Rowling) released (2007) & Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán recaptured (2015) on this day.
July 12
Josiah Wedgwood (1730), Henry David Thoreau (1817), George Eastman (1854), George Washington Carver (1864), Emil Hácha (1872), Louis B. Mayer (1884), Amedeo Modigliani (1884), Kirsten Flagstad (1895), Oscar Hammerstein II (1895), R. Buckminster Fuller (1895), Pablo Neruda (1904), Milton Berle (1908), Andrew Wyeth (1917), Van Cliburn (1934), Bill Cosby (1937), Lionel Jospin (1937), Cheryl Ladd (1951), Jamey Sheridan (1951), Kristi Yamaguchi (1971), Cheyenne Jackson (1975), Topher Grace (1978) & Malala Yousafzai (1997) were born #OnThisDay. Desiderius Erasmus (1536), Richard Cromwell (1712), Johann Joachim Quantz (1773), Alexander Hamilton (1804), William Howe (1814), Dolly Madison (1849), Alfred Dreyfus (1935), D.T. Suzuki (1966), Lon Chaney, Jr. (1973) & Sherwood Schwartz (2011) died on this day. Geoffrey Chaucer named chief clerk by Richard II of England (1389), Charles II of England ratified the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), Battle of the Boyne (1690), Stanislaw Leszcynski became king of Poland (1704), Civil Constitution of the Clergy adopted in France (1790), Alexander Hamilton shot by Aaron Burr (1804), Arthur Balfour succeeded Lord Salisbury as British prime minister (1902), Alfred Dreyfus exonerated of treason in France (1906), Battle of Kursk (1943), Congo, Chad & Central African Republic declared independence from France (1960), Moors Murders in England (1963), Thor Heyerdahl arrived in Morocco after crossing the Atlantic from Barbados on the raft Ra II (1970), George McGovern accepted the Democratic presidential nomination (1972), Sao Tomé e Príncipe independent of Portugal (1975), Geraldine Ferraro chosen as Walter Mondale’s running mate (1984) & Nelson Mandela rode with QEII through the streets of London (1998) on this day.
July 13
Julius Caesar (100 BCE), John Dee (1527), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III (1608), Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821), Sydney Webb (1859), John Jacob Astor (1864), Kenneth Clark (1903), Carlo Bergonzi (1924), Simone Veil (1927), Bob Crane (1928), Wole Soyinka (1934), Jack Kemp (1935), Patrick Stewart (1940), Paul Prudhomme (1940), Jacques Perrin (1941), Harrison Ford (1942) & Ken Jeong (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Holy Roman Emperor Henry II (1024), Jean-Paul Marat (1793), Alfred Stieglitz (1946), Arnold Schoenberg (1951), Frida Kahlo (1954), Carlos Kleiber (2004), Red Buttons [Aaron Chwatt] (2006), George Steinbrenner (2010), Cory Monteith (2013), Nadine Gordimer (2014), Loren Maazel (2014), Liu Xiaobo (2017) & Nancy Barbato Sinatra (2018) died on this day. Northwest Territory created (1787), Jean-Paul Marat assassinated by Charlotte Corday (1793), Battle of the Vosges (1794), Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace (1837), anti-draft mobs lynched African Americans in NYC (1863), “Go west, young man” (Horace Greeley in the New-York Tribune), William of Prussia’s Emser Depeche (1870), Treaty of San Stefano revised at the Congress of Berlin (1878), Hollywood sign dedicated (1923), Richard Strauss resigned as chair of the Reichskulturkammer (1935), Frank Sinatra’s recording debut (1939), JFK nominated by the Democratic Party (1960), “Ghost” released (1990), #BlackLivesMatter hashtag created (2013), Sandra Bland died in police custody (2015) Theresa May elected British prime minister (2016), Donald Trump met with QE II at Windsor while anti-Trump protestors took to the streets of London (2018) on this day.
July 14
Jules Mazarin (1602), Frederick Louis Maytag (1857), Gustav Klimt (1862), Annie Jones (1865), Gertrude Bell (1868), Gerald Finzi (1901), William Hanna (1910), Woodrow ‘Woody’ Guthrie (1912), Northrop Frye (1912), Gerald Ford (1913), Ingmar Bergman (1918), Polly Bergen [Nellie Burgin] (1930), Roosevelt ‘Rosey’ Grier (1932) & Franklin Graham (1952) were born #OnThisDay. Claude Fleury (1723), Richard Bentley (1742), Bernard-René de Launay (1789), Madame de Staël [Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein] (1817), Alfred Krupp (1887), Paul Kruger (1904), Adlai Stevenson II (1965), Cicely Saunders (2005) & Sir Charles Mackerras (2010) died on this day. Jerusalem captured in the First Crusade (1099), Bastille stormed (1789), “La Marseillaise” by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle France’s national anthem by the National Convention (1795), Congress enacted the Sedition Act (1798), Commodore Matthew Perry’s request for trade relations with Japan (1853), non-Nazi parties banned in Germany (1933), Jimmy Carter & Walter Mondale nominated at the Democratic national convention in NYC (1976) & the bicentennial of Bastille Day marked by Jessye Norman’s rendition of “La Marseillaise” (1989) on this day.
July 15
Inigo Jones (1573), Rembrandt van Rijn (1606), Emmeline Pankhurst (1858), Dorothy Fields (1904), Edward Shackleton (1911), Leopoldo Galtieri (1926), Jacques Derrida (1930), Julian Bream (1933), Linda Ronstadt (1946), Carl Bildt (1949), Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (1950), Jesse Ventura [James Janos] (1951), Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1953), Forest Whitaker (1961), Scott Ritter (1961), Brigitte Nielsen (1963), David Miliband (1965) and Laura Benanti (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Ulrich von Jungingen (1410), Jean, duc d Berry (1416), Juan Ponce de León (1521), Annibale Carracci (1609), Farinelli (1782), Carl Czerny (1857), Anton Chekhov (1904), Hugo von Hofmannstal (1929), John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing (1948), Lawrence Tibbett (1960), Gianni Versace (1997), Louis Quilico (2000), Celeste Holm (2012) & Martin Landau (2017) died on this day. Jerusalem captured & plundered by Crusaders during the First Crusade (1099), Peasants’ Revolt leader John Ball executed in front of Richard II of England (1381), Battle of Brunwald (Tannenburg) (1410), Rosetta Stone found in Egypt (1799), Buchenwald concentration camp opened (1937), Billy Carter registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government (1980), John Poindexter’s testimony at the Iran-Contra hearings (1987), Hutu flight to Zaire near the end of the Rwandan genocide (1994), Andrew Cunanan murdered Gianni Versace in a killing spree (1997), Odeo launched Twitter (2006), “Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince” (the 6th film based on the books by J. K. Rowling) was released worldwide (2009) on this day.
July 16
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723), Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796), Mary Baker Eddy (1821), Eugene Ysaye (1858), Roald Amundsen (1872), Anna Vyrubova (1884), Trygve Lie (1896), Barbara Stanwyck (1907), Orville Redenbacher (1907), Ginger Rogers (1911), Bess Myerson (1924), Richard Thornburgh (1932), Donald Payne (1934), Barbara Lee (1946), Assata Shakur (1947), Pinchas Zuckerman (1948), Rubén Blades (1948) & Tony Kushner (1956) were born #OnThisDay. Anne of Cleves (1557), Thomas Kyd (1594), Ivan VI of Russia (1764), Tad lincoln (1871), Mary Todd Lincoln (1882), Alfred Deller (1979), Harry Chapin (1981), Heinrich Böll (1985), Herbert von Karajan (1989), Frank Rizzo (1991), Robert Motherwell (1991), Stephen Spender (1995), John F. Kennedy, Jr. (1999), Celiz Cruz (2003) & John Paul Stevens (2019) died on this day. Mohammed’s flight from Mecca to Medina (622), Great Schism (1054), Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa [Battle of Al-Uqab] (1212), Mission San Diego founded by Father Junipero Serra (1769), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” premiered in Vienna (1782), Jacques Necker reinstated as France’s finance minister by Louis XVI (1789), Washington, D.C. designated bye new capital by Congress (1790), Nicholas II & the Romanov family executed in Ykaterinburg (1918), Augusto César Sandino launched the resistance to US occupation of Nicaragua (1927), first atomic bomb exploded by the Manhattan Project in New Mexico (1945), “Catcher in Rye” by J. D. Salinger published by Little Brown & Co. (1951), Apollo 11 launched into orbit (1969), Amazon’s on-line book business launched (1995), John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette Kennedy & sister-in-law Lauren Bessette killed in a plane crash (1999), Millenium Park opened in Chicago (2004), Martha Stewart sentenced to five months (2004) & “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, the 6th book in the series by J. K. Rowling was published worldwide (2005) on this day.
July 17
Elbridge Gerry (1744), John Jacob Astor [Johann Jakob Astor] (1763), Xianfeng emperor of China (1831), Donald Francis Tovey (1875), Erle Stanley Gardner (1889), Georges Lemaître (1894), James Cagney (1899), Art Linkletter (1912), Eleanor Steber (1916), Phyllis Diller (1917), Donald Sutherland (1935), Diahann Carroll (1935), P.D.Q. Bach [Peter Schickele] (1935), Elmer Fudd (1937), Camilla Parker Bowles (1947), Lucie Arnaz 91951), David Hasselhoff (1952), Angela Merkel (1954), Wong Kar-Wai (1958), Dawn Upshaw (1960) & Felipe Juan Froilán de Marichalar y de Borbón (1998) were born #OnThisDay. Tsar Peter III of Russia (1762), Adam Smith (1790), Charlotte Corday (1793), Charles Grey (1845), Dorothea Dix (1887), James McNeill Whistler (1903), Tsar Nicholas II of Russia & the imperial family (1918), Raoul Wallenberg (1947), Billie Holiday (1959), John Coltrane (1967), John Coltrane (1967), Katharine Graham (2001), Edward Heath (2005), Walter Cronkite (2009), Elaine Stritch (2014) & John Lewis (2020) died on this day. Charles VII crowned king of France (1429), Martin Luther entered an Augustinian monastery at Erfurt (1505), Babington plot against Elizabeth Tudor discovered (1585), Sir Walter Raleigh arrested by James I of England (1603), George Frideric Handel’s “Water Music” on the Thames (1717), Peter III of Russia assassinated (1762) National Guardsmen fired on Jacobins at the Champs de Mars in Paris (1791), British satirical magazine “Punch” first published (1841), George V’s proclamation changing the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the House of Windsor (1917), Nicholas II & the Romanovs executed in Yekaterinburg (1918), Potsdam Conference (Truman, Churchill & Stalin) (1945), Republic of Korea’s constitution (1948), Berlin ‘Operation Little Vittles’ (1948), Disneyland opened in Anaheim (1955), “High Society” released by MGM (1956), serfdom abolished in Tibet (1959), Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” released (1959), Suharto’s Indonesia annexed East Timor (1976), Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled to Miami (1979), Ronald Reagan accepted the Republican nomination for president (1980), Pierre Mauroy resigned as prime minister of France (1984), Eric Garner murdered by Daniel Pantaleo & the NYPD (2014), Malaysia Airlines flight 17 shot down over Russia (2014 & Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán was recaptured (2019) on this day.
July 18
Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552), Feargus O’Connor (1796), Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811), Pauline Viardot (1821), Vidkun Quisling (1887), Herbert Marcuse (1898), Clifford Odets (1906), S.I. Hayakawa (1906), Andrei Gromyko (1909), Mohammed Daoud Khan (1909), Hume Cronyn (1911), Nelson Mandela (1918), John Glenn (1921), Thomas Kuhn (1922), Richard Pasco (1926), Kurt Masur (1927), James Brolin (1940), Richard Branson (1950), Elizabeth McGovern (1961), Wendy Williams (1964), Kristen Bell (1980) & Priyanka Chopra (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Bartolomé de las Casas (1566), Caravaggio [Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio] (1610), Jean-Antoine Watteau (1721), John Paul Jones (1792), Jane Austen (1817), Benito Juarez (1872), Thomas Cook (1892), Horatio Alger (1899), George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly (1954), William Westmoreland (2005) & Jerry Hadley (2007) died on this day. Gauls defeated Romans at the Battle of the Allia (390 BCE), Great Fire of Rome (64), Edward I ordered the expulsion of all JEws from England (1290), Thomas Aquinas canonized by Pope John XXII (1323), the Pope’s authority declared null & void in England (1536), Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” published (1925), Benelux customs union created by the Ouchy Convention (1932), Gen. Francisco Franco issued a manifesto in Morocco precipitating a Spanish army uprising & the Spanish Civil War (1936), Indian Independence Act signed by George VI (1947), Presidential Succession Act signed into law by Harry Truman (1947), “The Nun’s Story” premiered in LA (1959), riots in Harlem in Manhattan & Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn (1964), Ted Kennedy drove a car with Mary Jo Kopechne off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island (1969), Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” published (1995), Kim Jong-un appointed supreme leader of North Korea (2012), Elon Musk apologized for calling British cave diver a ‘pedo guy’ (2018), Google fined $5.1 billion by the EU (2018) & June 2019 was determined to be the hottest June on record (2019) on this day.
July 19
Giuseppe Castiglione (1688), Samuel Colt (1814), Edgar Degas (1834), Lizzie Borden (1860), Edgar Snow (1905), George McGovern (1922), Nicola Sturgeon (1970) & Benedict Cumberbatch (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Francesco Petrarca [Petracco] (1374), Philippa of Lancaster, queen of Portugal (1415), Mary Boleyn (1543), Agustín de Iturbide [crowned Agustin I], Margaret Fuller (1850), Gen. Aung San (1947), Syngman Rhee (1965), Mary Jo Kopechne (1969), Paolo Borsellino (1992), Frank McCourt (2009) & Garry Marshall (2016) died on this day. The Peasants’ War began in Germany (1524), sinking of Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose (1545), Lady Jane Grey deposed as queen of England (1553), Albert Friedrich became Duke of Prussia (1569), Rosetta Stone discovered (1799), Medusa frigate survivors rescued off the coast of Senegal after 17 days on a raft (1816), Seneca Falls Convention (1848), Red River Rebellion precipitated by Louis Riel’s discussion of Metis rights (1869), Franco-Prussian War (1870), Aung San & eight others assassinated in Burma (1947) & the Nation-State Law was enacted by Israel’s Knesset (2018) on this day.
July 20
Alexander the Great (356 BCE), Francesco Petrarca (1304), Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659), Gregor Mendel (1822), Vladimir Nabokov (1870), László Moholy-Nagy (1895), Cicely Veronica Wedgwood (1910), Edmund Hillary (1919), Elliot Richardson (1920), Jacques Delors (1925), Frantz Fanon (1925), Nam June Paik (1932), Nelson Doubleday (1933), Barbara Mikulski (1936), Diana Rigg (1938), Natalie Wood [Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko] (1938), Kim Carnes (1945), Paul Valéry [Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry], Carlos Santana (1947), Thomas Friedman (1953), Enrique Peña Nieto (1966), Sandra Oh (1971) & Haakon Magnus of Norway (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Pancho Villa [José Doroteo Arango Arámbula] (1923), Claus Schenk von Sauffenberg (1944), Paul Valéry [Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry] (1945), Anna Vyrubova (1974), Bruce Lee (1973), Vince Foster (1993) & Tammy Faye Messner Bakker (2007) died on this day. Euston Station opened in London (1837), Napoléon III met Count Cavour at Plombières (1858), Sitting Bull’s surrender (1881), Franz von Papen’s coup d’état against the Prussian government (1932), Pope Pius XII’s accord with Nazi Germany (1933), failed assassination plot against Adolf Hitler (1944), Syngman Rhee elected the first president of the Republic of Korea (1948), Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon (1969), War Powers Act passed by the Senate (1973), Viking 1 landed on Mars (1976), Hyde Park & Regent’s Park bombings in London (1982) & 12 were killed in the Aurora mass shooting in Colorado (2012) on this day.
July 21
Ernest Hemingway (1899), Hart Crane (1899), Marshall McLuhan (1911), Isaac Stern (1920), Manuel Valls (1920), Mollie Sugden (1922), Don Knotts (1924), Norman Jewison (1926), Edolphus Towns (1934), Janet Reno (1938), Les Aspin (1938), John Negroponte (1939), James Clyburn (1940), Edward Herrmann (1943), Paul Wellstone (1944), Alton Maddox (1945), Ken Starr (1946), Cat Stevens [Steven Demetre Georgiou; Yusaf Islam] (1948), Garry Trudeau (1948), Robin Williams (1951), Stevan Lofven (1957), Cori Bush (1976) & Eivør [Pálsdóttir] (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Henry Percy [Harry Hotspur] (1403), Manuel Paleologus (1425), Robert Burns (1796), Basil Rathbone (1967), Robert Young (1998), Mako (2006) & Alexander Cockburn (2012) died on this day. Henry IV of England defeated Henry ‘Harry Hotspur’ Percy at the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403), Treaty of Passarowitz between Ottoman Turkey, Austria & Venice (1718), Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji between Ottoman Turkey & Russia (1774), Battle of the Pyramids at Embabeh (1798), Belgium independent from the Netherlands (1831), Central Park created by an act of the New York state legislature (1853), First Battle of Bull Run at Manassas (1861), Alexander Kerensky prime minister of Russia (1917), “Stormy Weather” premiered (1943), Geneva Accords on Indochina (1954), Sirimavo Bandaranike first woman elected head of government in Sri Lanka or anywhere in the world (1960), Aswan High Dam (1970), House Judiciary Committee voted two articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon (1974), Tony Blair elected British Labour Party leader (1994), “Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows” (the final book in the series) by J. K. Rowling is published worldwide (2007), Philippe succeeded Albert II as king of Belgium (2013), Sean Spicer’s resignation as White House press secretary (2017), Ricardo Rosselló announced he wouldn’t seek re-election as governor of Puerto Rico (2019) & Omar Hassan al-Bashir went on trial for the 1989 coup in Sudan (2020) on this day.
July 22
Philip the Fair, first Habsburg king of Spain (1478), Tsar Michael Romanov (1596), Emma Lazarus (1849), Edward Hopper (1882), Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890), Alexander Calder (1898), Stephen Vincent Benet (1898), Licia Albanese (1909), Bob Dole (1923), Margaret Whiting (1924), Orson Bean (1928), Oscar de la Renta (1932), Terence Stamp (1938), Alex Trebek (1940), Kay Bailey Hutchison (1943), Danny Glover (1946), Mireille Mathieu (1946), Albert Brooks (1947), Alan Menken (1949), Willem Dafoe (1955), David Spade (1964), John Leguizamo (1964), Colin Ferguson (1972), Rufus Wainwright (1973), Caroline Giuliani (1989), Selena Gomez (1992) & Prince George of Cambridge (2013) were born #OnThisDay. Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. (1932), John Dillinger (1934), Mackenzie King (1950), Carl Sandburg (1967), Martti Talvela (1989), Hermann Prey (1998), Uday & Qusay Hussein (2003), Estelle Getty (2008), Nan Merriman (2012), & Li Peng (2019) died on this day. Philip the Fair’s expulsion of Jews from France (1306), Smolny Cathedral consecrated in St. Petersburg (1835), Battle of Atlanta (1864), “El Sombrero de Tres Picos” (The Three-Cornered Hat) ballet premiered in London (1919), John Dillinger gunned down by FBI agents in Chicago (1934), FDR’s court packing plan rejected by the Senate (1937), Warsaw Ghetto Jews sent to Treblinka (1942), King David Hotel in Jerusalem bombed by the Zionist Irgun (1946), Edward Heath elected Conservative Party leader to succeed Alec Douglas-Home (1965), Jeffrey Dahmer apprehended in Milwaukee (1991), “March of the Penguins” premiered (2005), Oslo & Utøya terrorist attacks (2011) on this day.
July 23
Francesco Sforza (1401), Francesco Cilea (1866), Emil Jannings (1884), Raymond Chandler (1888), Haile Selassie [Ras Tafari Makonnen] (1892), Anthony Kennedy (1936), Don Imus (1940), Kaity Tong (1950), Woody Harrelson (1961), Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967), Raphael Warnock (1969), Monica Lewinsky (1973) & Daniel Radcliffe (1989) were born #OnThisDay. Don Carlos of Spain (1568), Domenico Scarlatti (1757), Ulysses S. Grant (1885), Helmuth von Moltke (1944), D.W. Griffith (1948), Philippe Pétain (1951), Cordell Hull (1955), Jan de Vries (1964), Montgomery Clift (1966), Eddie Rickenbacker (1973), Jessica Mitford (1996), Hassan II of Morocco (1999), Eudora Welty (2001), Leo McKern (2002), Chaim Potok (2002), Amy Winehouse (2011), Nguyễn Cao Kỳ (2011) & Sally Ride (2012) died on this day. Arab conquest of Palestine (636), Peace of Nuremberg between Emperor Charles V & the Schamlkaldic League (1532), Battle of Custozza (1848), Austrian ultimatum to Serbia (1914), use of foreign words in Italy banned by Mussolini’s fascist government (1929), Adolf Hitler’s Directive #45 issued ordering the German army to advance on Stalingrad (1942), Maréchal Philippe Pétain put on trial in France (1945), Henry Wallace nominated for president by the Progressive Party (1948), King Farouk ousted in a military coup in Egypt led by Gamal Abdal Nasser (1952), Grace Bumbry first black singer to perform at the Bayreuth Festival (1961), Miss America Vanessa Williams nude photos scandal (1984), three killed on the set of the “Twilight Zone: The Movie” (1982) & Boris Johnson was elected by Conservative Party members to replace Theresa May as British prime minister (2019) on this day.
July 24
Simón Bolívar (1783), Alexandre Dumas (1802), Francisco Solano López of Paraguay (1826), Frank Wedekind (1864), Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (1870), Ernest Bloch (1880), Robert Graves (1895), Amelia Earhart (1897), Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900), Bella Abzug (1920), Giuseppe di Stefano (1921), Charles Mathias, Jr. (1922), William Ruckelshaus (1932), Pat Oliphant (1935), Ruth Buzzi (1936), Peter Serkin (1947), Marvin the Martian (1948), Kristin Chenoweth (1968), Jennifer Lopez (1969), Rashida Tlaib (1976), Anna Paquin (1982) & Bindi Irwin (1998) were born #OnThisDay. Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (1846), Martin Van Buren (1862), Peter Sellers (1980), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1991), Andrew Cunanan (1997), William J. Brennan, Jr. (1997), Chad Everett [Raymon Lee Cramton] (2012), Sherman Hemsley (2012) & Regis Philbin (2020) died on this day. Jacques Cartier arrived in Canada & claimed it for France (1534), Mary, Queen of Scots forced to abdicate (1567), Fort Ponchartrain (future Detroit) founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (1701), Brigham Young & Mormon follwers arrived on the site of the future Salt Lake City in Utah (1847), Tennessee first Confederate state readmitted to the Union (1866), Björkö Treaty between Nicholas II of Russia & Wilhelm II of Germany (1905), Hiram Bingham III discovered Machu Picchu (1911), Kellogg-Briand Pact announced by Herbert Hoover (1929), Richard Nixon & Nikita Khrushchev’s ‘Kitchen Debate’ (1959), “Vive le Québec libre” speech by Charles de Gaulle (1967), Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979), French DGSE officers Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart arrested & charged with murder over the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior (1985), “Saving Private Ryan” released (1998), & Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was sworn in as prime minister of Bulgaria (2001) on this day.
July 25
Agostino Steffani (1654), Thomas Eakins (1844), Arthur Balfour (1848), Maxfield Parrish (1870), Gavrilo Princip (1894), Yvonne Printemps (1895), Gianandrea Gavazzeni (1909), Rosalind Franklin (1920), Estelle Getty (1923), Frank Church (1924), Maureen Forrester (1930), Adnan Khashoggi (1935), Emmett Till (1941), Christine C. Quinn (1966), Maureen Herman (1966), Lynda Lemay (1966) & Matt Le Blanc (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Lorenzo Cardinal Campeggio (1539), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I (1564), André Chenier (1794), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1834), Engelbert Dollfuss (1934), Frank O’Hara (1966), Douglas Moore (1969), Vincente Minnelli (1986), Carlo Bergonzi (2014) & Olivia de Havilland (2020) died on this day. Constantine proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops (306), Henri II crowned king of France (1547), Henri IV converted to Catholicism to gain entry to Paris as king of France (1593), Napoleon’s victory over Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Abukir (1799), George Stephenson’s first steam locomotive (1814), July Ordinances signed into law in France by Charles X (1830), First Battle of Custozza (1848), Korea a Japanese protectorate (1907), Serbia’s reply to the Austrian ultimatum (1914), Mata Hari (Margaretha Gertruida Zelle) sentenced to death (1917), Benito Mussolini dismissed & arrested on the orders of Victor Emmanuel III (1943), Mao Zedong swam the Yangtze River (1966), Pope Paul VI published his encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (1968), Ted Kennedy plead guilty to a minor charge in the Chappaquiddick incident (1969), Rock Hudson’s spokesperson confirmed his AIDS diagnosis (1985) & Ricardo Rosselló resigned as governor of Puerto Rico (2019) on this day.LikeCommentShare
July 26
John Field (1782), George Catlin (1796), George Bernard Shaw (1856), Serge Koussevitzky (1874), Carl Jung (1875), George Grosz [Georg Ehrenfried Groß] (1893), Aldous Huxley (1894), Donald Voorhees (1903), Salvador Allende (1908), Vivian Vance (1909), Blake Edwards (1922), Jason Robards (1922), Stanley Kubrick (1928), Alexis Weissenberg (1929), John Howard (1939), Mary Jo Kopechne (1940), Mick Jagger (1943), Helen Mirren [Ilyena Lydia Vasilievna Mironoff] (1945), Dorothy Hamill (1956), Kevin Spacey (1959), Sandra Bullock (1964), Jeremy Piven (1965) & Jacinda Ardern (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Inca emperor Atahualpa (1533), Sam Houston (1863), William Jennings Bryan (1925), Eva Perón [Evita] (1952),, Diane Arbus [Nemerov] (1971), George Gallup (1984), Ed Gein (1984), Averell Harriman (1986), Matthew Ridgway (1993), George Romney (1995), Merce Cunningham (2009) & Bobbi Kristina Brown (2015) died on this day. Francisco Pizarro ordered the death of the last Inca emperor Atahualpa (1533), Giacomo Casanova arrested in Venice (1755), James Wolfe’s British fleet captured Fort Louisbourg (1758), US postal system established by the Second Continental Congress (1755), New York ratified the US Constitution (1788), Liberian independence declared (1847), Richard Wagner’s opera “Parsifal” premiered in Bayreuth (1882), first book in Esperanto published (1887), Tahiti annexed by France (1891), FBI founded (1908), Clement Attlee led Labour to a landslide in the British general election (1945), Potsdam Declaration (1945), National Security Act signed into law by Harry Truman (1947), Harry Truman issued Executive Order No. 9981 desegregating the US military (1948), Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser announced his plan to nationalize the Suez Canal (1956), George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act into law (1990) & Donald Trump announced his recission of Barack Obama’s lifting the ban on transgender inclusion in the US military (2017) on this day.
July 27
Ludovico Sforza (‘il Moro’), duke of Milan (1452), Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich (1625), Charlotte Corday (1768), Giosuè Carducci (1835), Enrique Granados (1867), Hilaire Belloc (1870), Ernst von Dohnányi Dohnányi Ernő, Mario del Monaco (1915), Norman Lear (1922), Vincent Canby (1924) & Pina Bausch (1940) were born #OnThisDay. Ferruccio Busoni (1924), Gertrude Stein (1946), António de Oliveira Salazar (1970), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran (1980), William Wyler (1981), James Mason (1984), Miklós Rózsa (1995), Bob Hope (2003), Lindy Boggs Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs & Sam Shepard III (2017) died on this day. 1st Battle of Bouvines (1214), Walter Raleigh brought tobacco from Virginia back to England (1586), Battle of Gainsborough (1643), Battle of Killicrankie (1689), Maximilien Robespierre overthrown in a coup d’état (1794), Battle of Talavera (1809), revolution in Paris against Charles X of France (1830), Chartist riots in Birmingham (1839), Gen. George McClellan took command of the Army of the Potomac (1861), Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in Auvers-sur-Oise (1890), Tex Avery & Bob Givens’ Bugs Bunny debuted in the Warner Bros. cartoon “Wild Hare” (1940), Korean War armistice (1953), Austria’s sovereignty restored after the end of Allied occupation (1955), Richard Nixon nominated for president at the Republican national convention in Chicago (1960), cigarette warning bill signed into law by LBJ (1965), the House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to recommend the impeachment of Richard Nixon (1974), Alan Menken & Howard Ashman’s musical “Little Shop of Horrors” opened at the Orpheum Theatre in NYC (1982), Mafia bombings in Italian cities (1993), bombing in Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta (1996), Barack Obama issued a statement defending Israel’s pursuit of genocide in Gaza (2014) on this day.
July 28
Ibn al-‘Arabi, Muslim mystic and philosopher (The Meccan Revelations) (1165), Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844), Beatrix Potter (1866), Marcel Duchamp (1887), Rudy Vallee (1901), Karl Popper (1902), Gottlob Frick (1906), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929), Jacques d’Amboise (1934), Alberto Fujimori (1938), Riccardo Muti (1941), Bill Bradley (1943), Jim Davis (1945), Sally Struters (1947), Georgia Engel (1948), Santiago Calatrava (1951), Hugo Chávez (1954), Lori Loughlin (1964), Liz Cheney (1966), Alexis Arquette (1969), Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi (1971), Alexis Tsipras (1974), Huma Abedin (1976) & Juan Guaidó (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Thomas Cromwell (1540), Cyrano de Bergerac (1655), Antonio Vivaldi (1741), Johann Sebastian Bach (1750), Maximilien Robespierre (1794), Clemens Brentano (1842), Joseph Bonaparte (1844), Frank Loesser (1969), Helen Traubel (1972), Bruno Kreisky (1990), Rosalie Crutchley (1997), William Scranton (2013) & Margot Adler (2014), the Treaty of Berlin ending the First Silesian War between Maria Theresa’s Austria & Prussia’s Frederick the Great (1742), Maximilien Robespierre & 22 others guillotined in Paris (1794), Peru’s independence from Spain (1821), ratification of the 14th Amendment announced by Secretary of State William Seward (1868), Russia’s interior minister Vyacheslav Plehve assassinated (1904), Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia (1914), UN Charter ratified by the US Senate (1945), Nagasaki bombed (1945), Elia Kazan’s film “On the Waterfront” released (1954), LBJ announced an escalation in Vietnam from 75,000 to 150,000 troops (1965) & Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination (2016) on this day.
July 29
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805), Benito Mussolini (1883), William Powell (1892), Dag Hammarskjöld (1905), Melvin Belli (1907), Paul Taylor (1930), Nancy Landon Kassebaum (1932), Peter Schreier (1935), Elizabeth Hanford Dole (1936), Charles Schwab (1937), Peter Jennings (1938), Marilyn Tucker Quayle (1949), Ken Burns (1953), Tim Gunn (1953) & Chang-Rae Lee (1965) were born #OnThisDay. Offa of Mercia (796), Olaf Haraldsson (Óláfr Haraldsson), Olaf II of Norway (1030), Philip I of the Franks (1108), William Wilberforce (1833), Robert Schumann (1856), Vincent Van Gogh (1890), Giovanni ‘John’ Barbirolli (1970), ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot (1974), Herbert Marcuse (1979), Robert Moses (1981), David Niven (1983), Luis Buñuel (1983), Bruno Kreisky (1990), Dorothy Hodgkin (1994), Jerome Robbins [Rabinowitz] (1998), Foday Sanko (2003), Michel Serrault (2007) & Tom Snyder (2007) died on this day. Battle of Stiklestad (1030), Kublai Khan’s emissaries to Japan beheaded (1279), James VI crowned king of Scotland (1567), Antonio Perez & the Princess of Eboli arrested by Philip II of Spain (1579), Spanish Armada defeated off Graveline (1588), Iroquois chiefs shot by Samuel de Champlain at Ticonderoga (1609), Arc de Triomphe inaugurated in Paris (1836), Umberto I of Italy assassinated by Gaetano Bresci (1900), Taft-Kaitsura Agreement (1905), Boy Scouts founded by William Baden-Powell (1907), telegrams between Kaiser Wilhelm II & Tsar Nicholas II (1914), language equality in Belgium (1921), Adolf Hitler became head of the Nazi Party (1921), Beijing & Tianjin occupied by Japanese troops (1937), Olympic National Park (1938), “The Fellowship of the Ring” published by George Allen & Unwin (1954), NASA created (1958), royal wedding of Charles & Diana (1981), Cherry Garcia (1987) & Ahed Tamimi was released from prison after eight months (2018) on this day.
July 30
Giorgio Vasari (1511), Maria Anna ‘Nannerl’ Mozart (1751), Emily Brontë (1818), Helena Blavatsky (1831), Thorstein Veblen (1857), Henry Ford (1863), Robert McCormick (1880), Fatima Jinnah (1893), Gerald Moore (1899), Peter Bogdanovich (1939), Pat Schroeder (1940), Paul Anka (1941), Frances de la Tour (1944), Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947), Anita Hill (1956), Delta Burke (1956), Laurence Fishburne (1961), Lisa Kudrow (1963) & Hillary Swank (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton (1550), 1683 Maria Theresa of Spain, queen of Louis XIV of France (1683), William Penn (1718), Thomas Gray (1771), Otto von Bismarck (1898), Joyce Kilmer (1918), George Szell (1970), Claudette Colbert (1996), Bảo Đại, last Emperor of Vietnam (1997), Max Showalter (2000), Ingmar Bergman (2007) & Herman Cain died on this day. The Battle of Vercellae (101 BCE), Baghdad founded by Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur (762), First Defenestration of Prague (1419), Virginia’s House of Burgesses formed (1619), Baltimore founded (1729), Bartolomeo Rastrelli’s Catherine Palace presented to the Empress Elizabeth & the Russia court (1756), German parliamentary election (1878), mobilization in Russia in response to mobilization in Austria-Hungary (1914), Penguin’s first paperback book published (1935), Russian Politburo’s NKVD Order no. 00447 in the Great Purge (1937), USS Indianapolis torpedoed by a Japanese submarine (1945), Dwight Eisenhower signed “In God We Trust” bill into law (1956), Medicare bill signed into law by LBJ (1965), Richard Nixon released the Watergate tapes (1974), Bruce (Caitlyn) Jenner won the Olympic decathlon (1976), King Hussein dissolved Jordan’s House of Representatives & renounced sovereignty over the West Bank (1988), Sarbanes Oxley Act signed into law by George W. Bush (2002), “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” released (2004), “Slumdog Millionaire” released (2008), US & EU sanctions on Russia expanded prompting Vladimir Putin to expel American diplomats in Moscow (2014) on this day.
July 31
Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne (1396), Albrecht III, duke of Saxony (1443), Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II (1527), Jean Dubuffet (1901), Irving ‘Kup’ Kupcinet (1912), Milton Friedman (1912), Norman Del Mar (1919), Primo Levi (1919), Oriana Fallaci (1929), Ted Cassidy (1932), John Searle (1932), Geraldine Chaplin (1944), William Weld (1945), Wesley Snipes (1962), J.K. Rowling (1965), Emilia Fox (1974) & Harry Potter (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Aurelia Cotta, mother of Julius Caesar (54 BCE), St. Ignatius of Loyola (1556), Bartholome de Casas (1566), Sybilla Schwarz (1638), Denis Diderot (1784), Loui Christophe François Hachette (Librairie Hachette) (1864), Andrew Johnson (1875), Franz Liszt (1886), Jean Jaurès (1914), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1944), Robert A. Taft (1953), Gen. Omar Torrijos (1981), Baudouin I of Belgium (1993), Gore Vidal (2012) & Jeanne Moreau (2017) died on this day. French defeated by the English at the Battle of Cravant in Burgundy (1423), Christopher Columbus reached Trinidad (1498), Puritans (‘Pilgrim Fathers’) left Leiden for England on their way to New England (1620), surrender of the Fronde leaders in Bordeaux (1653), Charles Albert of Bavaria’s invasion of Upper Austria & Bohemia (1741), 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette made a major-general of the Continental Army by George Washington (1777), Robert Burns poems published in Scotland (1786), Jean Jaurès assassinated (1914), Battle of Passchendaele (3rd Battle of Ypres) (1917), Loi Van Cauwelaert enacted by Belgium’s parliament (1921), general strike in Italy against fascist violence (1922), Aristide Briand elected prime minister of France for the sixth time (1929), Nazi Party won 37.3% in German parliamentary elections (1932), homosexuals banned in Germany by Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart (1940), uprising in Tibet against the PRC (1958), Israel welcomed its millionth immigrant (1960), Thomas Eagleton withdrew as vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic Party (1972), Jimmy Hoffa reported missing (1975), Seychelles independence (1976), Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia (1990), Medininkai Massacre in Lithuania (1991), Fidel Castro succeeded by Raúl Castro as president of Cuba (2006), Michael Phelps became the biggest medal winner in Olympic history (2012), Barack Obama agreed to resupply arms to Israel in the midst of its pursuit of genocide in Gaza (2014), Anthony Scaramucci fired as White House communications director (2017), Alan Alda’s Parkinson’s diagnosis made public (2018), Facebook’s disclosure of Russian-linked network of websites attempting to influence American politics (2018) on this day.
August 1
Roman emperor Claudius (10 BCE), Roman emperor Publius Helvius Pertinax (126), Sabbatai Zevi (1626), Benedetto Marcello (1686), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744), William Clark (1770), Francis Scott Key (1779), Herman Melville (1819), Robert Todd Lincoln (1843), Meir Kahane (1932), Dom DeLuise (1933), Yves Saint Laurent (1936), Alfonse ‘Al’ D’Amato (1937), Giancarlo Giannini (1942), Jerry Garcia (1942), Sam Mendes (1965) & Honeysuckle Weeks (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Mark Antony [Marcus Antonius] (30 BCE), Cosimo de Medici (1464), Anne Stuart, queen of England (1714), Korad Duden (1911), Francis Gary Powers (1977), Pddy Chayefsky (1981), Benson Fong (1987), Svyatoslav Richter (1997) & Corazon Aquino (2009) died on this day. Mark Antony [Marcus Antonius] suicide (30 BCE), Justinian I the sole rule of the Byzantine Empire (527), Treaty of Verdun among Charles the Bald, Louis the German & Lotharius II (843), Doomsday Book presented to William the Conqueror (1086), Christopher Columbus landed on the Paria Peninsula in what is now Venezuela (1498), assassination of Henry III of France by friar Jacques Clément (1589), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II’s demand that all Austrian Protestants convert to Catholicism (1628), Georg Ludwig king of England as George I (1714), oxygen discovered by Joseph Priestley (1774), surrender of British troops under Gen. Cornwallis at Yorktown (1781), metric system adopted by France (1793), French fleet at Aboukir Bay destroyed by the British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatiao Nelson in the Battle of the Nile (1798), British Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 effectively abolished slavery throughout the British empire (1834), Castle Clinton opened in Manhattan (1855), Colorado admitted to the Union as the 38th state (1876), first Michelin Guide published by the brothers Édouard and André Michelin (1900), German declaration of war on Russia (1914), Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica founded by Marcus Garvey (1914), Sukarno arrested by the Dutch colonial regime in Batavia (1933), Olympic Games in Berlin opened by Adolph Hitler (1936), Harlem Riot of 1943 began (1943), Adam Clayton Powell Jr. elected 1st African-American member of Congress from New York (1944), Anne Frank’s last diary entry (1944), Warsaw Uprising (1944), Baoudouin king of Belgium following Leopold III’s abdication (1950), Dahomey (Benin) independent of France (1960), Arthur Ashe first African American tennis play named to the US Davis Cup team (1963), Watergate first reported by Woodward & Bernstein in the Washington Post (1972), Māori Language Act came into force in New Zealand (1987), Rush Limbaugh’s radio show premiered (1988), Hedy Lamarr arrested for shoplifting in Florida (1991), George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy novel “A Game of Thrones” published (1996), Elon Musk upbraided by the Egyptian government for claiming that the pyramids were built by space aliens (2020) on this day.
August 2
Philippe, Duc d’Orléans & regent of France (1715-23) (1674), Pierre Charles l’Enfant (1754), Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (1834), Constantine I of Greece (1868), Myrna Loy (1905), Shimon Peres (1923), Carroll O’Connor (1924), James Baldwin (1924), Peter O’Toole (1932), Benjamin Barber (1939), Isabel Allende (1942), James Fallows (1949) & Lance Ito (1950) were born #OnThisDay. Ælfweard of Wessex (924), Henri III of France (1589), Thomas Gainsborough (1788), Horace Mann (1859), Wild Bill Hickok [James Butler] (1876), Enrico Caruso (1921), Alexander Graham Bell (1922), Warren G. Harding (1923), Paul von Hindenburg (1934), Pietro Mascagni (1945), Fritz Lang (1976), Michel Debré (1996) & William S. Burroughs (1997) died on this day. Macedonian victory in the Battle of Chaeronea (338), Battle of Cannae in the Second Punic War (216), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V concluded the Peace of Passau with the Protestant princes of Germany (1552), Battle of the Nile (1798), Napoléon Bonaparte declared ‘consul for life’ after winning a national referendum in France (1802), Charles X of France’s abdication (1830), Battle of Bad Axe in Wisconsin (1832), Luxembourg invaded by German troops (1914), East Prussia invaded by Russian troops (1914), Benito Mussolini’s peace treaty with Abyssinia (Ethiopia) (1928), Adolf Hitler commander-in-chief of German armed forces (1934), USS Indianapolis survivors found in the Pacific Ocean (1945), Potsdam Conference (1945), “In the Heat of the Night” premiered (1967), Hedy Lamarr arrested for shoplifting in LA (1991), Michael Phelps’ fifth gold medal won at the Rome Olympics (2009), Michael Phelps’ third consecutive gold medal in the London Olympics (2012) on this day.
August 3
Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope (1753), Elisa Otis (1811), Auguste Schmidt (1833), Stanley Baldwin (1867), Haakon VII of Norway (1872), Rupert Brooke (1887), Ernie Pyle (1900), John T. Scopes (1900), Habib Bourguiba (1902), Dolores del Rio (1904), Maggie Kuhn (1905), Leonhard Huizinga (1906), Ernesto Geisel (1907), Irene Tedrow (1907), Lawrence Brown (1907), P.D. [Phyllis Dorothy] James (Baroness James of Holland Park) (1920), Leon Uris (1924), Tony Bennett [Benedetto] (1926), Martin Sheen (1940), Martha Stewart (1941), Jack Straw (1946), Tom Brady (1977), Ryan Lochte (1984) & Charlotte Casiraghi (1986) was born #OnThisDay. Bernardino de Mendoza (1604), Francesco Borromini (1667), Giovanni Battista Martini (1784), Richard Arkwright (1792), Sir Roger Casement (1916), Joseph Conrad (1924), Thorstein Veblen (1929), Colette [Sidonie-Gabrielle], Flannery O’Connor (1964), CBS broadcast footage of US Marines burning huts in the village of Cam Na in Vietnam (1965), Ida Lupino (1995), Henri Cartier-Bresson (2004), Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (2006), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (2008) & Robert Hardy (2017) died on this day. Vikings defeated by Frankish forces at the Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu (881), Christopher Columbus & the Santa María, Pinta & Niña sailed to ‘the Indies’ from Palos de la Frontera (1492), Teatro alla Scala opened in Milan (1778), Battle of the Nile (1798), Gioachino Rossini’s last opera “Guillaume Tell” premiered at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris (1829), Belgium invaded by Germany (1914), Germany & France declared war on each other (1914), British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey declared, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time” (1914), Sir Roger Casement hanged (1916), Calvin Coolidge succeeded Warren G. Harding as president (1923), Adolf Hitler declared himself ‘Führer’ (1934), Jesse Owens won the 100 meter race in front of Adolf Hitler at the Berlin Olympics (1936), Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being a Soviet spy (1948), Niger’s independence from France (1960), “The Macarena” reached the top of the pop music charts (1996), “The Princess Diaries” with Anne Hathaway (2001), Juan Carlos announced his intention to leave Spain & go into exile (2020) on this day.
August 4
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792), Louis Vuitton (1821), Walter Pater (1839), Knut Hamsun (1859), Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) (1900), Louis Armstrong (1901), Raoul Wallenberg (1912), Helen Thomas (1920), Sheldon Adelson (1933), Jonas Savimbi (1934), David Lange (1942), Kristoffer Tabori [Siegel] (1952), Alberto Gonzales (1955), Barack Obama (1961), Lori Lightfoot (1962), Daniel Dae Kim (1968) & Meghan Markle (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester (1265), Hugh le Despencer, 1st Baron Despencer (1265), Wenceslaus III of Bohemia, king of Hungary (1306), William Cecil, first Baron Burghley (1598), Hans Christian Andersen (1875), Siegfried Wagner (1930) & Vladimir Jabotinsky (1940) died on this day. Frederick the Great’s flight to England (1730), feudalism abolished in France by the new National Assembly (1789), Treaty of Sistova ending the Habsburg/ Ottoman wars (1791), Lizzie Borden’s father & stepmother murdered with an axe (1892), armed forces left Tianjin for Beijing to put down the Boxer Rebellion (1900), German war crimes in the Belgian village of Battice (1914), Germany declared war on Belgium & Britain declared war on Germany (1914), US neutrality declared (1914), Rodin Museum opened in Paris in the Hôtel Biron (1919), Jesse Owens won his second gold medal at the Berlin Olympics (1936), Anne Frank arrested in Amsterdam by the German Security Police (Grüne Polizei) (1944), Nelson Mandela captured by South African police (1962), Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman & James Chaney’s bodies found (1964), Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of 50,000 Asians of Indian descent from Uganda (1972), Bettino Craxi sworn in as prime minister of Italy (1983), Prince’s “Purple Rain” #1 on the charts (1984), Upper Volta became Burkina Faso (1984), California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger (2010), Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame won a third term with 98.63% of the vote (2017) & nine killed in a mass shooting in Dayton (2019) on this day.
August 5
Guillaume Dufay (1397), Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes, favorite of Louis XIII (1578), Ambroise Thomas (1811), Ivar Aasen (1813), Guy de Maupassant (1850), Erich Kleiber (1890), Richard Kleindienst (1923), Neil Armstrong (1930), Alan Howard (1937), Janet Dubois (1945), Loni Anderson (1945), Hun Sen (1952), Maureen McCormick (1956) & Marine Le Pen (1968) were born #OnThisDay. Frederick Lord North, Tory prime minister to George III (1792), Friedrich Engels (1895), Victoria, queen of Prussia & empress of Germany (1901), Carmen Miranda (1955), Marilyn Monroe (1962), Richard Burton (1984), Robert Muldoon (1992), Todor Zjivkov (1998), Alec Guiness (2000), Charlotte Rae (2018) Toni Morrison (2019) & Brazilian indigenous leader Aritana Yawalapiti (2020) died on this day. Roman capture of Bar Kochba’s last outpost Betar (135), Vikings defeated by Edward & Æþelræd of Mercia & Wessex at the Battle of Tettenhall (910), Henry I crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey (1100), William Wallace executed in London (1305), Ottoman Turks decisively defeated by a Habsburg army under Eugene of Savoy at the Battle of Petrovaradin/Peterwardein (1716), public announcement of the first partition of Poland (1772), first transatlantic telegraph cable completed (1858), Karl IV of Sweden & Norway crowned king of Norway in Trondheim (1860), flogging abolished by the US Army (1861), income tax bill signed into law by Abraham Lincoln (1861), Battle of Mobile Bay (1864), first meeting of Russian & Japanese representatives chez Theodore Roosevelt in Oyster Bay (1905), Battle of Liège between Belgian forces & German troops led by Erich Ludendorff (1914), Montenegro declared war on Austria-Hungary (1914), first “Little Orphan Annie” comic strip published in the New York Daily News (1924), Plaid Cymru formed (1925), Jesse Owens won his third gold medal at the Berlin Olympics (1936), Munich Pact cancelled by the British government (1942), 348 Jews freed from a German forced labor camp in Warsaw by Polish insurgents (1944), Burkina Faso independent from France (1960), Marilyn Monroe found dead (1962), Nelson Mandela arrested (1962), Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed by the US, UK & USSR (1963), Martin Luther King, Jr. stoned during the Chicago march (1966), Ronald Reagan fired 11,359 air traffic controllers (1981), “Risky Business” with Tom Cruise released (1983), Rodney King riots in Los Angeles (1992), Barack Obama signed the Iron Dome bill into law providing $225 million in additional funding for Israel’s defense (2014), India’s prime minister Narendra Modi changed the status of Kashmir from a state to a union territory (2019), Narendra Modi laid the cornerstone for a new Hindu temple at Ayodhya Ram to replace a Muslim mosque (2020) on this day.
August 6
Louise de La Vallière, mistress of Louis XIV (1644), Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII (1697), Daniel O’Connell (1775), Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809), Edith Carrow Roosevelt (1861), Alexander Fleming (1881), Louella Parsons (1881), Lucille Ball (1911), Robert Mitchum (1917), Andy Warhol (1928), Roh Moo-hyun (1946), Jim McGreevey (1957), Michelle Yeoh (1962), M. Night Shyamalan (1970), Geri Halliwell Horner (‘Ginger Spice’) (1972), Leslie Odom, Jr. (1981) & Jon Benet Ramsey (1990) were born #OnThisDay. Anne Hathaway (1623), Ben Jonson (1637), Diego Velázquez (1660), Wilhelm Liebknecht (1900), Eduard Hanslick (1904), Leon Bismarck ‘Bix Beiderbecke (1931), Warner Oland (1938), Hiram Johnson (1945), Preston Sturges (1959), Cedric Hardwicke (1964), Teodor Adorno (1969), Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar (1973), Pope Paul VI (1978), Harry Reasoner (1991), Dorothy Tutin (2001), Marvin Hamlisch (2012) & Ruggiero Ricci (2012) died on this day. Bogotá (Colombia) founded by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (1538), Brandenburg Gate opened (1791), Holy Roman Empire abolished by Napoleon (1806), Bolivia’s independence from Peru (1825), France defeated by Prussia at the Battle of Spicheren (1870), Madagascar annexed by France (1896), Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia (1914), Serbia declared war on Germany (1914), atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (1945), LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act into law (1965), Jon Stewart’s last “Daily Show” (2015) & Alex Jones de-platformed by Facebook, Apple, YouTube & Spotify (2018) on this day.
August 7
Elizabeth Báthory (1560), Georg Stiernhielm (1598), Nathanael Greene (1742), Mata Hari [Margaretha Geertruida Zelle] (1876), François Darlan (1881), Billie Burke [Mary William Ethelbert Appleton] (1884), Louis Leakey (1903), Ralph Bunche (1904), Edwin Edwards (1927), Edward Hardwicke (1932), Jean-Luc Dehaene (1940), Garrison Keillor (1942), David Duchovny (1960), & Charlize Theron (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (1106), Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1817), Caroline of Brunswick, queen of England (1821), Joseph Marie Jacquard (1834), Rabindranath Tagore (1941), Oliver Hardy (1957), Salvatore Ferragamo (1960), Peter Jennings (2005) & Hugh Carey (2011) died on this day. Otto I crowned king (936), first organized witch trials in Europe begin in the Valais (later a canton of Switzerland) (1428), Gen. Cao Qin’s coup against the Tianshun emperor of Ming China (1461), Battle of Guinegate between Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I & France’s Louis XI (1479), Henry Tudor’s army landed at Milford Haven in Wales (1485), Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” performed for James I in the Great Hall at Hampton Court (1606), astronomer Johannes Kepler’s mother arrested for witchcraft (1620), Louis XIII defeated his mother Marie de Medici’s army at the Battle of Ponts-the-Ce in Poitou (1615), slave rebellion in Curaçao (1750), Napoléon reinstated slavery in Haïti (1802) Spanish army in Colombia defeated by Simón Bolívar at the Battle of Boyacá (1819), Theodore Roosevelt nominated for president by the Progressive (‘Bull Moose’) Party (1912), Russian invasion of East Prussia (1914), Battle of Gallipoli (1915), Assyrian Martyrs Day in Iraq (1933), government ban on James Joyce’s “Ulysses” strudk down by the US Court of Appeals (1934), Alsace Lorraine annexed by Nazi Germany (1940), Thor Heyerdahl & the crew of the Kon-Tiki reached a reef in the Tuamotu Islands after 101 days crossing the Pacific Ocean (1947), Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) independence from France (1960), Gulf of Tonkin resolution overwhelmingly passed by Congress (1964), Singapore’s separation agreement with Malaysia after two years of political union (1965), Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center (1974), NASA’s Viking 2 orbiting Mars (1976), Operation Desert Shield ordered by George H.W. Bush to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait (1990), “Crazy Rich Asians” premiere in LA (2018), China banned “Christopher Robin” the Winnie the Pooh movie (2018) on this day.
August 8
Godfrey Kneller (1646), Charles Bulfinch (1763), Cecile Chaminade (1857), Emiliano Zapata (1879), Dino De Laurentiis (1919), Esther Williams (1921), Richard Anderson (1926), Josef Suk (1929), Dustin Hoffman (1937), Connie Stevens [Concetta Ingoglia] (1938), Randy Shilts (1951), Mohamed Morsi (1951), Ron Klain (1961), Giuseppe Conte (1964), Michael Urie (1980), Roger Federer (1981), Beatrice, Princess of York (1988) & Shawn Mendes (1998) were born #OnThisDay. George Canning (1827), Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1879), Jacob Burckhardt (1897), Louise Brooks (1985), Fay Wray (2004), Barbara Bel Geddes (2005), Patricia Neal (2010), Regina Resnik (2013), Glen Campbell (2017) & Barbara Cook (2017) died on this day. Henry II of France declared war on England (1549), Louis XVI ordered France’s Estates-General to convene (1788), Brigham Young chosen to succeed Joseph Smith as head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1844), Hundred Days’ Offensive launched by the Allies in World War I with the Battle of Amiens (1918), Treaty of Rawalpindi recognizing Afghanistan’s independence (1919), United Nations Charter signed by Harry Truman (1945), Treaty of London signed laying down procedures for the Nuremberg trials (1945), USSR declared war on Japan & invaded Manchuria (1945) Bhutan’s independence (1949), authoritarian Syngman Rhee elected president of the Republic of Korea (1952), Richard Nixon announced his intention to resign (1974), coup d’état in Guatemala against dictator Efraín Rios Montt (1983) & Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as associate justice of the US Supreme Court (2009) on this day.
August 9
Reynaldo Hahn (1874), Erich Hückel (1896), Leonide Massine (1896), Jean Piaget (1896), Zino Francescatti (1902), Robert van Gulik (1910), Herman Talmadge (1913), Ferenc Fricsay (1914), Tove Jansson (1914), Leonid Kuchma (1938), Chris Haney (1950), Melanie Griffith (1957), Michael Kors (1959), Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (1962), Whitney Houston (1963), Hoda Kotb (1964), Chris Cuomo (1970) & Audrey Tautou (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Roman Emperor Trajan (117), Hieronymus Bosch (1516), Ruggero Leoncavallo (1919), Hermann Hesse (1962), Joe Orton (1967), Sharon Tate (1969), Dmitri Shostakovich (1975), Jerry Garcia (1995), Bernie Mac (2008) & Michael Brown (2014) died on this day. Goths defeated a Roman army under Emperor Valens at the Battle of Adrianople (378), khanate of Bulgaria founded on the Danube (681), construction of the Tower of Pisa commenced (1173), Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for exile on St. Helena (1815), Louis-Philippe formally accepted the crown of France following the abdication of Charles X (1830), Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” published (1854), Hector Berlioz’ opera “Béatrice et Bénédict” premiered in Baden-Baden (1862), Edward VII crowned king of England (1902), Nagasaki incinerated by an atomic bomb (1945), Singapore’s separation from the Federation of Malaysia (1965), Charles Manson’s crime family’s murder of five people (1969), Gerald Ford sworn in as president following Richard Nixon’s resignation (1974), Belgium’s constitution revised (1980), Albert II crowned king of Belgium (1993) & Michael Brown was killed by the police in Ferguson (2014) on this day.
August 10
Philipp Nicolai (1566), William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe (1729), Charles Napier (1782), Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810), Henri Nestlé (1814), Alexander Glazunov (1865), Herbert Hoover (1874), John Joseph ‘Jack’ Haley (1898), Marie-Claire Alain (1926), Eddie Fisher (1928), Jimmy Dean (1928), Anwar Ibrahim (1947), Rosanna Arquette (1959), Antonio Banderas (1960), Andrew Sullivan (1963) & Kylie Jenner (1997) were born #OnThisDay. Al-Mansur, regent of Cordoba (1002), Guillaume Cardinal Dubois (1723), Rin Tin Tin (1932), Berthold Schenk von Stauffenberg (1944), Estes Kefauver (1963), Isaac Hayes (2008) & Eydie Gormé [Edithe Gormezano] (2013) died on this day. Treaty of Verdun (843), Battle of Lechfeld (955), Diego Diaz first European to see Madagascar (1500), sinking of the Swedish warship Vasa in Stockholm (1628), Peace of Vásvár between the Habsburg & Ottoman empires (1664), Royal Observatory in Greenwich foundation stones laid by Charles II & John Flamsteed (1675), Charles III crowned king of Spain (1759), news of the Declaration of Independence reached London (1776), “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (A Little Night Music) composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1787), opening of the Musée du Louvre in Paris (1793), Missouri admitted as the 24th state (1821), incorporation of Chicago (1833), Battle of the Yellow Sea (1904), House of Lords’ power reduced by the Parliament Act (1911), 2nd Balkan War ended with the Treaty of Bucharest (1913), Treaty of Sèvres between the Allies & Turkey (1920), British Mandate Palestine recognized by the Turkish government (1920), FDR stricken with what was believed to be polio but could have been Guillain–Barré syndrome (1921), “Sunset Boulevard” premiered at Radio City Music Hall (1950), Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” premiered in LA (1960), Ruth Bader Ginsburg sworn in as a US Supreme Court Justice (1993), anti-government protests in Bucharest (2018) & Jeffrey Epstein found dead of ‘suicide’ in his jail cell (2019) on this day.
August 11
Holy Roman Emperor Henry V (1081), Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778), Alex Haley (1921), Claus von Bülow (1926), Raymond Leppard (1927), Jerry Falwell, Sr. (1933), Allegra Kent [Iris Cohen] (1937), Anna Massey (1937), Elizabeth Holtzman (1941), Pervez Musharraf (1943), Steve Wozniak (1950), Joe Rogan (1967) & Chris Hemsworth (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Hans Memling (1494), Johann Tetzel (1519), Hamnet Shakespeare (1596), Ottavio Piccolomini (1656), Thaddeus Stevens (1868), Andrew Carnegie (1919), Edith Wharton (1937), Jean Bugatti (1939), Jackson Pollock (1956), Alfred A. Knopf (1984), Clara Peller (1987), Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1988), Peter Cushing (1994), Diana Mitford (2003), Eunice Shriver (2009), Dan Rostenkowski (2010), Robin Williams (2014) & V.S. Naipaul (2018) died on this day. Penang established as a British colony by Captain Francis Light in Malaysia (1786), Francis II first emperor of Austria (1804), Cambodia made a French protectorate (1863), Herrero crushed by German Gen. Lothar von Trotta at the Battle of Waterberg in German Southwest Africa (1904), Weimar Republic’s constitution approved in Germany (1919), Chad’s independence from France (1960), Meir Kahane renounced his US citizenship to retain his seat in the Israeli Knesset (1988), Voyager 2’s discovery of two partial rings of Neptune (1989), Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate (2020) & Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya fled persecution by Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko (2020) on this day.
August 12
Christian III of Denmark (1503), Tsar Alexei I of Russia (1629), Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644), George IV (1762), Robert Southey (1774), Edith Hamilton (1867), Cecil B. DeMille (1881), Alexei Nikolaevich, last tsarevich of Russia (1904), Jane Wyatt (1910), Cantinflas [Mario Moreno] (1911), Dale Bumpers (1925), George Soros (1930), John Poindexter (1936), George Hamilton (1939), Peter Hofmann (1944), Willie Horton (1951), Chen Kaige (1952), François Hollande (1954), Miss Cleo [Youree Dell Harris] (1962), Pete Sampras (1971) & Casey Affleck (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Cleopatra VII Philopator (30 BCE), Ming emperor Yongle (1424), Giovanni Gabrieli (1612), Jacopo Peri (1633), Philippe de Champaigne (1674), William Blake (1827), Leoš Janáček (1928), Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (1944), Thomas Mann (1955), Ian Fleming (1964), Henry Fonda (1982), John Cage (1992), Merv Griffin (2007) & Lauren Bacall (2014) died on this day. King Philip’s War ended (1676), Battle of Mohacs (1687), Battle of Kunersdorf (1759), Chicago incorporated (1833), Isaac Singer patented the sewing machine (1851), armistice ending the Spanish–American War (1898), France & Britain declared war on Austria-Hungary (1914), Battle of Halen in Belgium (1914), Battle of Amiens (1918), Battle of Warsaw (1920), “The Wizard of Oz” movie premieres in Oconomowoc (Wisconsin) (1939), New Jersey Governor James McGreevey came out publicly as gay (2004), James ‘Whitey’ Bolger found guilty of racketeering (2013), London archaeologists discover a mass grave of 30 bodies from the 1665 plague (2015), “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville (2017) on this day.
August 13
William Caxton (1422), Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, queen consort of William IV (1792), Annie Oakley [Phoebe Ann Moses] (1860), Giovanni Agnelli (1866), Karl Liebknecht (1871), Bert Lahr [Irving Lahrheim] (1895), Makarios III [Michail Moeskos] (1913), Fidel Castro (1926), Pat Harrington, Jr. (1929), Don Ho (1930), Roy Evans (1931), Jocelyn Elders (1993), Madhur Jaffrey (1933), Janet Yellen (1946), Kathleen Battle (1948), Dan Fogelberg (1951), Danny Bonaduce (1959), Lady Bunny [Jon Ingle] (1962), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (1982) & Ibram X. Kendi (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Johann Elias Schlegel (1749), Eugène Delacroix (1863), John Everett Millais (1896), Collis P. Huntington (1900), Florence Nightingale (1910), Jules Massenet (1912), H.G. Wells (1946), Manfred Wörner (1994), Mickey Mantle (1995), David Lange (2005), Brooke Astor (2007), Helen Gurley Brown (2012) & Frans Brüggen died on this day. Spanish conquistadors under Hernán Cortés captured Aztec Emperor Cuauhtémoc in Tenochtitlan bringing about the end of the Aztec Empire (1521), Spanish theologian & physician Michael Servetus arrested as a heretic in Geneva (1553), Cardinal Richelieu appointed Chief Minister of France by Louis XIII (1624), Albrecht von Wallenstein dismissed as supreme commander of imperial troops by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (1630), Martian south polar cap discovered by Christiaan Huygens (1642), John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough combined British, German and Dutch army to victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim (Second Battle of Höchstädt) (1704), the Bayreuth Festspielhaus opened with the first complete performance of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle (1876), US forces under Admiral George Dewey captured Manila during Spanish–American War (1898), Edward VII & Franz Josef met at Ischl (1908), revolt in Catalonia (1917) Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Pasja elected president by the Turkish National Congress (1923), the Battle of Shanghai in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937), Hermann Goering’s ‘Adlertag’ offensive launched in the Battle of Britain (1940), Central African Republic & Chad proclaimed their independence from France (1960), Berlin Wall construction initiated in East Berlin (1961), last broadcast of “The Waltons” on CBS-TV (1981), Swedish prosecutors dropped allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of sexual molestation and coercion (2015), Grace Mugabe, wife of the president of Zimbabwe, accused of assault in Johannesburg, South Africa (2018) & Ugandan pop singer Bobi Wine arrested by the Ugandan army at a campaign rally in Arua & later allegedly tortured (2020) on this day.
August 14
Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury (1473), Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia (1688), Louise Élisabeth of France, twin daughter of Louis XV (1727), Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840), John ‘Doc’ Holliday (1851), John Galsworthy (1867), John Ringling North (1903), Georges Prêtre (1924), Russell Baker (1925), Lina Wertmüller [Arcangela Braueich] (1928), Steve Martin (1945), Danielle Steel (1947), Gary Larson (1950), Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson (1959) & Halle Berry (1966) were born #OnThisDay. David Farragut (1870), Charles Crocker (1888), William Randolph Hearst (1951), Bertolt Brecht (1956), Leonard Woolf (1969), Karl Böhm (1981), John Boynton Priestley (1984), Gale Songergaard (1985), Enzo Ferrari (1988), John Sirica (1992), Julian Bream (2020) & James R. Thmpson (2020) died on this day. Duncan I of Scotland killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth (1040), Christopher Columbus landed at the mouth of the Orinoco River in what is now Venezuela (1498), Christopher Marlowe’s play “Tamburlaine the Great” published (1590), Prussian army occupied Saksen, beginning 2nd Silesian War (1743), Prussian victory over Russia at Zorndorf (1758), Russian settlement in Alaska (1784), Henry David Thoreau jailed for refusing to pay taxes (1846), Queen Victoria received Zulu chief Cetewayo (1882), China declared war on Germany & Austria (1917), Tannu Tuva (later Tuvinian People’s Republic) established as a completely independent country (supported by Russia) (1921), FDR signed the Social Security Act into law (1935), China declared war on Japan (1937), V-J Day: Japan’s surrender (1945), Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” hit #1 (1965), Pakistani military coup against Bangladeshi President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1975) Illich Ramirez Sanchez (‘Carlos the Jackal’) captured in Khartoum (1994) on this day.
August 15
Napoleone Buonaparte (Napoléon Bonaparte) (1769), Jacques Ibert (1890), Lillian Carter (1898), Julia Child (1912), Wendy Hiller (1912), Oscar Romero (1917), Lukas Foss [Fuchs] (1922), Phyllis Schlafly (1924), Oscar Peterson (1925), Maxine Waters (1938), Stephen Breyer (1938), Linda Ellerbee (1944), Melinda Gates (1964), Debra Messing (1968), Ben Affleck (1972), Abiy Ahmed (1976) & Jennifer Lawrence (1990) were born #OnThisDay. Frankish commander Roland (778), Macbeth, king of Scots (1057)Philippa of Hainault, queen consort of Edward III of England (1369), Marin Marais (1728), Will Rogers (1935), Artur Schnabel (1951), René Magritte (1967), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1975), Licia Albanese (2014) & Julian Bond (2015) died on this day. Roland, commander of the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army, defeated by the Basques at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778), Scotland’s king Macbeth slain in battle by Malcolm Canmore — the son of King Duncan (1057), Empire of Trebizond surrendered to forces of Sultan Mehmet II (1461), Louis XI crowned King of France at Reims cathedral (1461), Society of Jesus (Jesuits) formed by Ignatius Loyola (1534), Asunción founded in Paraguay (1537), Mary, Queen of Scots arrived in France at the age of six (1548), the Mayflower set sail from Southampton, England, with 102 Puritans (1620), Cardinal de Rohan arrested on the orders of Louis XVI (1785), Franz Joseph Haydn departed England (1795), freed American slaves established Liberia on the West African coast through the American Colonization Society (ACS) (1824), Tivoli Gardens amusement park opened in Copenhagen (1843), Anglo-Satsuma War between the British & the Satsuma daimyo in Japan (1863), Representation of the People Act enacted by the British parliament (1867), Transcontinental Railway completed in Colorado (1870), 4th & last British government of William Gladstone formed (1892), Dowager Empress Cixi & the imperial court forced to flee the Forbidden City in the midst of the Boxer Rebellion in China (1900), Russian troops advanced further into Manchuria (1900), Edward VII met with Wilhelm II to discuss the escalating rivalry between the British & German naval forces (1906), Taliesin murders in Frank Lloyd Wright’s house (1914), Polish troops under Józef Piłsudski defeated Soviet troops at the Battle of Warsaw (Miracle on the Vistula) (1920), Eamon de Valera arrested in Irish Free State (1923), Spitsbergen annexed by Norway (1925), “The Wizard of Oz” directed by Victor Fleming premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood (1939), Chartres liberated by the 7th US armored division (1944), Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender in World War II (1945), India’s independence (1947), Republic of Korea (South Korea) proclaimed (National Day) (1948), Sukarno proclaimed the unitary Republic of Indonesia & became its first president (1950), Alfredo Stroessner named himself president of Paraguay (1954), the Woodstock Festival opened in Bethel on Max Yasgur’s Dairy Farm (1969), South Korean President Park Chung-Hee escaped an assassination attempt (1974), Bangladesh military coup under Khondakar Moustaque Ahmed (1975), the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland (the worst terrorist incident of The Troubles) killed 29 people & injured 220 (1998) & Kabul fell to the Taliban, completing its takeover of Afghanistan (2021) this day.
August 15
Hongxi [Zhu Gaochi], fourth emperor of the Ming dynasty (1378), Agostino Carracci (1557), Jean de La Bruyère, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV (1682), Heinrich August Marschner (1795), T. E. Lawrence [Lawrence of Arabia] (1888), Otto Messmer, American cartoonist (Felix the Cat) (1892), George Meany (1894), Robert Ringling (1897), Menachem Begin (1913), Eydie Gormé [Edithe Gormezano] (1928), Robert Culp (1930), Forrest E. Mars Jr. (1931), Julie Newmar (1933), Suzanne Farrell (1945), Lesley Ann Warren (1946), Carol Moseley-Braun (1947), Gianna Rolandi (1952), James Taylor (1953), Kathie Lee Gifford (1953), James Cameron (1954),Angela Bassett (1958), Madonna [Ciccone] (1958), Timothy Hutton (1960) & Steve Carell (1962) were born #OnThisDay. Wenceslaus, King of the Romans & King of Bohemia (1419), Andrew Marvell (1678), Robert Bunsen (1899), Babe Ruth (1948), Margaret Mitchell (1949), Bela Lugosi (1956), Wanda Landowska (1959), Elvis Presley (1977), John Diefenbaker (1979), Shamu the Whale (1991), John Cameron Swayze (1995), Abu Nidal (2002), Idi Amin (2003), Alfredo Stroessner (2006), William Windom (20122), John McLaughlin (2016), Arethra Franklin (2018) & Peter Fonda (2019) died on this day. Battle of the Spurs at Guinegate (1513), Peterloo Massacre in Manchester (1819), Queen Victoria telegraphed US President James Buchanan for 1st time by transatlantic telegraph cable (1858), Battle of Acosta Ñu (1869), Richard Wagner’s opera “Siegfried” premiered in Bayreuth (1876), Puyi the puppet emperor of Manchukuo captured by Soviet troops (1945), Sen. William Fulbright challenged LBJ’s interpretation of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1967) & Moroccan King Hassan II’s B727 was shot during a failed coup attempt by General Mohamed Oufkir failed (1972) on this day.
August 16
Hongxi [Zhu Gaochi], fourth emperor of the Ming dynasty (1378), Agostino Carracci (1557), Jean de La Bruyère, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV (1682), Heinrich August Marschner (1795), T. E. Lawrence [Lawrence of Arabia] (1888), Otto Messmer, American cartoonist (Felix the Cat) (1892), George Meany (1894), Robert Ringling (1897), Menachem Begin (1913), Eydie Gormé [Edithe Gormezano] (1928), Robert Culp (1930), Forrest E. Mars Jr. (1931), Julie Newmar (1933), Suzanne Farrell (1945), Lesley Ann Warren (1946), Carol Moseley-Braun (1947), Gianna Rolandi (1952), James Taylor (1953), Kathie Lee Gifford (1953), James Cameron (1954), Angela Bassett (1958), Madonna [Ciccone] (1958), Timothy Hutton (1960) & Steve Carell (1962) were born #OnThisDay. Wenceslaus, King of the Romans & King of Bohemia (1419), Andrew Marvell (1678), Robert Bunsen (1899), Babe Ruth (1948), Margaret Mitchell (1949), Bela Lugosi (1956), Wanda Landowska (1959), Elvis Presley (1977), John Diefenbaker (1979), Shamu the Whale (1991), John Cameron Swayze (1995), Abu Nidal (2002), Idi Amin (2003), Alfredo Stroessner (2006), William Windom (20122), John McLaughlin (2016), Arethra Franklin (2018) & Peter Fonda (2019) died on this day. Battle of the Spurs at Guinegate (1513), Peterloo Massacre in Manchester (1819), Queen Victoria telegraphed US President James Buchanan for 1st time by transatlantic telegraph cable (1858), Battle of Acosta Ñu (1869), Richard Wagner’s opera “Siegfried” premiered in Bayreuth (1876), Grand Central Station construction began (1904), Puyi the puppet emperor of Manchukuo captured by Soviet troops (1945), & Morocco King Hassan II’s B727 was shot during failed coup Sen. William Fulbright challenged LBJ’s interpretation of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1967), attempted coup by General Mohamed Oufkir against Hassan II of Morocco failed (1972) on this day.
August 17
Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, son of King Edward IV, one of the princes in the tower who disappeared (1473), Jan Sobieski of Poland (1629), Davy Crockett (1786), Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Duchess of Kent & mother of Queen Victoria (1786), Samuel Goldwyn Shmuel Gelbfisz, Marcus Garvey (1887), Harry Hopkins (1890), Mae West (1893), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. (1914), Maureen O’Hara (1920), Geoffrey Elton (1921), Jiang Zemin (1926), Francis Gary Powers (1929), Ted Hughes (1930), V.S. Naipaul (1932), Ibrahim Babanginda (1941), Robert De Niro (1943), Larry Ellison (1944), David Koresh (1959) & Sean Penn (1960) were born #OnThisDay. Frederick the Great, King of Prussia (1786), José de San Martín (1850), Ole Bull (1880), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1969), Ira Gershwin (1983), Rudolf Hess (1987), Franklin D. Rosevelt, Jr. (1988), Mohammad Zia Ul-Haq (1988), Pearl Bailey (1990), Gérard Souzay (2004) & Francesco Cossiga (2010) died on this day. Charles IX of France declared an adult at 13 (1563), Peace of Bergerac guaranteed political rights for Huguenots in France (1577), François, duc d’Alençon traveled to England to visit Elizabeth Tudor (1579) France’s Superintendent of Finances Nicolas Fouquet invited Louis XIV to Vaux-le-Vicomte for dinner (1661), Dakota uprising in Minnesota (1862), Richard Wagner’s opera “Götterdämmerung” premiered in Bayreuth (1876) Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesia (Dutch East Indies) independent from the Netherlands (1945), Korea divided into North and South Korea along the 38th parallel (1945), George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” published (1946), Indonesia independent from Netherlands (1950), East German shot dead by guards at the Berlin Wall (1962), last day of the Woodstock Music Festival (1969), & Bill Clinton admitted under oath to a relationship with Monica Lewinsky (1998) on this day.
August 18
Antonio Salieri (1750), Meriwether Lewis (1774), John Russell (1792), Franz Josef of Austria (1830), Marshall Field (1834), Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900), [Francis] Max Factor (1904), Edgar Faure (1908), Casper Weinberger (1917), Shelley Winters (1920), Mohammad Zia Ul-Haq (1924), Rosalynn Smith Carter (1927), Marge Schott (1928), Roman Polanski (1933), Roberto Clemente (1934), Robert Redford (1936), Patrick Swayze (1952), Edward Norton (1969) & Parker McKenna Posey (1995) were born #OnThisDay. Genghis Khan [Temüjin Borjigin] (1227), Ming emperor Wanli (1620), William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire (1707), Holy Roman Emperor Francis I (1765), Honoré de Balzac (1850), Walter Chrysler (1940), Nikolaus Pevsner (1983), Frederick Ashton (1988), BF Skinner (1990), Gottlob Frick (1994), Hiram Fong (2004), Michael Deaver (2007), Kim Dae Jung (2009), Robert Novak (2009) & Kofi Annan (2018) died on this day. Florence announced a competition to design the dome of the cathedral, ultimately won by Filippo Brunelleschi (1418), Russian Tsar Peter the Great arrives in Zaandam (1698), Curaçao slave revolt crushed by the militia (1795), Prussia defeated France at the Battle of Gravelotte-St. Privat, resulting in 32,000 casualties (1870), French troops under general Dubail occupy Sarrebourg (1914), 19th Amendment ratified by one vote in Tennessee (1920), Sukarno elected 1st President of Indonesia by the Preparatory Committee for Indonesian Independence (PPKI) (1945), Korean axe murder incident in the DMZ (1976), South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko is arrested at a roadblock (1977), coup d’état launched against Boris Gorbachev (1991), Steve Bannon fired as White House strategist by Donald Trump (2017), Iceland held a funeral for the first glacier lost to climate change at site of Okjökull glacier (2019), California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared state of emergency as 27 fires burned across the state amid a continuing heat wave (2020) & Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta resigned amid a military coup condemned by the UN Security Council (2020) on this day.
August 19
Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI & I of Scotland & England, Electress of the Palatinate & ‘Winter Queen’ of Bohemia (1596), Samuel Richardson (1689), Edward John Dent (1790), Gustave Caillebotte (1848), Bernard Baruch (1870), Orville Wright (1871), Georges Enesco (1881), Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel (1883), Arthur Waley (1889), Ogden Nash (1902), Malcolm Forbes (1919), Renée Richards [Richard Raskind] (1934), Diana Muldaur (1938), Fred Thompson (1942), [William Jefferson] Bill Clinton (1946), Tipper Gore (1948), Nanni Moretti (1953), Mary Matalin (1953), Adam Arkin (1956), Matthew Perry (1969) & Mette-Marit, crown princess of Norway (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Augustus Caesar [Gaius Octavius] (14 CE), Andrea Palladio [Andrea di Pietro della Gondola] (1580), Blaise Pascal (1662), Balthasar Neumann (1753), 1936 Federico Garcia Lorca (1936), Alcide de Gasperi (1954), Ima Hogg (1975), Groucho Marx [Julius] (1977), Otto Frank (1980), Hermione Badeley (1986), Linus Pauling (1994), Don Hewitt (2009), José Sarria (2013) & Dick Gregory (2017) died on this day. Octavian (Augustus) compelled the Roman Senate to elect him consul (43 BCE), Richard II of England surrendered to his cousin Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV) (1399), Mary, Queen of Scots arrived in Leith, Scotland to assume the throne after spending 13 years in France (1561), at the Battle of Slankamen (the bloodiest battle of the century), Austrian Hapsburg forces defeated Ottoman army, killing Grand Vizer Köprülü Fazıl Mustafa Pasha (1691), Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard at Glenfinnan, igniting the second Jacobite rebellion in Scotland (1745), at the Battle at Gross Jagerndorf, the Russian army defeated Prussia (1757), Gustav III seized effective control of the Swedish government & restored absolute monarchy through a royal coup d’état (1772), Tsar Nicholas II installed Russia’s Imperial Duma without legislative powers (1905), Operation Barbarossa: German invasion of Russia (1941), Mohammad Mosaddegh overthrown in a coup d’état in Iran (1953), Republicans nominated Gerald Ford for president at the convention in Kansas City (1976), Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan for president at the convention in Dallas (1984), coup d’état against Mikhail Gorbachev initiated by Communist Party reactionaries in the Soviet Union (1991), NASA satellite photos revealed the death of the Aral Sea (2014) on this day.
August 20
Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, Spanish cardinal & viceroy of Naples (1517), Jacopo Peri (1561), Josef Strauss (1827), Benjamin Harrison (1833), Raymond Poincaré (1860) Eliel Saarinen (1873), Paul Tillich (1886), Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel 1901), Jacqueline Susann (1918), George J. Mitchell (1933), Ron Paul (1935), Carla Fracci (1936), William H. Gray III (1941), Dave Brock (1941), Rich Brooks (1941), Robin Oakley (1941), Jo Ramírez (1941), Slobodan Milošević (1941), Rajiv Gandhi (1944), Connie Chung [Constance Yu-Hwa Chung Povich] (1946), Andrew Garfield (1983) & Demi Lovato (1992) were born #OnThisDay. Anne Hutchinson (1643), Johan de Witt (1672), Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1811), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1854), Hua Guofeng (2008), Phyllis Diller (2012) & Jerry Lewis (2017) died on this day. Venus & Jupiter in conjunction — possible astrological explanation for the Star of Bethlehem (2CE), Battle of Yarmuk (636), Hungary established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I (1000), Richard I of England & Crusaders killed 3,000 Muslim prisoners in Akko (1191), the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown (1619), Grand Pensionary of Holland Johan de Witt & his brother Cornelis brutally murdered by an angry mob in the Hague (1672), Gioachino Rossini’s opera “Le Comte Ory” premiered in Paris (1828), Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over (1866), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” premiered in Moscow (1822), the second salon exhibition by Society of Independent Artists held in Paris including Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1886), the Congo Free State became Belgian Congo (1908), Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico on Stalin’s orders (1940), Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s return to France (1944), Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi ordered the arrest of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a CIA supported coup d’état (1953), 250,000 Soviet & Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring (1968), Nelson Rockefeller chosen to be vice-president by Gerald Ford (1974), Viking 1 to Mars launched (1975), the Oslo Peace Accords signed (1993), Pope Francis sent a letter to Catholics condemning priest abuse (2018), Venezuela issued a new currency the “Bolivar Soberano” in attempt to stop runaway hyperinflation (2018), Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned (2020) & Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nomination (2020) on this day.
August 21
Philip Augustus of France (1165), William IV of England (1765), Rudolf von Habsburg (1858), Aubrey Beardsley (1872) Lili [Marie-Juliette Olga] Boulanger (1893), [William] Count Basie (1904), Isadore ‘Friz’ Freleng (1905), C. Dillon Douglas (1909), Mário Pinto de Andrade (1928), Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930), Janet Baker (1933), Wilt Chamberlain (1936), Kenny Rogers (1938), Peter Weir (1944), Kim Cattrall (1956), Stephen Hillenburg (1961), Mohammed VI of Morocco (1963), Stéphane Charbonnier [Charb] (1967) & Sergey Brin (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Elizabeth Báthory (1614), Adelbert von Chamisso (1838), Leon Trotsky (1940), Sobhua II of Swailand (1982), Benigno Aquino, Jr. (1983) & Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1991) died on this day. Kublai Khan accepted the surrender of his younger brother Ariq Böke at Xanadu at the end of the Mongol civil war (1264), Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent captured Buda (1541), Gustav III’s coup d’état completed with the adoption of a new constitution in Sweden (1772), Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte of France elected crown prince of Sweden by the Swedish Riksdag (1810), Nat Turner’s slave rebellion (1831), the first debate over slavery between Abraham Lincoln & Stephen Douglas (1858), American Bar Association founded (1878), “Mona Lisa” stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Perugia; recovered in 1913 (1911), Italy declared war on Turkey (1915), Walt Disney’s animated movie “Bambi” released (1942), Hawaii admitted as the 50th state (1959), Alexander Dubček arrested & forced to sign the Moscow Protocols subjecting Czechoslovakia to continued Soviet control (1968), al-Aqsa mosque fire in Jerusalem (1969), “Matlovich vs US Air Force” first gay-themed TV film to air (1978), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) founded (1980), coup d’état against Mikhail Gorbachev thwarted by Boris Yeltsin (1991) & Donald Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort was convicted on 8 counts of fraud (2018) on this day.
Claude Debussy (1862), George Herriman, American cartoonist (Krazy Kat) (1880), Dorothy Parker (1893), Elisabeth Bergner (1897), Leni Riefenstahl (1902), Deng Xiaoping (1904), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908), Ray Bradbury (1920), Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928), (1961), Diana Sands (1934), Norman Schwarzkopf (1934), E. Annie Proulx (1935), Valerie Harper (1939), Diana Nyad (1949), I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby (1950), Ty Burrell (1967), Rich Lowry (1968), Giada De Laurentiis (1970), Richard Armitage (1971), Kristin Wiig (1973), James Corden (1978) & Steve Kornacki (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Flavius Stilicho (408), Philip VI of France (1350), Richard III of England (1485), John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (1553), Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland (1572), Luca Marenio (1590), Johann Georg II, Elector of Saxony (1680), Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1806), Xianfeng, Manchu emperor of China (1861), Erns II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1893), Michael Collins (1922), Mikhail Fokine (1942), Jacob Bronowski (1974), Juscelino Kubitschek (1976), Sebastian Cabot (1977), Jomo Kenyatta (1978), Huey P. Newton (1989), Diana Vreeland (1989), Colleen Dewhurst (1991) & Mary Louise Smith (1997) died on this day. Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485), failed assassination of Gaspard de Coligny in Paris (1572), George III of England proclaimed the American colonies in open rebellion (1775), Sierra Leone settled by the British as a haven for former slaves (1798), Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt the 1st European to rediscover the Nabataean city of Petra (modern Jordan) (1812), New Mexico annexed by the United States (1848), First Geneva Convention (1864), International Red Cross founded in Geneva (1864), Japan’s annexation of Korea (1910), assassination of Michael Collins (1922), the International Zionist Congress opened in Prague (1933), Adolf Hitler ordered the destruction of Paris (1944), Romania occupied by Soviet troops (1944), coup d’état in Vietnam launched by Ho Chi Minh (1945), Althea Gibson became the first African American to compete in a US Lawn Tennis Association match (1950), Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s return to Tehran (1953), Dwight Eisenhower nominated for re-election at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco (1956), failed assassination attempt on France’s president Charles de Gaulle (1962), Fannie Lou Hamer spoke at the Democratic National Convention about voter registration in Mississippi (1964), protests against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), Bolivia’s president Juan José Torres overthrown in a military coup d’état led by Gen. Hugo Bánzer Suárez (1971), Ronald Reagan nominated for re-election at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco (1984), first complete ring around Neptune (1989), & Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (1910 version) & “Madonna” were stolen at gunpoint from the Munch Museum in Oslo (2004) on this day.
August 22
August 23
Charles Martel (686), Tsar Ivan IV of Russia(1740), Louis XIV of France (1754), Georges Cuvier (1769), Alexander Milne Calder (1846), Gene Kelly (1912), Clifford Geertz (1926), Vera Miles (1929), Barbara Eden (1931), Mark Russell (1932), Pete Wilson (1933), Keith Moon (1946), David Robb (“I, Claudius”)(1947), Shelley Long (1949), Charles Busch (1954), River Phoenix (1970), Kobe Bryant (1978) & Jeremy Lin (1988) were born #OnThisDay. Gnaeus Julius Agricola (93), William Wallace (1305), Olav IV of Norway (1307), George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1628), Rudolph Valentino (1926), Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1927) Oscar Hammerstein II (1960) & Shamu the orca (1971) died on this day. Mount Vesuvius eruption (79), William Wallace executed (1305), levée en masse enacted by France’s National Convention (1793), Prussian victory over France at the Battle of Grossbeeren (1813), Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington rescued by Dolly Madison (1814), British capture of Hong Kong (1839), Treaty of Prague ending the war between Prussia & Austria (1866), Theodor Herzl’s declaration of a Jewish state at the 6th Zionist Congress (1903), Battle of Mons (1914), Japan’s declaration of war on Germany (1914), Tsar Nicholas II’s personal command of the Russian army (1915), Karl Liebknecht sentenced to four years by a military court in Berlin (1916), “Gasoline Alley” cartoon strip premiered in the Chicago Tribune (1919), Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti executed (1927), Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union (1939), “The Big Sleep” directed by Howard Hawks premiered (1946), Lou Reed’s last performance with the Velvet Underground (1970), defection of the Bolshoi Ballet dancer Alexander Godunov (1979), Pete Rose banned from baseball (1989), Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against the US (1996), Hurricane Katrina hit the Bahamas (2005), Natascha Kampusch’s escape from Wolfgang Priklopil after eight years of captivity (2006), hashtag invented by product designer Chris Messina (2007), overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi (2011), Donald Trump nominated for re-election by the Republican National Convention (2020) & Jacob Blake shot by police in Kenosha (2020).
August 24
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou (1113), William Wilberforce (1759), Max Beerbohm (1872), Jorge Luis Borges (1899), Fernand Braudel (1902), Carlo Gambino (1902), Howard Zinn (1922), Yasser Arafat (1933) Kenny Baker (1934) Marsha P. Johnson [born Malcolm Michaels Jr.] (1945), Mike Huckabee (1955), Stephen Fry (1957), Marlee Matlin (1965), Ava DuVernay (1972), Dave Chappelle (1973) & Rupert Grint (1988) were born #OnThisDay. Gaspard de Châtillon, Comte de Coligny (1572), Simone Weil (1943), Getulio Vargas (1954), Henry J. Kaiser (1967), Bayard Rustin (1987), E.G. Marshall [Everett Eugene Grunz] (1998), Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (2004), Richard Attenborough (2014), Walter Scheel (2016) & Robin Leach (2020) were born on this day. Mount Vesuvius eruption (79), Rome overrun by Visigoths under Alaric I for the first time in nearly 800 years (410), 6,000 Jews, blamed for the Plague, killed in Mainz (1349), English victory over Spain at the Battle of Gravelines (1558), St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of Protestants by Roman Catholics in Paris & France (1572), Battle of Málaga: largest naval battle in the War of the Spanish Succession (1704), freedom of speech in France proclaimed by the National Assembly (1789), British troops set fire to the White House (1814), Spanish Viceroy Juan de O’Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba ending the Mexican War of Independence (1821), Captain Matthew Webb became the first man to successfully swim the English Channel without assistance (1875), the motion picture camera patented by Thomas Edison (1891), FBI given the authority to pursue fascists & communists by FDR (1936), Dwight Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act outlawing the Communist Party (1954), Hiram Fong sworn in as 1st Chinese-American senator & Daniel K. Inouye sworn in as 1st Japanese-American U.S. Representative (both from Hawaii) (1959), France became the world’s fifth thermonuclear power with a detonation on Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific (1968), Mark David Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder of John Lennon (1981), Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as head of the Soviet Communist Party (1991), Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union (1991), diplomatic relations established between the People’s Republic of China & the Republic of Korea (South Korea) (1992), Israel & the PLO initialed accord giving autonomy to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank in education, health, taxation, social welfare & tourism (1994), Steve Jobs succeeded by Tim Cook as CEO of Apple Inc. (2011), Scott Morrison became prime minister of Australia after defeating Peter Dutton in a leadership contest, replacing Malcolm Turnbull (2012) Britain’s Prince Andrew denied knowing his friend Jeffrey Epstein was involved in sexual trafficking of underage girls after public accusations made against him (2012) & Anders Behring Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in prison in Norway (2012) on this day.
August 25
Ivan IV [Ivan the Terrible], 1st tsar of Russia (1530), George Stubbs (1724), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744), Ludwig I of Bavaria (1786), Bret Harte (1836), Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845), Võ Nguyên Giáp (1911), Erich Honecker (1912), Walt Kelly (1913), Mel Ferrer (1917), Leonard Bernstein (1918), George Wallace (1919), Monty Hall (1921), Althea Gibson (1927), Sean Connery (1930), Regis Philbin (1931), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1934), José Van Dam (1940), Conrad Black (1944), Gene Simmons [Chaim Witz], (KISS) (1949), Martin Amis (1949), Elvis Costello Declan Patrick McManus, Tim Burton (1958), Billy Ray Cyrus (1961), Blair Underwood (1964), Michael Cohen (Donald Trump’s lawyer) (1966) & Rachael Ray (1968) were born #OnThisDay. Gratian (Flavius Gratianus), emperor of Rome (383), Louis IX (Saint Louis), king of France (1270), Margaret of Anjou (1482), David Hume (1776), James Watt (1819) William Herschel (1822), Michael Faraday (1867), Friedrich Nietzsche (1900), Henri Becquerel (1908), Alfred Kinsey (1956), Truman Capote (1984), Samantha Smith (1985), Lewis Powell, Jr. (1998), Edward [Ted] M. Kennedy (2009), Neil Armstrong (2012) & John McCain (2018) died on this day. Nicene Creed establishing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity adopted by the First Council of Nicaea (325), Havana in modern day Cuba founded by the Spanish Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar (1515), Théodore Géricault’s painting “Raft of the Medusa” exhibited in Paris (1819), Belgian revolt against the Netherlands (1830), “The Great Moon Hoax” published in the “New York Sun” (1835), Captain Matthew Webb made the 1st observed & unassisted swim across the English Channel in 21 hours & 45 minutes (1875), Uruguay declares independence from Brazil (1825), Yellow Cab founded (1910), Guomindang founded in China (1912), Louvain in Belgium burned by German troops (1914), Russia defeated in the Battle of Warsaw (1920), “The Wizard of Oz” opened in US movie theaters (1939), Paris liberated from Nazi occupation (1944), Bruce Springsteen’s landmark third album “Born To Run” released (1975) & Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn (63,000 miles/100,000 km) (1981) on this day.
August 26
Frederick V, Count Palatine & King of Bohemia (1596), Robert Walpole (1676), Antine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743), Albert of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria (1819), Guillaume Apollinaire (1880), Peggy Guggenheim (1898), Rufino Tamayo (1899), Christopher Isherwood (1904), Mother Teresa [Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu] (1910), Ben Bradlee (1921), Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923), Alain Peyrefitte (1925), Geraldine Ferraro (1935), Robert Torricelli (1951), Branford Marsalis (1960), Keith Raniere (Nxivm sex cult leader) (1960), Nancy Martinez (French-Canadian pop-dance singer) (1960), Ola Ray (American model) (1960), Daphne Caruana Galizia (1964), Melissa McCarthy (1970), Macaulay Culkin (1980) & John Mulaney (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Ottokar II, king of Bohemia (1272), Franz Hals (1666), Louis-Philippe, Duke of Chartres, the last King of France (1850), William James (1910), Leonidas ‘Lon’ Chaney (1930), Andrew Mellon (1937), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1958), Charles Lindbergh (1974), Lotte Lehmann (1976), Charles Boyer (1978), Ted Knight [Tadeusz Wladyslaw Konopka] (The Mary Tyler Moore Show”) (1986), Gaston Thorn (2007) & Neil Simon (2018) died on this day. Byzantine army defeated by Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert (1071). Philip VI’s France defeated by Edward III’s English longbows at the Battle of Crécy (1346), conspiracy against Piero di Cosimo de Medici in Florence led by Luca Pitti was discovered (1466), Gustaf Adolf’s Swedish & German forces defeated by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II’s army & Spanish forces at the Battle of Nördlingen (1634) popular uprising against Anne of Austria & Cardinal Mazarin in France (1648), English astronomer Edmond Halley first observed the comet named after him (1682), the National Constituent Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man & of the Citizen at the beginning of the French Revolution (1789), Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah” premiered at the Birmingham Festival in England (1846), first free kindergarten in the U.S. started by Susan Blow in the St. Louis suburb of Carondelet (1873), Battle of Tannenberg (1914), 7,000 Jews are rounded up in Vichy France (1942), victory parade in Paris to celebrate the liberation of France from Nazi German occupation (1944), “An American In Paris” with music by George Gershwin, directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Gene Kelly & Leslie Caron premiered in London (1951), fluoridation of San Francisco water (1952), British Motor Corporation introduced the Morris Mini-Minor designed by Alec Issigonis (1959), LBJ nominated for president at the Democratic national convention in Atlantic City (1964), “Hey Jude” single released by the Beatles in the US (1968), Democratic National Convention in Chicago engulfed by massive anti-Vietnam War protests (1968), Guinea-Bissau became independent of Portugal (1974), Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice became Pope John Paul I (1978), the French government denied knowledge of attack on the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior (1985), Robert Chambers, the ‘Preppie Killer’ murdered Jennifer Levin in New York City’s Central Park & afterwards claimed ‘rough sex’ as the motive (1986), Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law (1996), Russia unilaterally recognized the independence of the former Georgian breakaway republics of Abkhazia & South Ossetia (2008), San Francisco 49ers Colin Kaepernick kneeled in protest during the US national anthem at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium while playing against the San Diego Chargers, objecting to racial injustice and police brutality in the US (2016), Pope Francis asked for forgiveness in a speech on child abuse in Dublin, during first official visit to Ireland since 1979 (2018), & Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in as President of Zimbabwe (2018) on this day.
August 27
Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, governor of the province of Maryland (1637), Ivan V, Tsar of Russia (1666), Baal Shem Tov (founder of Hasidic Judaism) (1698), Michel-Richard Delalande (1739), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770), Hannibal Hamlin (1809), Umberto Giordano (1867), Theodore Dreiser (1871), May Ray (1890), Lyndon B. Johnson (1908), Martha Raye [Margaret Reed] (1916), Joan Kroc [Mansfield] (1928), Mangosuthu Buthelezi (1928), Antonia Fraser (1932), Cesária Évora (1941), Pee-wee Herman [Paul Reubens] (1952), Roger Stone (1952), Kathy Hochul (1958), Cesar Millan (1969), Avil Haines (1969) & Sebastian Kurz (1986) were born #OnThisDay. Josquin Des Prez (1521), Titian [Tiziano Vecelli] (1576), Tomés Luis de Victoria (1611), Lope Félix de Vega Carpio (1635), Francisco Zurbarán (1664), Luis Botha (1919), W.E.B. Du Bois (1963), Le Corbusier [Charles Jeanneret] (1965), Marina, princess of Greece & Denmark & duchess of Kent (1968), Bennett Cerf (1971) Margaret Bourke-White (1971), Haile Selassie [Ras Tafari Makonnen], emperor of Ethiopia (1930-74) (1975), Louis Lord Mountbatten (1979) & Pierre Poujade (2003) died on this day. Greek victory over Persia at the Battle of Plataea & the Battle of Mycale (479 BCE), Baekje kingdom & Yamato Japanese allies defeated by Tang Chinese & Silla Korean forces at the Battle of Baekgang (663), John Dudley Earl of Warwick destroyed Robert Kett’s army at the Battle of Dussindale, ending Kett’s rebellion in Norfolk (1549), Denmark’s Christian IV defeated at the Catholic League at the Battle of Lutter (1626), Treaty of Nerchinsk between Russia & Qing China (1689), Americans defeated by the British at the Battle of Long Island (1776), Jacques Neeker named France’s minister of finance (1788), the “Declaration of Rights of Man & Citizen” issued by France’s National Assembly (1789), Austrians defeated by French forces under Napoleon at the Battle of Dresden (1813), Uruguay’s independence (1828), Sauk leader Black Hawk’s surrender (1832), 40,000 killed by the Krakatoa volcano explosion west of Java (1883), NYC’s Metropolitan Opera House damaged by fire (1892), Zanzibar defeated by British forces in a 38-minute war, the shortest recorded war in history (1896), second day of the Battle of Tannenberg (1914), Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary (1916), Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), Shah of Iran Rezā Shāh Pahlavi’s abdication in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941), “Roman Holiday” starring Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck & Eddie Albert released (1953), Renee Richards barred from competing in the US Tennis Open (1976), 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma assassinated (1979) & Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s regime in Nigeria was overthrown by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (1985) on this day.
August 28
Taichang Emperor [Zhu Changluo], 14th emperor of Ming China (1582), George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592), Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Wife of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich of Russia (1694), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749), Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, 1st American Catholic saint (1774), Umberto Giordano (1867), Karl Böhm (1894), Charles Boyer (1899), Bruno Bettelheim (1903), Richard Tucker [Reuben Ticker] (1913), C. Wright Mills (The Power Elite) (1916), Jack Kirby (1917), Nancy Kulp (1921), Roxie Roker (1929), István Kertész (1929), Ben Gazzara (1930), John Shirley-Quirk (1931), William Cohen, US Secretary of Defense (1940), Paul Peter Plishka (1941), Ai Weiwei (1957), Scott Hamilton (1958), Jack Black (1969) & Sheryl Sandberg (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Frankish king Louis the German (876), Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle (1550), Albert Frederick, Duke of Prussia (1618), Hugo de Grotius (1645), Axel Gustafson Oxenstierna (1654), Junípero Serra (1784), Frederick Law Olmsted (1903), Emmett Till (1955), Charles Darrow (1967), Ruth Gordon (1985) & Chadwick Boseman (2020) died on this day. Orestes, father of Emperor Romulus Augustulus, captured & executed by Odoacer & his followers (476), Ferdinand II elected Holy Roman Emperor (1619), William Herschel discovered Saturn’s moon Enceladus (1789), Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act given royal assent (1833), Venice under Daniele Manin surrendered to Austrians under Radetsky (1849), Richard Wagner’s opera “Lohengrin” premieres at Weimar (1850), Zulu King Cetshwayo captured by the British (1879), third day of Battle of Tannenberg (1914), Germans defeated by the British at the Battle of Helgoland (1914), Germany declared war on Romania & Italy declared war against Germany (1916), Woodrow Wilson picketed by women suffragists (1917), Mauthausen concentration camp opened in Austria (1938), general strike against Nazi Germany’s occupation of Denmark (1943), Chicago teenager Emmett Till kidnapped & murdered in Mississippi (1955), Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech addressing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedo (1963), Democratic National Convention in Chicago engulfed in antiwar protests (1968), the first Gay Games held in San Francisco (1982), Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced his resignation (1983), first LGBT pride parade in Japan (1994), divorce of the Prince & Princess of Wales (1996), Greta Thunberg arrived in New York after sailing across the Atlantic in an emissions-free voyage (2019), British prime minister Boris Johnson prorogued parliament (2019) &US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand ended her campaign for president (2019) on this day.
August 29
Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619), John Locke (1632), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780), Maurice Maeterlinck (1862), Ingrid Bergman (1915), Isabel Sanford (1917), Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker (1920), Richard Attenborough (1923), Marmaduke Hussey (1923), Dinah Washington (1924), Charles Gray (1928), John McCain (1936), James Florio (1937) (Elliott Gould (1938), Robert Rubin (1938), Robin Leach (1941), Michael Jackson (1958) & Neil Gorsuch (1967) were born #OnThisDay. John the Baptist (29), Charles Napier (1853), Brigham Young (1877), Éamon de Valera (1975), Ingrid Berman (1982), Lee Marvin (1987), Pierre Messmer (2007) & Gene Wilder (2016). Hungarians decisively defeated by Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent at the Battle of Mohács (1526), Atahuallpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, strangled by Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish Conquistadors (1533), Seven Years’ War (1756), Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts (1786), 1st Factory Act enacted by the British parliament (1833), Treaty of Nanjing ending the Opium War in China (1842), 2nd Battle of Bull Run in Manassas (1862), Japan’s system of prefectures created by the Emperor Meiji (1871), seismic sea waves created by Krakatoa eruption created a rise in English Channel 32 hrs after explosion (1883), Count Witte dismissed as Russia’s finance minister by Tsar Nicholas II (1903), Japan changed Korea’s name to Chōsen (1910), 4th day of the Battle of Tannenberg (1914), Hubert Humphrey nominated for president at the Democratic national convention in Chicago (1968), a Native American group occupied Mount Rushmore to protest the broken Treaty of Fort Laramie (1970), the house of the Ray brothers — three HIV-positive Florida boys — burned down in what was almost certainly a case of arson (1987), Hurricane Katrina made its 2nd & 3rd landfall as a category 3 hurricane (2005), Germany handed back human remains of Namibian Herero & Nama people murdered during 1904-08 genocide at church service in Berlin (2018), scientists announced that there is no single ‘gay’ gene with genetics accounting for at most 25% of same-sex behavior in a study published in “Science” (2019) on this day.
August 30
Peter the Cruel, king of Castile & Leon (1334), Jacques-Louis David (1748), Mary Shelley (1797), George Frederick Root, American songwriter (The Battle Cry of Freedom) (1820), Huey Long (1893), Shirley Booth (1898), John Gunther (1901), Roy Wilkins (1901), [Rose] Joan Blondell (1906), Fred MacMurray (1908), Denis Healey (1917), Regina Resnik (1922), Laurent de Brunhoff (1925), Geoffrey Beene (1927), Bill Daily (1927), Warren Buffett (1930), Robert Crumb (cartoonist, Fritz the Cat) (1943), Molly Ivins (1944), Timothy Bottoms (1951), Ron George (1954), David Paymer (1954), Alexander Lukashenko, 1st & only president of Belarus (1954), Anna Politkovskaya (1958), Cameron Diaz (1972) & Lisa Ling (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Louis XI, king of France (1483), Max Factor (1938), Guy Burgess (1963), Charles Bronson (2003), Seamus Heaney (2013), Lotfollah ‘Lotfi’ Mansouri (2013), Oliver Sacks (2015) & Valerie Harper (2019), died on this day. Battle of Lake Poyang (1363), Battle of Groß Jägersdorf (1757), Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas (1862), Benjamin Harrison signed into law the first federal statute requiring inspection of meat products (1890), Battle of Tannenberg in East Prussia (1914), Nazi-Germany annexed Luxembourg (1942) & Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first African American US Supreme Court justice (1967) on this day.
August 31
Caligula [Gaius Caesar], 3rd Roman Emperor (37-41 AD) (12), Commodus, Roman Emperor (180-192 AD) (161), Théophile Gautier (1811), Amilcare Ponchielli (1834), Maria Montessori (1870), Wilhelmina, queen of the Netherlands (1880), DuBose Heyward (1885), Fredric March (1897), Alan Jay Lerner (1918), Barnyard Dawg [George P Dog], Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Robert McKimson (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series), debuted in “Walky Talky Hawky” (1942), Itzhak Perlman (1945), Richard Gere (1949), Marcia Clark [Kleks], LA DA (O.J. Simpson Case) (1953), Tsai Ing-wen, 7th President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) (1956), Mohammed bin Salman & Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Theodora, Byzantine empress (1056), Henry V of England (1422), Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1867), Mathilde Wesendonk (1902), Georges Braque (1963), Henry Moore (1986), Urho Kekkonen, 8th president of Finland (1986), Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales (1997), Dodi Fayed (1997) & Ike Pappas (2008) died on this day. Henry VI became King of England at the age of 9 months (1422), Jack the Ripper’s first victim murdered (1888), Britain & Russia signed treaty with Afghanistan, Persia & Tibet (1907), Britain, Russia & France formed the Triple Entente (1907), Theodore Roosevelt gave his ‘square deal’ speech in Kansas (1910), the Sullivan Act requiring licenses for concealable firearms in effect in New York (1911), Sun Yat-sen elected commander-in-chief in China (1917), anthropologist Margaret Mead’s arrival in Samoa (1925), Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weil’s “The Threepenny Opera ” premiered in Berlin (1928), Neutrality Act signed into law by FDR (1935), Foghorn Leghorn, Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Robert McKimson & Warren Foster, (Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies series), debuted in “Walky Talky Hawky” (1946), Federation of Malaya’s independence (1957), “The Battle of Algiers”, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, starring Jean Martin, Saadi Yacef, premiered at the Vienna International Film Festival (1966), Polish government’s accord with Gdansk shipyard workers (1980), Uzbekistan declared independence from the Soviet Union following the failed coup in Moscow (1991), Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in a road tunnel in Paris (1997), Edvard Munch’s famous painting “The Scream” recovered from a raid by Norwegian police after having been stolen on 8.22.04 (2006) & Dilma Rousseff was impeached, convicted & removed as president by the Brazilian Senate (2016) on this day.LikeCommentShare
September 1
Edward Alleyn, English actor & founder of Dulwich College (1566), Johann Pachelbel (1653), Emmanuel Schikaneder (1751), Mark Hopkins (1813), Engelbert Humperdinck (1854), Roger David Casement (1864), Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875), Walter Reuther (1907), Melvin Laird (1922), Yvonne De Carlo (1922), Cecil Parkinson (1931), Cecil Parkinson (1933), Conway Twitty [Harold Jenkins] (1933), Ann Richards (1933), Seiji Ozawa (1935), Alan Dershowitz (1938), Lily Tomlin (1939), Leonard Slatkin (1944), Barry Gibb (1946), Roh Mooy-hyun (1946), Dr. Phil McGraw (1950), Gloria Estefan [Fajardo] (1957) & Padma Lakshmi (1970) were born #OnThisDay. Jacques Cartier (1557), Louis XIV (1715), William Clark (1838), Lillian Wald (1940), Siegfried Sassoon (1967), Ethel Waters (1977), Albert Speer (1981), Clifford Curzon (1982), Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson (1983) & A. Bartlett Giamatti (1989) died on this day. Königsberg (modern day Kaliningrad) founded by Teutonic Knights & named in honor of the Bohemian King Ottokar II (1255), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 6th string quartet opus 10 published in Vienna (1785), Chechen separatist rebels enters a school in southern Russia (1807), Jenny Lind brought to New York by P.T. Barnum (1850), Atlanta fell to Union forces (1864), Napoleon III captured at Sedan (1870), Cetshwayo succeeded his father Mpande as king of the Zulu nation (1873), St. Petersburg’s name changed to Petrograd (1914), Battle of Megiddo (1918), Benito Mussolini canceled the civil rights of Italian Jews (1938), Adolf Hitler ordered the extermination of mentally ill through the T4 Euthanasia Program (1939), World War II began with Germany’s invasion of Poland (1939), Jews living in Germany required to wear a yellow Star of David (1941), a 1942 US Federal judge upheld the detention of Japanese-Americans (1942), Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion ordered the establishment of Israeli secret service Mossad (1951), “Rear Window” directed by Alfred Hitchcock & starring James Stewart & Grace Kelly released (1954), language laws in Belgium went into effect causing a riot (1963), Charles de Gaulle of France denounced US policy in Vietnam & urged the US to pull its troops out of Southeast Asia (1966), Col. Muammar Gaddafi deposed King Idris in the Libyan revolution (1969), failed assassination attempt on Jordanian king Hussain (1970), Bobby Fischer beats Russian champion Boris Spassky, becoming the first American to win the title of chess grandmaster(1972), last broadcast of “Columbo” starring Peter Falk on NBC (1978), a Korean Boeing 747 (flight 007) strayed into Siberia & was shot down by a Soviet jet (1983), “What’s Love Got to Do With It” single topped the charts, giving Tina Turner her 1st No. 1 as a solo artist (1984), wreck of the Titanic found (1985), Princess Anne & Mark Phillips announced their separation (1989), “Roger and Me”, the first documentary directed by Michael Moore, premiered at the Telluride Film Festival (1989), Chechen separatist rebels stormed a school in southern Russia (2004), Aretha Franklin’s funeral held in Detroit (2018) on this day.
September 2
Louis Bonaparte, King of the Netherlands (1778), Liliuokalani [Lydia Kamakaʻeha], last queen of Hawaii (1891-93) (1838), Yang Hsiu-ch’ing, commander-in-chief of the Taiping Rebellion (1856), Hiram Johnson, governor of California (1866), Martha Mitchell [nee Beall], wife of Attorney General John Mitchell (1918), Daniel Arap Moi, president of Kenya (1924), Mathieu Kérékou, dictator president of Benin (1933), Derek Fowlds (1937), Christa McAuliffe (1948), Linda Purl (1955), Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil (1959), Keanu Reeves (1964) & Salma Hayek (1966) were born #OnThisDay. Pheidippides (490 BCE), Henri Rousseau (1910), Ho Chi Minh [Nguyễn Sinh Cung] (1969), J.R.R. Tolkien (1973), Ljuba Welitsch (1996), Rudolf Bing (1997), Christiaan Barnard (2001), Troy Donahue (2001), Bob Denver (2005) & Alan Kurdi (2015) died on this day. Octavian’s forces defeated those of Mark Antony & Cleopatra off the western coast of Greece at the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), the Great Fire of London began at 2 a.m. in Pudding Lane (1666), Habsburg armies took Buda from Turks (1686), September Massacres of the French Revolution in Paris (1792), Union General William T. Sherman captured & burned Atlanta (1864), 2nd & final day of the Battle of Sedan (1870), Lord Kitchener led British forces to victory at the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan (1898), Theodore Roosevelt advised “Speak softly & carry a big stick” (1901), Reichspräesident Friedrich Ebert declared “Deutschland Über Alles” the German national anthem (1922), Holocaust diarist Anne Frank sent to Auschwitz concentration camp (1944), Japan’s surrender ended World War II (V-J Day) (1945), Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent from France (National Day) (1945), “The Third Man” — directed by Carol Reed & starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli & Orson Welles — released in the United Kingdom (1949), Democracy Day — the first election of the parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration in the history of Tibet (1960), CBS expanded the “CBS Evening News” program anchored by Walter Conkrite from 15 to 30 minutes (1963), Gerald Ford signed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) into law (1974) & 64-year-old Diana Nyad became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage for protection (2013).
September 3
Diane de Poitiers, maîtresse-en-titre of Henry II of France (1499), Pietro Locatelli (1695), Eugène de Beauharnais, stepson of Napoleon I (1781), Louis Sullivan (1856), Jean Jaurès (L’Humanité), 1859, Ferdinand Porsche (1875), Kitty Carlisle (1910), Alan Ladd (1913), Dixy Lee Ray (1914), Thurston Dart (1921), Gaston Thorn (1928), Whitey Bulger (1929), Mario Draghi (1947), Charlie Sheen [Carlos Estévez] (1965) & Noah Baumbach (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1402), Oliver Cromwell (1658), Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie, Princesse de Lamballe (1792), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1820), Adolphe Thiers (1877), Ivan Turgenev (1883), E. E. Cummings (1962), Vince Lombardi (1970), Frank Capra (1991), Pauline Kael (2001), W. Clement Stone (2002), William Rehnquist (Chief Justice of the United States) (2005), Sun Myung Moon (2012) & Adrian Cadbury (2015) died on this day. San Marino founded by St. Marinus (301), Richard the Lionheart crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey in London (1189), Cardinal Beaton replaced the Earl of Arran as regent for Mary, Queen of Scots (1543), Oliver Cromwell’s New Model army destroyed English royalist force of mainly Scots in the last battle of English Civil War at the Battle of Worcester (1651), Richard Cromwell (‘Tumbledown Dick’) succeeded his father as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth (1658), Treaty of Paris signed in Paris ending the American Revolutionary War (1783), France’s first constitution declaring France a constitutional monarchy adopted by the National Assembly (1791), rebellious slaves set fire to Paramaribo in Suriname (1832), Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery disguised as a sailor (1838), 700 soldiers under Gen. William S. Harney avenged the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village, killing 100 men, women & children in Nebraska (1855), Confederate forces enter Kentucky (1861), Battle of Verdun (1916), Woodrow Wilson began a campaign to promote the League of Nations (1919), Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa & Canada declared war on Germany following its invasion of Poland (1939), Nazi sympathizer Unity Mitford attempted suicide after Britain declared war on Germany (the bullet lodged in her brain eventually killed her in 1948) (1939), Allied invasion of Italy began (1943), Holocaust diarist Anne Frank sent to Auschwitz concentration camp (1944), Espionage & Sabotage Act of 1954 signed into law by Dwight Eisenhower (1954), Wilderness Act signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson (1964), Swedes began driving on the right-hand side of the road (Dagen H) (1967), Nixon’s operatives broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s doctor’s office (1971), over 300 people killed in a Chechen terrorist siege of a school (2004), the first public caning & conviction of a lesbian couple attempting to have sex by the Sharia High Court in Malaysia’s Terengganu state (2018), Walmart announced it would stop selling handguns & some ammunition & ask customers not to openly carry firearms in response to the El Paso shootings (2019) & MacKenzie Scott (philanthropist & ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) became the world’s richest woman worth $68 billion (2020) on this day.
September 4
Wanli, Ming emperor of China (1563), Count Axel von Fersen (1755), Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, King of Netherlands (1806-10) (1778), Sarah Childress Polk (1803), Anton Bruckner (1824), Daniel Burnham (1846), Lewis Howard Latimer (1848), Darius Milhaud (1892), Mary Renault [Challans] (1905), Henry Ford II (1917), Paul Harvey (1918), Dick York (“Bewitched”) (1928), Thomas Eagleton (1929), Mitzi Gaynor [Francesca von Gerber] (1931), Carlos Romero Barceló (1932), René Pape (1964), Anthony Weiner (1964) & Beyoncé Knowles (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Tughril (1063), Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1588), Edvard Grieg (1907), Robert Schuman (1963), Albert Schweitzer (1965), Georges Simenon (1989), Irene Dunne (1990), Steve Irwin (2006), Astrid Varnay (2006), Joan Rivers (2014) & Bill Daily died on this day. Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor, abdicated after forces led by Odoacer invaded Rome, marking the traditional end of the Western Roman Empire (476), Henry Hudson became the first European to see the island of Manhattan & sail into New York harbor (1609), the Third French Republic proclaimed after the overthrow of Emperor Napoleon III in France (1870), Apache Chief Geronimo surrendered, ending armed resistance to the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Native Americans in the US (1886), “Swing Time” — directed by George Stevens & starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers — released (1936), German invasion of Danzig (Gdansk) (1939), Netherlands & Belgium declared their neutrality (1939), Wilhelmina’s abdication as queen of the Netherlands after 58 years, the longest reign of any Dutch monarch (1948), “Beetle Bailey” comic strip debuted in twelve newspapers (1950), Little Rock’s Central High School desegregation blocked by Gov. Orval Faubus (1957), Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova defected to the West while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in London & was granted political asylum (1970) & Marxist Salvador Allende won a narrow plurality of votes in Chile’s presidential election (1970) on this day.
September 5
Louis XIV of France (1638), Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, mistress to King Charles II of England (1649), Johann Christian Bach (English Bach) (1735), Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791), Jesse James (1847), Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867), Joseph Szigeti (1892), John Cage (1912), Jack Valenti (1921), Arthur C. Nielsen (1923), Paul Volcker (1927), Bob Newhart (1929), Carol Lawrence (1934), Werner Erhard (1935), John Danforth (1936), Raquel Welch (1940), Werner Herzog (1942), Freddie Mercury [Farrokh Bulsara] (1946), Cathy Guisewite (1950), Michael Keaton (1951), Rose McGowan (1973) & Pierre Casiraghi (1987) were born #OnThisDay. Catharine Parr (1548), Suleiman the Magnificent (1566), Pieter Brueghel (1569), Bernardo Tasso (1569), Pomponne de Bellièvre (1607), Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1683), Auguste Comte (1857), Crazy Horse [Tashunka Witko] (1877), Charles Péguy (1914), Sir Georg Solti [György Stern] (1997), Mother Teresa [Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu] (1997), Heywood Hale Broun (2001) & Phyllis Schlafly (2016) died on this day. Hernán Cortés defeated the Tlascala Aztecs at the Second Battle of Tehuacingo in Mexico (1519), Battle of Nordlingen (1634), Frances’ Superintendent of Finances Nicolas Fouquet arrested on the orders of Louis XIV (1661), the Great Fire of London ended, leaving 13,200 houses destroyed & 8 dead (1666), Russian Tsar Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards (1698), Philadelphia designated the first capital of the United States by the Continental Congress (1774), a French fleet of 24 ships under the Comte de Grasse defeated British forces under Admiral Graves at the Battle of the Chesapeake [Battle of the Virginia Capes] & trapped Gen. Cornwallis (1781), la Terreur (the Terror) initiated during the French Revolution (1793), at the Battle of Masurische Meren, Russian troops defeated by Prussians & driven out of East Prussia (1814), Sam Houston elected President of the Republic of Texas (1836), First Opium War began in China (1839), Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson in Nebraska (1887), German Christine Hardt patented the first modern brassiere (1889), the Treaty of Portsmouth & signed concluding the Russo-Japanese War (1905), Tsar Nicholas II assumed personal command of his nation’s military forces (1915), FDR declared US neutrality at start of World War II in Europe (1939), “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac published by Viking Press in New York (1957), “Doctor Zhivago” novel by Boris Pasternak published in the US (1958), Léopold Sédar Senghor elected as the first President of Senegal (1960), Lt. William Calley charged for the My Lai massacre (1969), the first assassination attempt on US President Gerald Ford by Lynette Fromme in Sacramento (1975), Jim Henson’s “The Muppet Show” premiered on television with Mia Farrow as the guest star (1976), Hurricane Irma became the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin region (2017), Togo’s government shut down the internet for a week to quell government opposition (2017), Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond, became the first woman president of the British Supreme Court (2017) & British prime minister Theresa May confirmed in parliament that two Russian military intelligence officers undertook novichok nerve agent attack (2018) on this day.
September 6
Guillaume Dubois (1565), Moses Mendelssohn (1729), Marquis de Lafayette (1757), Anton Diabelli (1781), Jane Addams (1860), Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (1888), Franz Josef Strauss (1915), Roger Waters (1943), Swoosie Kurtz (1944), Jane Curtin (1947), Carly Fiorina (1954), Bill Ritter (1956), Elizabeth Vargas (1962), Chris Christie (1962), Geert Wilders (1963) & Rosie Perez (1964) were born #OnThisDay. Gertrude Lawrence (1952), Hendrik Verwoerd (1966), Margaret Sanger (1966), Akira Kurosawa (1998), Luciano Pavarotti (2007), Burt Reynolds (2018), Claudio Scimone (2019) & Robert Mugabe (2019) died on this day. Ferdinand Magellan’s Spanish expedition aboard the Vitoria returned to Spain without their captain, the first to circumnavigate the earth (1522), the Battle at Nördlingen ended in Swedish/Protestant German defeat (1634), Charles II of England spent a day hiding in an oak tree during his escape after losing the Battle of Worcester (1651), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “La Clemenza di Tito” premiered in Prague (1791), William McKinley shot by Leon Czolgosz while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in New York (1901), First Battle of the Marne (1914), Jews over age 6 ordered to wear a star in Germany (1941), Juliana crowned queen of The Netherlands (1948), “La Strada” directed by Federico Fellini premiered at the Venice Film Festival (1954), South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd stabbed to death (1966), “Amadeus” (based on the play by Peter Shaffer) film directed by Milos Forman premiered in Los Angeles (1984), Leningrad renamed Saint Petersburg (1991), funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales held at Westminster Abbey in London (1997), “The King’s Speech” directed by Tom Hooper starring Colin Firth & Geoffrey Rush premiered at the Telluride Film Festival (2010), Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president (2012), Catalonia’s parliament enacted law to allow referendum on independence from Spain (2017) on this day.
September 7
Elizabeth Tudor (1533), Grandma Moses [Anna Mary Robertson] (1860), John Pierpont Morgan, Jr. (1867), Edith Sitwell (1887), Elia Kazan (1909), Peter Lawford (1923), Daniel K. Inouye (1924), John Paul Getty, Jr. (1932), Buddy Holly [Charles Holley] (1936), Gloria Gaynor [Fowles] (1943), Peggy Noonan (1950), Julie Kavner (1950), Michael Feinstein (1956), Jean-Yves Thibaudet (1961), Leslie Jones (1967) & Rudy Galindo (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou (1151), Edward Grey, Viscount of Fallodon (1933), José Clemente Orozco (1949), Everett McKinley Dirksen (1969), KeithMoon (1978), A.J.P. Taylor (1990), Eric John Crozier (1994) & Mobutu Sese Seko (1997) died on this day. A Roman army under General Titus occupied & plundered Jerusalem (70), Flemish pretender Perkin Warbeck acclaimed as English King Richard IV on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall (1497), Treaty of Baden between the Holy Roman Empire & France ending the War of the Spanish Succession (1714), 70,000 killed in the Battle of Borodino (1812), political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) began popularizing the image of Uncle Sam (1813), Pedro I, son of King Joao VI declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal (National Day) (1822), Atlanta evacuated (1864), Peace of Peking ended the Boxer Rebellion in China (1901), first day of the Luftwaffe’s London Blitz (1940), Jimmy Carter & Panama’s General Omar Torrijos signed the Panama Canal treaties (1977), Desmond Tutu became Anglican archbishop of Cape Town (1986) & China’s Xi Jinping announced plans to develop a new ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ (2013) on this day.
September 8
Richard I [Richard the Lion Hearted], king of England (1189-99) (1157), Ludovico Ariosto (Orlando Furioso) (1474), Nicolas de Grigny (1672), Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie, Princesse de Lamballe (1749), August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767), August Wilhelm Schlegel (1778), Eduard Friedrich Mörike (1804), Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828), Frederic Mistral (1830), Antonín Dvořák (1841), Gojong, king & emperor (Gwangmu) of Korea (1852), Siegfried Sassoon (1886), Robert A. Taft (1889), Claude Pepper (1900), Hendrik Verwoerd (1901), Jean-Louis Barrault (1910), Lyndon LaRouche (1922), Sid Caesar (1922), Peter Sellers (1925), Christoph von Dohnányi (1929), Patsy Cline [Virginia Henlsey] (1932), Peter Maxwell Davies (1934), Sam Nunn (1938), Bernie Sanders (1941), David Carr (1956), Stefano Casiraghi (1960), David Arquette (1971), Martin Freeman (1971), Lachlan Murdoch (1971) & Pink [Alecia Beth Moore] (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Amy Robsart (1560), George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon (1603), Carlo Gesauldo (1613), John Coke (1645), Richard Strauss (1949), Dorothy Dandridge (1965), Samuel Joel ‘Zero’ Mostel (1977), Jean Piaget (1980), Roy Wilkins (1981), Leni Riefenstahl (2003), Frank Middlemass (2006), Magda Olivero (2014) & the Lady Chablis [Benjamin Knox] (2016) died on this day. The Statute of Kalisz guaranteeing Jews safety & personal liberties promulgated by Boleslaus the Pious, Duke of Greater Poland (1264), Stefan Dušan declared himself king of Serbia (1331), Battle of Kulikovo (1380), Battle of Tumu Fortress (1449), Michelangelo’s statue of David unveiled in Florence (1504), China & Russia signed Treaty of Nertsjinsk (Nierchul) (1689), William IV crowned king of England (1831), British and French troops captured Sevastopol from the Russians, effectively ending the Crimean War (1855), Margaret Gorman the first Miss America crowned in Atlantic City (1921), Sen. Huey Long shot in the Louisiana state capitol building (1935),the siege of Leningrad began (1941), Gen. Dwight Eisenhower announced the surrender of Italy to the Allies (1943), Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Old Man & the Sea” published (1952), the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) formed (1954), Althea Gibson became the first African American to win the US Open (1957), Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Psycho” starring Anthony Perkins & Janet Leigh released throughout the US (1960), “Star Trek” premiered on NBC (1966), “That Girl” starring Marlo Thomas premiered on ABC (1966), Uganda abolished traditional tribal kingdoms, becoming a republic (1967), John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts opened in Washington, D.C. (1971), Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon of all federal crimes (1974), Guinea-Bissau declared independence from Portugal (1975), “The Oprah Winfrey Show” first broadcast nationally (1986), “The Joy Luck Club” — the first major studio movie with an all Asian American (mostly female) cast — premiered (1993), “The Rachel Maddow Show” hosted by Rachel Maddow” & based on her radio show premiered on MSNBC (2008), Stephen Colbert debuted as the new host of CBS’s “The Late Show” (2015), two ex-Myanmar soldiers testified they were ordered to rape and kill Muslim Rohingya villagers — the first public confession of army-directed crimes against Rohingya (2020) & the Moria refugee camp — Europe’s biggest migrant camp — burned down on the Greek island of Lesbos, leaving 13,000 without shelter (2020) on this day.
September 9
Aurelian, Roman Emperor (270-275), Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583), Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu (1585), William Bligh (1754), Leo Tolstoy [Lev Nikolayevich] (1828), Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855), Alf Landon (1887), Colonel Harland Sanders (1890), [Chaim] Topol (1935), Otis Redding (1941), Christopher Francis Palmer (1946), Hugh Grant (1960), Mario Batali (1960), Adam Sandler (1966), Michael Bublé (1975) & Michelle Williams (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Olaf Tryggvason of Norway (1000), William the Conqueror (1087), James IV of Scotland (1513), Stéphane Mallarmé (1898), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1901), Roger Fry (1934), Jussi Björling (1960), Mao Zedong (1976), Jacques Lacan (1981), Helen O’Connell (1993), Burgess Meredith (1997), Edward Teller (2003) & Shere Hite [Shirley Diana Gregory] died on this day. King Olaf of Norway leapt from the Long Serpent to his death in the Battle of Svolder on the Baltic Sea (1000), James IV of Scotland defeated by an English army at the Battle of Flodden Fields (1513), Mary Stuart at nine months old crowned Queen of Scots in the Scottish town of Stirling (1543), a meeting of theologians convened by Catherine de’ Medici at the Conference of Poissy (1561), Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Nature” published (1836), California admitted as the thirty-first state of the Union (1850), Luxembourg’s independence (1867), Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary & Artistic Works finalized (1886), Easter Island/Rapa Nui annexed by Chile (1888), Captain Alfred Dreyfus sentenced based on false testimony (1899), the National Broadcasting Company created by the Radio Corporation of America (1926), Luxembourg liberated by Allied forces (1944), the Red Army supported a coup in Bulgaria instituting new Communist government (1946-1990) during the ‘National Uprising’ (1944), Uganda declared its independence from Britain (1967) Ronald Reagan ordered sanctions against apartheid South Africa (1985), Israel & the Palestine Liberation Organization exchanged letters of mutual recognition (1993), a court in the Philippines ordered Imelda Marcos to repay the government almost $280,000 for funds taken from the National Food Authority by Ferdinand Marcos in 1983 (2010), Erna Solberg elected prime minister of Norway (2013), Elizabeth II surpassed her great-great-grandmother Victoria’s record as the longest-reigning monarch in British history at 63 years & seven months (2015) CBS chief Les Moonves resigned after six more women make allegations of sexual abuse in “The New Yorker” (2018) & the global death toll from COVID-19 passed 900,000 with the US the most deaths at 190,589 (2020) on this day.
September 10
Pope Julius II [Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte] (1550-55) (1487), Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia (1550), Maria Theresa of Spain, wife of Louis XIV & queen of France (1638), Henry Purcell (1659), Charles Peirce (1839), Elsa Schiaparelli (1890), Georges Bataille (1897), Gwen Watford (1927), Arnold Palmer (1929), Karl Lagerfeld (1933), Charles Kuralt (1934), Stephen Jay Gould (1941), Thomas Allen (1944), José Feliciano (1945), Margaret Trudeau (1948), Chris Columbus (1958), Colin Firth (1960), Alison Bechdel (1960), John Sununu (1964), Jack Ma (1964), Guy Ritchie (1968) & Misty Copeland (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Qin Shi Huang Di (210 BCE), Empress Matilda (Maud) )1167), Jean Sans Peur (John the Fearless) (duke of Burgundy (1419), Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France & wife of Charles I & queen of England (1669), Mary Wollstonecraft (1797), Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1851), Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, and wife of Franz Josef (1898), Harold Gillies (1960), Yves Montand [Ivo Livi] (1991), Alfredo Kraus (1999), Jane Wyman (2007) & Diana Rigg (2020) died on this day. English victory over Scottish forces at the Battle of Pinkie in Midlothian (1547), US victory over a squadron of British warships at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812 (1813), Hector Berlioz’s opera “Benvenuto Cellini” premiered in Paris (1838), Georges Bizet’s opera “Les Pêcheurs de Perles” premiered in Paris (1863), first drunk driving arrest (1897), Empress Elisabeth of Austria assassinated by anarchist Luigi Lucheni (1898), Canada’s prime minister Mackenzie King declared war on Germany (1939), Buckingham Palace hit by a German bomb (1940), Vidkun Quisling sentenced to death for collaborating with Nazis (1945), “Gunsmoke” premiered on CBS (1955), Portugal recognized the independence of Republic of Guinea-Bissau (1974), last guillotine execution in France (1977), Picasso’s “Guernica” returned to Spain (1981), Pope John Paul II consecrated the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro (Côte d’Ivoire) (1990), Senate Committee hearings on the Clarence Thomas nomination began (1991) on this day.
September 11
Pierre de Ronsard (1523), Johan Georg, Elector of Brandenburg (1571-91) (1525), Mungo Park (1771), Eduard Hanslick (1825), O. Henry [William Sydney Porter] (1862), D. H. Lawrence (1885), Alice Tully (1902), Theodor Adorno (1903), Anne Seymour (1909), Ferdinand Marcos (1917), Charles Evers (1922), Daniel Akaka (1924), Reubin Askew (1928), Sonny [Herbert Leon] Callahan (1932), Bob Packwood (1932), Theodore Olson (1940), Bashar al-Assad (1965), Harry Connick Jr. (1967), Maria Bartiromo (1967), Taraji P. Henson (1970), Markos Moulitsas (1971) & Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (1982) were born #OnThisDay. François Couperin (1773), David Ricardo (1823), Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1948), Nikita Khrushchev (1971), Salvador Allende (1973), Erich Leinsdorf (1993), Jessica Tandy (1994), Todd Beamer (2001), Mark Bingham (2001), Father Mychal F. Judge (2001), John Ritter (2003), Alexis Arquette (2016), Peter Hall (2017) & Fenella Fielding (2018), died on this day. Roman troops defeated by Germans at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9), Scottish rebel forces under William Wallace defeated an English army at the Battle at Stirling Bridge (1297), Oliver Cromwell killed 3,000 royalists in the Massacre of Drogheda (1649), forces under Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Zenta (1697), Charles XII of Sweden stopped his march to conquer Moscow outside Smolensk, marking the turning point in the Great Northern War (1708), British, Austrian & Dutch forces defeated a French army at the Battle at Malplaquet during War of the Spanish Succession (1709), French & Spanish troops under the Duke of Berwick occupied Barcelona (1714), Maria Theresa addressed the Hungarian parliament (1741), Benjamin Franklin wrote, “There never was a good war or bad peace” (1773), Alexander Hamilton appointed 1st Secretary of the US Treasury (1789), the French Blue gem (later the Hope Diamond) stolen with other French crown jewels from Royal storehouse in Paris during Reign of Terror (1792), US Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough destroys a British squadron in the Battle of Plattsburg on Lake Champlain (1814), opera singer Jenny Lind (‘the Swedish Nightingale’) gave her first US concert in New York City, promoted by P.T. Barnum (1850), a group of African Americans & white abolitionists skirmished with a Maryland posse in the Christiana Riot in Pennsylvania (1851), 120 emigrants murdered by Mormons in the Mountain Meadows Massacre (1857), the Jewish Colonization Association established by Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1891), the Mahatma Gandhi coined the term ‘Satyagraha’ to characterize the non-violence movement in South Africa (1906), the British mandate in Palestine began (1922), Buckingham Palace damaged by German bombs (1940), Adolf Hitler began operation Seelöwe (Sealion), the aborted invasion England (1940), Hideki Tojo attempted suicide (1945), Igor Stravinsky’s opera “The Rake’s Progress” (with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman) premiered at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice (1951), West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed a reparation pact for the Jewish people (1952), Chile’s president Salvador Allended was murdered in a violent military coup d’état led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet & supported by the CIA at Nixon & Kissinger’s instigation (1973), the Battle of Brandywine began (1777), the World Trade Center’s two towers in New York City brought down by al-Qaeda (2001), a plane hijacked by al-Qaeda hit the Pentagon (2001), resistance by the passengers & crew of United Airlines Flight 93 to al-Qaeda hijackers led to its crashing in a field in Pennsylvania (2001), Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip (2005), the US consulate in Benghazi stormed, looted & burned down, killing five people, including the US ambassador to Libya (2012), one million marched in Barcelona in support of independence for Catalonia (2017) & Erna Solberg led a right-wing coalition to victory in Norway’s general election (2017) on this day.
September 12
François I of France (1494), Henry Hudson (1575), H.L.Mencken (1880), Maurice Chevalier (1888), Alfred Knopf (1892), Irene Jliot-Curie (1897), Juscelino Kubitschek (1902), Jesse Owens 91913), Sir Ian Holm (1931), Tatiana Troyanos (1938), Henry Waxman (1939), Michael Ondaatje (1943), Luis Lima (1948), Sam Brownback (1956, Leslie Cheung (1956), Louis C.K. [Louis Székely] (1967), Tarana Burke (1973), Yao Ming (1980) & Jennifer Hudson (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Blanche of Lancaster (1369), Cinq Mars (1642), Johann Georg III, Elector of Saxony (1691), Jean-Philippe Rameau (1764), Steven Biko (1977), Anthony Perkins (1992), Raymond Burr (1993), Johnny Cash (2003), Ian Paisley (2014) & Edith Windsor [née Schlain] (2017) died on this day. Athenian victory over the Persian army at the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE), Charles V abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor in favor of his brother Ferdinand I (1556), Habsburg victory over the Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Vienna (1683), Stanislaw Lesczynski elected king of Poland (1733), Giacomo Casanova sentenced to five years in prison in Venice (1755), court martial trial for the participants in the mutiny on the Bounty (1792), Greek War of Independence ended after 8 years & 6 months (1829), Switzerland’s federal system established (1848), Leopold II opened the Congo conference (1876), the Cleopatra Needle installed in London (1878), Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony (“Symphony of A Thousand”) premiered in Munich with 1028 musicians (1910), Lascaux cave discovered by four teenagers (1940), US troops entered Germany for the first time in World War II (1944), John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport (1953), the US Supreme Court ordered the all-white Central High School in Little Rock to desegregate (1958), “The Monkees” premiered on NBC (1966), “Maude” premiered on CBS (1972), Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in a coup d’état in Ethiopia (1974), anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko died in police custody from his injuries after being beaten & tortured by police (1977), “The Smurfs” premiered in North America (1981), Article V of the NATO agreement invoked for the first and only time in response to the September 11 attacks against the United States (2001), in Fallujah, US forces mistakenly shot & killed eight Iraqi police officers (2003), excavators announce that they found the remains of King Richard III of England under a carpark in Leicester (2012) & Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the British Labour Party (2015) on this day.
September 13
Cesare Borgia (1475), William Cecil, first Baron Burghley (1520), Daniel Defoe (1660), François Joseph Paul de Grasse (1723), Clara Wieck Schumann (1819), Walter Reed (1851), Milton S. Hershey (1857), John J. Pershing Blackjack, Arnold Schoenberg (1874), Sherwood Anderson (1876), J.B. Priestly (1894), Claudette Colbert Lily Chauchoin, Roald Dahl (1916), Yma Sumac Chavarri, Maurice Jarre (1924), Mel Tormé (‘The Velvet Fog’) (1925), Nicolai Ghiaurov (1929), Judith Martin (Miss Manners) (1938), Larry Speakes (1939), Óscar Arias Sánchez (1940), Tadao Ando (1941), Hissène Habré (1942), Jean Smart (1951), Ralph Northam (1959), Bong Joon-ho (1969) & Tyler Perry (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Titus Falvius Vespasianus (81), Andrea Mantegna (1506), John Cheke (1557), Michel de Montaigne (1592), Philip II of Spain (1598), James Wolfe (1759), Charles James Fox (1806), Ambrose Burnside (1881), Emmanuel Chabrier (1894), Lili Elbe born Einar Wegener, Lin Biao (1971), Arthur Fagg (1977), Leopold Stokowski (1977), William Loeb (1981), Tupac Shakur (1996), George Wallace (1998), Ann Richards (2006) & Pete Domenici (2017) died on this day. Construction of Hadrian’s Wall began (122), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre consecrated in Jerusalem (335), Pedro Álvares Cabral’s Portuguese expedition arrived in Calicut (1500), French troops defeated Habsburg & Papal forces at the Battle of Marignano (1515), Primo de Rivera’s coup in Spain (1923), Buckingham Palace damaged by German bombs (1940), Margaret Chase Smith’s election to the Senate made her the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress (1948), Gov. Nelson Rockefeller ordered a massacre at Attica prison in upstate New York (1971), “Law & Order” premiered on NBC (1990), the Oslo Accords signed (1993), Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” released (1997), Oprah Winfey gave away 276 cars (2004), Spain’s parliament voted to exhume former dictator Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen (2018) & Felicity Huffman sentenced to 14 days in prison for her role in the college admissions scandal (2019) on this day.
September 14
Luigi Cherubini (1760), Alexander von Humboldt (1769), Margaret Sanger (1879), Gaston Defferre (1910), Jacobo Árbenz (1913), Eric Bentley (1916), Deryck Cooke (1919), Sir Angus Ogilvy (1928), Harve Presnell (1933), Zoe Caldwell (1933), Kate Millett (1934), Sam Neill (1947), Kostas Karamanlis (1956), Dmitry Medvedev (1965), Ron DeSantis (1978) & Amy Winehouse (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Dante Alighieri (1321), Aaron Burr (1836), James Fenimore Cooper (1851), Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1852), William McKinley (1901), Isadora Duncan (1927), Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1937), Fritz Busch (1951), Grace Kelly (1982), Christian Ferras (1982) & Patrick Swayze (2009) died on this day. Domitian succeeded Titus as Roman emperor (81), Harun al-Rashid succeeded his brother Al Hadi as Abbasid caliph (786), French/Venetian victory at the Battle of Marignano (1515), Georg Friedrich Händel finished “Messiah” (1741), the Gregorian Calender was adopted in Britain & throughout its empire (1752), Napoleon entered Moscow as the Great Fire of Moscow began (1812), Francis Scott Key wrote the poem set to music as the Star-Spangled Banner (1814), Gen Winfield Scott captured Mexico City (1847), Leopold II of Belgium concluded the Congo conference (1876), uprising in German South-West Africa suppressed (1894), Theodore Roosevelt sworn in as president following William McKinley’s death (1901), Russia’s prime minister Peter Stolypin assassinated in Kiev (1911), Lord Kitchener poster published on the cover of London Opinion magazine (1914), Austria-Hungary’s note requesting peace discussions rejected by the Allies (1918), Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship established in Spain (1923), Isadora Duncan was killed in a car accident (1927), first pre-frontal lobotomy in the US performed at the George Washington University Hospital (1936), Nikita Khrushchev appointed first secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR (1953), Col. Joseph-Désiré Mobutu’s coup d’état in Congo (1960), Pope Paul VI canonized Mother Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton as the first US-born saint (1975), Princess Grace of Monaco died in an auto accident (1982), “The Golden Girls” debuted on NBC (1985), Swedish voters voted down a proposal to join the Euro zone (2003), Elizabeth Warren announced her intention to seek the 2012 Democratic presidential nomination (2011), 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing a clock to school (2015) & Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges (2018) on this day.
September 15
Marco Polo (1254), François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613), James Fenimore Cooper (1789), William Howard Taft (1857), Bruno Walter (1876), Max Factor (1877), Ettore Bugatti (1881), Agatha Christie (1890), Jean Renoir (1894), Umberto II, the last king of Italy 91904), Fay Wray (1907), Penny Singleton (1908), John Mitchell (1913), Margaret Lockwood (1916), Nipsey Russell (1918), Bobby Short (1924), Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (1933), Emmerson Mnangagwa (1942), Jessye Norman (1945), Tommy Lee Jones (1946), Oliver Stone (1946), Lloyd Blankfein (1954), Letizia, queen of Spain (1972), Prince Harry [Henry Charles Albert David Windsor] & Prince of Wales (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Publius Quinctilius Varus (9), Jan de Bakker [Johannes Pistorius] (1525), Hideyoshi Toyotomi (1598), André Le Nôtre (1700), Anton von Webern (1945), Vincent Canby (2000), Johnny Ramone (2004), Sidney Luft (2005), Oriana Fallaci (2006) & Moussa Traoré (2020) died on this day. Philip II’s palace San Lorenzo del Escorial completed (1584), Battle of Sekigahara (1600), Germantown in Pennsylvania founded by 13 immigrant families (1683), Friedrich Wilhelm I divided Brandenburg-Prussia into cantons (1733), Battle of Signal Hill (1762), Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev captured by Russian troops (1774), “Lyrical Ballads” of William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge published (1795), Napoleon captured the Kremlin in Moscow (1812), Charles Darwin & the HMS Beagle reached the Galapagos Islands (1835), Confederate troops seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in West Virginia (1862), the first trenches were dug on the Western Front during World War I (1914), first use of tanks in warfare at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (1916), Russia proclaimed a republic by Alexander Kerensky’s provisional government (1917), Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin while studying influenza (1928), the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of citizenship & made the swastika the official symbol of Germany’s Nazi regime (1935), British prime minister Neville Chamberlain visited Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden (1938), the turning of the tide in the Battle of Britain (1940), US & UN forces landed at Incheon in the midst of the Korean War (1950), the European Parliament formed in Strasbourg (1952), the UN turned Eritrea over to Ethiopia (1952), Marilyn Monroe filmed her iconic grate scene in “The Seven Year Itch” (1954), Konrad Adenauer’s CDU won the Bundestag elections in West Germany (1957), Nikita Khrushchev began a 13-day visit to the US (1959), Birmingham church bombing in Alabama killed four African American girls (1963), Ben Bella elected the first president of Algeria (1963), “Lost in Space” premiered on TV (1965), “Columbo” premiered on NBC (1971), Sandra Day O’Connor’s nomination to the US Supreme Court approved unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee (1981), Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “Laborem Exercens” inveighed against both capitalism & Marxism (1981), Menachem Begin resigned as prime minister of Israel (1983), “L.A. Law” premiered on NBC (1986), George Soros’ Quantum Fund dumped millions of pounds, provoking a sterling crisis that forced the currency out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism the following day (1992), Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy (2008), & Viktor Orban’s fascist government closed Hungary’s border with Serbia to migrants (2015).
September 16
Drusilla, daughter of Germanicus & Agrippina (16), Hildegard von Bingen (1098), Henry V (1387), Ming emperor Jiajing (1507), Qing emperor Daoguang (1782), Charles Crocker (1822), Andrew Bonar Law (1858), Yuan Shikai (1859), James Cash Penney (1875), Clive Bell (1881), Nadia Boulanger (1887), Hans ‘Jean’ Arp (1887), Karl Dönitz (1891), Lee Kuan Yew (1923), Lauren Bacall (1924), Peter Falk (1927), Ed Begley, Jr. (1949), Susan Ruttan (1949), David Copperfield (1956), John Bel Edwards (1966), Marc Anthony [Marco Antonio Muñiz] (1968), Amy Poehler (1971), Julian Castro (1974) & Nick Jonas (1992) were born #OnThisDay. Charles V of France (1380), Tomas de Torquemada (1498), Anne Bradstreet (1672), James II of England (1701), Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1736), Louis XVIII of France (1824), Maria Callas (1977), Millicent Fenwick (1992), McGeorge Bundy (1996), Mary Travers (2009), Princess Ragnhild Alexandra of Norway (2012), Carlo Azeglio Ciapmi (2016) & Edward Albee (2016) died on this day. Owain Glyndŵr was declared Prince of Wales by his followers (1400), the Mayflower left Plymouth with 102 Pilgrims and about 30 crew for the New World (1620), James Francis Edward Stuart (‘the Old Pretender’) became the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland on the death of his father James II (1701), Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla launched the Mexican War of Independence with his Grito de Dolores (Cry of Dolores) (1810), slavery abolished in France & all French territories (1848), Lake Nyasa ‘discovered’ by David Livingstone (1859), the last Prussian troops from the Franco-Prussian War left France (1873), the largest land rush in history began in Oklahoma’s Cherokee Strip (1893), William Durant created General Motors (1908), Wall Street bombing killed 38 & injured 143 (1920), Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began a hunger strike to protest the British decision to organize India’s electoral system by caste (1932), the Burke-Wadsworth Act enacted by Congress created Selective Service & instituted the first peacetime draft (1940), the Federation of Malaysia formed by Malaya, Singapore, British North Borneo (Sabah) & Sarawak (1963), the new Metropolitan Opera House opened in Lincoln Center with Leontyne Price as Cleopatra in “Antony & Cleopatra” by Samuel Barber (1966), BART began regular service in the San Francisco Bay area (1974), Gerald Ford announced conditional amnesty for US Vietnam War deserters (1974), Papua New Guinea’s independence from Australia (1975), the Episcopal Church USA approved the ordination of women (1976), the families of Peter Strelzyk & Gunter Wetzel arrived in West Germany from Communist East Germany in a hot air balloon (1979), New York City’s PBS channel (13) WNET-TV began round clock broadcasting (1987), “Frasier” starring Kelsey Grammer & David Hyde Pierce premiered on NBC (1993), “Judge Judy” with Judge Judith Sheindlin premiered in the US (1996), “Dr. Phil” with Phil McGraw & co-created by Oprah Winfrey debuted on syndicated US TV (2002), Navy Yard massacre in Washington, D.C. (2013), military coup in Burkina Faso (2015) & Guantánamo Bay is the world’s most expensive prison at US $13 million per prisoner according to investigation by “The New York Times” (2019) on this day.
September 17
Wenceslaus II, king of Bohemia & Poland (1271), Pope Paul V [Camillo Borghese] (1550), Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730), Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743), Frederick Ashton (1904), Warren Burger (1907), Chaim Herzog (1918), Hank Williams (1923), Roddy McDowell (1928), Anne Bancroft [Anna Italiano] (1931), David Souter (1939), John Ritter (1948), Wile E. Coyote (1949), Road Runner (1949), Narendra Modi (1950) & Baz Luhrmann (1962) were born #OnThisDay. Hildegard von Bingen (1179), Sabbatai Zevi (1676), Dred Scott (1858), Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1879), Charles Alfred Pillsbury (1899), Count Folke Bernadotte (1948), Fritz Wunderlich (1966), Anastasio Somoza Debayle [Tachito] (1980), Katherine Porter (1980), Laura Ashley (1985), Zino Francescatti (1991), Karl Popper (1994), Spiro Agnew (1996), Red Skelton [Richard] (1997), Patrick Kennedy Lawford (2006), David Willcocks (2015) & Cokie Roberts (2019) died on this day. Alexandria taken by Arab forces under Amr Ibn al-‘As (642), Emperor Frederick Barbarossa issued the ‘Privilegium Minus’ decree elevating Austria to the status of a duchy (1156), Jews expelled from France by order of Charles VI (11394), Henri IV recognized as king of France by Pope Clemens VIII (1595), Gustaf Adolf’s Swedish army defeated troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II under Johann Tserclaes, Graf Tilly at the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631), France & Spain signed the Treaties of Nijmegen (1678), Georg-August University opened in Göttingen (1737), the Presidio created in San Francisco (1776) the US Constitution signed by delegates in Philadelphia (1787), William Herschel discovered Saturn’s moon Mimas (1789), Finland ceded by Sweden to Russia by the Treaty of Fredrikshamn (1809), Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in Maryland with two of her brothers (1849), Joshua Abraham Norton proclaimed himself Emperor Norton I in San Francisco (1859), 22,000 killed or wounded in the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), the first Civil War battle on Union soil (1862), the Commonwealth of Australia proclaimed (1900), Treaty of Rapallo (1924), “The Third Man” directed by Carol Reed won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the Cannes Film Festival (1949), “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding published by Faber and Faber in London (1954), Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days” premiered in NYC (1961), “Bewitched” premiered on ABC (1964), “Hogan’s Heroes” premiered on CBS (1965), “Mission Impossible” premiered on CBS (1966), “M*A*S*H” premiered on CBS (1972), Solidarnosc (Solidarity) founded by Lech Wałęsa in the Gdańsk shipyard (1980), Brian Mulroney succeeded John Turner as Canada’s prime minister (1984), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuiania, North & South Korea, Marshall Islands & Micronesia admitted to the UN (1991), Occupy Wall Street launched in Manhattan’s Zucotti Park (2011), Greta Thunberg told US Congress members, “I know you are trying but just not hard enough. Sorry” (2019) on this day.
September 18
Trajan, Roman emperor (98-117 CE) (53 CE), Samuel Johnson (1709), Justinus Kerner (1786), John Diefenbaker (1895), Agnes De Mille (1905), Greta Garbo (1905), Robert Blake (1933), Frankie Avalon [Francis Avallone] (1940), Ben Carson (1951), Chris Hedges (1956), James Gandolfini (1961), Lance Armstrong (1971), Anna Netrebko (1971), Jada Pinkett Smith (1971) & Jason Sudeikis (1975), were born #OnThisDay. Domitian (96), Hubert van Eyck (1426), Toytomi Hideyoshi (1598), William Hazlitt (1830), Dion Boucicault (1890), Peter Stolypin (1911), Frank Morgan [Francis Wuppermann] (1949), Dag Hammarskjöld (1961), Sean O’Casey (1964), Clive Bell (1964), Jimi Hendrix (1970), Katherine Anne Porter (1980) & Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2020). Nerva proclaimed Roman Emperor following Domitian’s assassination (96), Philip Augustus became king of France (1180), Peace of Crépy signed by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V & French King Francis I ending the Fourth Hapsburg-Valois War (1544), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II declared war on France (1635), the Royal Opera House opened in Covent Garden (1809), British East India Company forces under Baron Minto conquered Java & appointed Stamford Raffles lieutenant governor (1811), the Great Fire of Moscow burned out after 5 days (1812), Tiffany & Co. founded by Charles Lewis Tiffany & John B. Young (1837), the Fugitive Slave Law enacted by Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 (1850), the New York Times started publishing (1851), Oscar II became king of Sweden & Norway (1872), Lord Kitchener’s ships reached Fashoda in Sudan (1898), Scott Joplin granted copyright for his “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899), Peter Stolypin assassinated in Russia (1911), Ralph Bunche confirmed as acting UN mediator in Palestine (1948), “A Streetcar Named Desire” — directed by Elia Kazan & based on Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play of the same name, starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh — released (1951), “I Dream of Jeannie” premiered on NBC (1965), Dag Hammarskjöld killed in a plane crash (1961), “Funny Girl” released (1968), Momofuku Ando marketed the first Cup Noodle (1971), Patty Hearst captured by the FBI in San Francisco (1975), Mao Zedong’s funeral in Beijing (1976), the Assemblée Nationale voted to abolish capital punishment in France (1981) & Israel’s confederates murdered thousands of Palestinians in the Sabra & Shatila massacres in Lebanon (1982) on this day.
September 19
Antoninus Pius [Titus Aurelius], 15th Emperor of Rome (138-161 AD), Henri III of France (1551), Arthur Rackam (1867), Leon Jaworski (1905), Lewis Powell, Jr. (1907), William Golding (1911), Paulo Freire (1921), Lurleen Wallace (1926), Rosemary Harris (1927), Adam West (1928), Marge Roukema (1929), Jean-Claude Carrière (1931), Mike Royko (1932), Brian Epstein (1934), Mariangela Melato (1941), ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot (1941), Umberto Bossi (1941), Jeremy Irons (1948), Twiggy Leslie Hornby, Barry Scheck (1949), Joan Lunden (1950), Rex Smith (1955), Kevin Hooks (1958), Soledad O’Brien (1966) & Jimmy Fallon (1974) were born #OnThisDay. James Garfield (1881), Condé Nast (1942), John Dingell, Sr. (1955), Robert Casadesus (1972), Italo Calvino (1985), Orville Redenbacher (1995), Robert Guéï (2002) & Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali (2019) died on this day. English forces under Edward the Black Prince defeated the French at the Battle of Poitiers (1356), Holy Roman Emperor Charlves V & Henry VIII of England concluded an anti-French alliance (1523), Saturn’s moon Hyperion discovered by Bond & Lassell (1848), Battle of Chickamauga (1863), Prussian siege of Paris initiated (1870), New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote (1893), Gustav Mahler’s 7th symphony premiered in Prague (1908), Wilhelmina’s enthronement speech as queen of the Netherlands (1922), Japanese troops seized Mukden in Manchuria (1931), Bruno Hauptmann arrested for the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby (1934), Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) became radio host of Reichsrundfunk Berlin (1939), Witold Pilecki voluntarily captured & sent to Auschwitz in order to smuggle out information and start a resistance (1940), Jackie Robinson named 1947 “Rookie of Year” (1947), Juan Domingo Perón deposed as president in a military coup in Argentina (1955), LIFE magazine put Anna Mary ‘Grandma’ Moses on its cover on her 100th birthday (1960), Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (1960), “The Mary Tyler Moore” show premiered on CBS (1970), Carl XVI Gustaf became king of Sweden (1973), Indonesia invaded East Timor (1975), “Fawlty Towers” starring John Cleese, Prunella Scales & Andrew Sachs premiered on BBC2 in the UK (1975), “Ordinary People” released (1980), Simon & Garfunkel reunited for a NYC Central Park concert for an audience estimated at 500,000 (1981), the UK & the PRC conclude an agreement on the transfer of Hong Kong to China by 1997 (1984), “Doogie Howser, MD” debuted on ABC (1989), Ötzi the Iceman 3,300 BCE old mummy discovered by German tourists in Italian Alps (1991), a military coup & martial law in Thailand (2006) on this day.
September 20
Arthur, Prince of Wales & son of Henry VII (1486), Christian von Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1599), Giacomo Quarenghi (1744), Móric Beňovský (1746), Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (1833), Rama V [Chulalongkorn], king of Thailand (1868-1910) (1853), Upton Sinclair (1878), Leo Strauss (1899), Rama VIII [Ananda Mahidol], king of Siam (1935-46) (1925), Anne Meara (1929), Sophia Loren (1934), Pia Lindström (1938), Dale Chihuly (1941), Sylvester [J. Pussycat Sr.,], Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Friz Freleng (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series) (1941), Sani Abacha (1943), George R.R. Martin (1948) & Asia Argento (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Gilles Binchois (1460), Philippe Pot (1493), Anthony Babington (1586), Lodovico Agostini (1590), Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland (1643), Utamaro Kitagawa (1806), Jacob Grimm (1863), Pabrlo de Sarasate (1908), Annie Besant (1933), Fiorello La Guardia (1947), Jean Sibelius (1957), Jule Styne (1994), Raisa Gorbachyova (1999), Simon Wiesenthal (2005), Sven Nykvist (2006) & Polly Bergen [Nellie Burgin] (2014) died on this day. Roman general Flavius Aetius defeated Attila the Hun at The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (Chalons-sur-Marne) (451), Saladin began the siege of Jerusalem (1187), Salisbury Cathedral inaugurated (1258), Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition set sail to circumnavigate the globe (1519), Spanish forces under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés captured the French Huguenot settlement of Fort Caroline in Florida in the first European battle on American soil (1565), Ottoman Turks defeated Sigismund III of Poland at the Battle of Jassy (1620), Maryland enacted the first miscegenation law in the English colonies (1664), Paoli Massacre (1777), Revolutionary France’s forces defeated Prussia at the Battle of Valmy (1792), British & French forces defeated the Russian army at the Battle of Alma, the first major battle of the Crimean War (1854), first royal visit to the US by the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) (1860), Confederate victory at the Battle of Chickamauga (1863), Chester Alan Arthur sworn in as the 21st president (1881), the Mahatma Gandhi began a hunger strike to protest the mistreatment of the Dalit (‘Untouchables’) in India (1932), Leontyne Price made her operatic stage debut singing Madame Lidoine in the US premiere of “Dialogues of the Carmelites” in San Francisco (1957), James Meredith denied enrollment in the segregated University of Mississippi (1961), Ben Bella elected president in the first election in independent Algeria (1962), HMS Queen Elizabeth II launched at Clydebank (1967), Jim Morrison found guilty of indecent exposure (1970), Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the battle-of-sexes tennis match (1973), Jimmy Carter’s ‘lust in my heart’ interview published in Playboy (1976), Russell Means addressed the UNHCR in Geneva & criticized the United States, describing Native Americans as “people who live in the belly of the monster” (1977), ‘Emperor’ Bokassa overthrown by David Dacko in a coup d’état in the Central African Republic (1979), Lee Iacocca elected president of the Chrysler Corporation (1979), “The Cosby Show” premiered on NBC-TV (1984), 23 killed in a bombing at the US embassy annex in Beirut (1984), German reunification ratified by both the FRG & the GDR (1990), South Ossetia declared its independence from Georgia (1990), France ratified the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (1992), “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (created by Dick Wolf) starring Mariska Hargitay & Christopher Meloni premiered on NBC (1999), George W. Bush announced a ‘war on terror’ (2001), Farm Aid 21 in Massachusetts (2008), Alexis Tsipras & Syriza declared the winners in a snap election in Greece (2015), Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, confirmed raising the price of toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim by 5,000% (2015), largest ever climate change demonstration led by Greta Thunberg in Manhattan (2019).
September 21
Ming emperor Hongwu of China (1368-98) (1328), Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York (1411), Ming emperor Jingtai (1428 (1449-57) (1428), Girolamo Savonarola (1452), Louis Jolliet (1645), Francis Hopkinson (1737), H.G. Wells (1866), Henry Stimson (1867), Gustav Holst (1874), Hans Hartung (1904), Kwame Nkrumah (1909), Chuck Jones (1912), Françoise Giroud (1916), Larry Hagman (1931), Leonard Cohen (1934), Fannie Flagg (1944), Hamilton Jordan (1944), Stephen King (1947), Bill Murray (1950), Shinzō Abe (1954), Julia Grant [George Roberts] (1954) & Samantha Power (1970) were born #OnThisDay. Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] (19 BCE), Edward II of England (1327), Friedrich von Hohenzollern, Kurfürst von Brandenburg (1440), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1558), Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1586), Emmanuel Schikaneder (1812), Sir Walter Scott (1832), Arthur Schopenhauer (1860), Nez Percé Chief Joseph (1904), Kokichi Mikimoto (1954), Haakon VII of Norway (1957), Paul Reynaud (1966), Diana Sands (1973), Orlando Letelier (1976), Alice Ghostley (2007), Rex Humbard (2007), Richard the Lionheart captured by Leopold of Austria (1192), Treaty of Arras signed by Charles VII of France & Philip the Good of Burgundy (1435), Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite army defeated the British army at the Battle of Preston Pans (1745), Benedict Arnold committed treason by giving British Major John André plans to West Point (1780), France’s monarchy abolished (1792), Joseph Smith claimed the angel Moroni gave him gold plates (1823), British & French troops defeated Qing China at the Battle of Baliqiao (1860), the New York Sun ran its “Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus” editorial (1897), the Empress Dowager Cixi imprisoned the Guangxu emperor (1898), Cecil Chubb bought Stonehenge for £6,600 (1915), Fancisco Franco named Generalissimo in Spain (1936), J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” published by George Allen and Unwin in London (1937), Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in Beijing (1949), Allied troops leave Austria (1955), “Perry Mason” TV series based on the character by author Erle Stanley Gardner & starring Raymond Burr premiered on CBS-TV (1957), Olav V became king of Norway upon the death of Haakon VII (1957), Malta’s independence from Britain (1964), Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines (1972), Orlando Letelier assassinated in Washington, D.C. (1976), Cyrus Vance, Sr. dismissed as US Secretary of State (1977), Thabo Mbeki resigned as president of South Africa (2008) & Ehud Olmert resigned as prime minister of Israel (2008) on this day.
September 22
Bilbo Baggings (2890 T.A. in Shire reckoning), Frodo Baggins (2968 T.A. in the Shire reckoning), Anna von Kleve (Anne of Cleves) (1515), Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII & queen of France (1601), Michael Faraday (1791), Erich von Stroheim (1885), Paul Muni (1895), Hans Scholl (1918), Henryk Szeryng (1918), Norma Jane McCorvey (1947), Mark Phillips (1948), Ségolène Royal (1953), John Brennan (1955), Debby Boone (1956), David Krakauer (1956), Andrea Bocelli (1958), Scott Baio (1960) & Princess Märtha Louise of Norway, daughter of Harald V of Norway (1971) were born #OnThisDay. Olaf III of Norway (1093), Louise de Savoie (1531), Guru Nanak (1539), Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (1554), Nathan Hale (1776), Shaka, king of the Zulus (1828), Cecil Chubb (1934), Axel Springer (1985), Irving Berlin [Israel Isidore Baline] (1989), Dorothy Lamour [Mary Kaumeyer] (1996), George C. Scott (1999), Isaac Stern (2001), Marcel Marceau (2007), Eddie Fisher (2010), Lorenzo ‘Yogi’ Berra (2015), Switzerland’s independence (1499), Treaty of Blois between France, Burgundy & the Holy Roman Emperor (1504), Battle of Zutphen (1586), last victims of the Salem witch trials hanged (1692), Robert Walpole moved into 10 Downing Street (1735), coronation of George III of England (1761), Nathan Hale executed for spying on the British (1776), Russian fur trappers established a colony on Alaska’s Kodiak Island (1784), First French Republic established (1792), John Quincy Adams became US Secretary of State (1817), Shaka king of the Zulus murdered by his two half brothers (1828), Des Moines incorporated as Fort Des Moines in Iowa (1851), Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (1862), Paraguay’s decisive victory over Argentina & Brazil at the Battle of Curupayty in the War of the Triple Alliance (1866), Richard Wagner’s opera “Das Rheingold” had its Munich premiere (1869), Queen Victoria surpassed her grandfather George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history (1896), Bulgaria’s independence from the Ottoman Empire (1908), the first International Hobbit Day celebrating the birthdays of Bilbo & Frodo Baggins (1937), Mali’s independence from France (1960), JFK signed the bill into law creating the Peace Corps (1961), “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” starring Robert Vaughn & David McCallum premiered on NBC (1964), Henry Kissinger sworn in as the first Jewish US Secretary of State (1973), second assassination attempt on Gerald Ford by Sara Jane Moore foiled by Oliver Sipple (1975), “Charlie’s Angels” premiered (1976), Saddam Hussein launched the Iran-Iraq War (1980), Sandra Day O’Connor appointed to the US Supreme Court (1981), “Family Ties starring Michael J. Fox premiered on NBC (1982), first Farm Aid benefit concert in Champaign (1985), Laurent Fabius admitted on TV that France’s DGSE sank the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor (1985), the Plaza Accord signed by the Group of Seven (1985), “Friends” debuted on NBC (1994), Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” released as a tribute to the late Princess of Wales (1997), “The West Wing” debuted on NBC (1999), Angela Merkel led the CDU to a third term (2013) & Donald Trump held his ‘Howdy, Modi’ rally for Narendra Modi in Houston (2019) on this day.
September 23
Augustus Caesar [Gaius Octavius] (63 BCE), Kublai Khan (1215), Victoria Woodhull (1838), Emmuska Orczy (1865), Mary Mallon, ‘Typhoid Mary’ (1869), Alfieri Maserati (1887), Walter Lippmann (1889), Friedrich Paulus (1890), Paul Delvaux (1897), Walter Pidgeon (1897), Jarmila Novotna (1907), Elliot Roosevelt (1910), Aldo Moro (1916), Mickey Rooney (1920), John Coltrane (1926), Romy Schneider (1938), Tom Lester (1938), Julio Iglesias (1943), Bruce Springsteen (1949), Cherie Blair [née Booth] (1954), Jason Alexander [Greenspan] (1959), Ani DiFranco (1970), Sean Spicer (1970) & Hasan Minhaj (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Snorri Sturluson (1241), Vincenzo Bellini (1835), Prosper Mérimée (1870), Ivar Aasen (1896), Sigmund Freud (1939), Pablo Neruda (1973) & Bob Fosse (1987) died on this day. Battle of Blore Heath in Staffordshire, 1st major battle of the English Wars of the Roses (1459), “I have not yet begun to fight,” John Paul Jones declared aboard the USS Bonhomme while defeating the British frigate HMS Serapis (1779), Conseil of the Cinq-Cents (Council of 500), formed in Paris (1759), Neptune discovered by Johann Gottfried Galle (1846), Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation published in northern newspapers (1862), Otto von Bismarck appointed prime minister & foreign minister by Wilhelm I of Prussia (1860), Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) formed (1895), Abdulaziz Ibn Saud merged the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (1932), Standard Oil geologists arrived in Saudi Arabia (1933), Charles de Gaulle formed a government in exile in London (1941), FDR defended his Scottish Terrier Fala (1944), Ralph Bunche awarded a Nobel Peace Prize (1950), Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech (1952), Roy Brant & John William Milam found not guilty of the brutal murder of black teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi (1955), Dwight Eisenhower ordered US troops to Arkansas after a white mob forced nine black students to flee Little Rock’s Central High School (1957), “The Jetsons” premiered on ABC (1962), Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines (1972), Juan Perón re-elected president of Argentina (1973), presidential debate between Gerald Ford & Jimmy Carter (1976), Jackson Browne reportedly beat his girlfriend Daryl Hannah (1992), “The Shawshank Redemption” directed by Frank Darabont & starring Tim Robbins & Morgan Freeman released (1994), “Modern Family” premiered on ABC (2009), 178-year-old British travel company Thomas Cook liquidated, stranding 600,000 travelers worldwide, prompting the largest postwar repatriation effort by the British government (2019), Greta Thunberg scolded world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit in NYC (2019) & Alexander Lukashenko sworn in for a sixth term as president of Belarus in a secret ceremony (2020) on this day.
September 24
Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583), Johan de Witt (1625), Arthur Guinness (1725), John Marshall (1755), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896), Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902), Leon MacLaren (1910), Konstantin Chernenko (1911), Audra Lindley (1918), Manfred Wörner (1934), Jim Henson (1936), Linda Eastman McCartney (1941), Lou Dobbs (1945), Phil Hartman (1948), Joseph P. Kennedy II (1952) & John Logan (1961), were born #OnThisDay. Peter Carl Fabergé (1920) & Theodor Geisel, a.k.a., Dr. Seuss (1991) died on this day. Suleiman the Magnificent led Ottoman troops to begin the siege of Vienna (1529), Louis XIV ordered the expulsion of all Jews from New France (1683), the Judiciary Act of 1789 signed into law by George Washington (1789), France annexed New Caledonia (1853), the ‘Mormon Manifesto’ declared that Mormons had an obligation to adhere to anti-polygamy laws (1890), Fannie Farmer opened Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston (1902), Bulgaria declared its desire to seek a ceasefire with the Allies (1918), Kentucky Fried Chicken opens its first KFC franchise in Salt Lake City (1952), “60 Minutes” premiered on CBS (1968), trial of the Chicago 8 began in Chicago (1969), Guinea-Bissau’s independence from Portugal (1973), the National League for Democracy formed by Aung San Suu Kyi & others to help fight against dictatorship in Myanmar (1994), China was reported to be expanding Uighur concentration camps in Xinjiang (2020) on this day.
September 25
Francesco Borromini (1599), Claude Perrault (1613), Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683), Henry Pelham (1694), Qianlong emperor of Qing China (1711), Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia (1744) Fletcher Christian (1764), Wladimir Köppen (1846), William Faulkner (1897), Mark Rothko [Markus Rothkovich] (1903), Dmitri Shostakovich (1906), Ethel Rosenberg (1915), Robert Muldoon (1921), Ronnie Barker (1929), Barbara Walters (1929), Glenn Gould (1932), Adolfo Suárez (1933), Moussa Traoré (1936), Robert Gates, Michael Douglas (1944), Felicity Kendal (1946), Pedro Almodovar (1949), Mark Hamill (1951), Christopher Reeve (1952), Bell Hooks [Gloria Jean Watkins] (1952), Heather Locklear (1961), Will Smith (1968), Catherine Zeta-Jones (1969) & Donald Glover (a.k.a., Childish Gambino) (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Harald Hardrada (1066), Tostig Godwinson (1066), Philip the Fair of Castile (1506), Pope Clement VII [Giulio de’ Medici] (pope 1523-34), Johann Strauss the Elder (1849), Helen Broderick (1959), Emily Post (1960), Erich Maria Remarque (1970), T.C. Jones (female impersonator) (1971), Coco the Clown [Nikolai Poliakoff] (1974), Leopold III (1983), Walter Pidgeon (1984), Mary Astor [Lucile Langhanke] (1987), Billy Carter (1988), Klaus Barbie (Butcher of Lyon) (1991), Nicu Ceaușescu (1996), Jean Françaix (1997), Edward Said (2003), Alicia de Larrocha (2009), Wangari Maathai (Green Belt movement founder) (2011), Andy Williams (2012), Arnold Palmer (2016) & Paul Badura-Skoda (2019) died today. Harald III Hardrada, king of Norway (1047-66) & Tostig Godwinson, Earl of Northumbria, killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge at 51 & Harold II of England emerged victorious at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, regarded as the end of the Viking Age in England (1066), Augsburg Confession (1555), failed assassination attempt on Simon Bolívar (1829), the Royal Court Theatre opened in London (1888), Columbia University School of Journalism founded in New York City (1912), Woodrow Wilson’s breakdown in Colorado (1919), Vidkun Quisling’s Nazi puppet government formed in Norway (1940), Sandra Day O’Connor sworn in as the 1st female US Supreme Court Justice (1981), Friar Junípero Serra (founder of 1st Californian missions) beatified by Pope John Paul II (1988), Anthony Weiner sentenced to 21 months for sexting a minor (2017), Bill Cosby sentenced on sexual assault charges (2018), Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the first woman to lie in state in the US Capitol (2020) on this day.
September 26
Francis of Assisi (1181), Johnny Appleseed [John Chapman] (1774), Théodore Géricault (1791), Ivan Pavlov (1849), Christian X of Denmark (1870), T.S. Eliot (1888), Martin Heidegger (1889), Pope Paul VI [Giovanni Montini] (1897), George Gershwin (1898), Anthony Blunt (1907), Fritz Wunderlich (1930), Manmohan Singh (1932), Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (1936), Andrea Dworkin (1946), Christine Todd Whitman (1946), Olivia Newton-John (1948), Jane Smiley (1949), Jill Soloway (1965), Beto O’Rourke (1972) & Serena Williams (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Taichang emperor of Ming China (1620), Daniel Boone (1820), Levi Strauss (1902), Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues (1937), Béla Bartok (1945), William Strunk, Jr. (1946), George Santayana (1952), Anna Magnani (1973), Alberto Moravia [Pincherle] (1990), Tokyo Rose [Iva Toguri D’Aquino] (2006), Paul Newman (2008) & Jacques Chirac (2019) died on this day. Sir Francis Drake completed his circumnavigation of the world on the Golden Hind (1580), Peter Stuyvesant recaptured Dutch Fort Casimir in Delaware from the Swedes (1655), the Great Plague of London (1665), Parthenon explosion (1687), Thomas Jefferson appointed first US Secretary of State & John Jay appointed first US Chief Justice (1789), Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte named heir to the Swedish throne in a new Act of Succession enacted by Sweden’s Riksdag (1810), Russia, Prussia & Austria formed the Holy Alliance (1815), Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord resigned as prime minister of France (1815), Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “Lucia di Lammermoor” premiered at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (1835), Allies launched the Meuse-Argonne offensive (1918), Adolf HItler issued an ultimatum to Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland (1938), Allied troops slaughtered in Arnhem (1944), first American soldier killed in Vietnam (1945), Hergé’s Tintin cartoon published (1946), US & UN troops recaptured Seoul (1950), “West Side Story” premiered at the Winter Garden Theater in Manhattan (1957), Dag Hammarskjöld re-elected secretary-general of the UN (1957), John F. Kennedy & Richard Nixon debated in the first US presidential TV debate (1960), “Gilligan’s Island” debuted on CBS (1964), “The Brady Bunch” premiered on ABC (1969), Norway voted against membership in the European Community (1972), Ronald Reagan vetoed sanctions against South Africa (1984), Antonin Scalia sworn in as a US Supreme Court justice (1986), William Rehnquist sworn in as Chief Justice of the US (1986), “Downton Abbey” premiered on British TV (2010), Hillary Clinton debated Donald Trump at Hofstra University (2016) & Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2020) on this day.
September 27
Cosimo de’ Medici (1389), Louis XIII (1601), Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627), Samuel Adams (1722), Agustín de Iturbide (1783), Thomas Nast (1840), Louis Botha (1862), Charles Percy (1919), Jayne Meadows (1919), James H. Wilkinson (1919), Johnny Pesky (1919), William Conrad [John Cann] (1920), Igor Kipnis (1930), Josephine Barstow (1940), Meat Loaf [Marvin Lee Aday] (1947), Shaun Cassidy (1958) & Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Arabella Stuart (1615), Vincent de Paul (1660), Edgar Degas (1917), Engelbert Humperdinck (1921), Walter Benjamin (1940), Gerald FInzi (1956), Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1956), Sylvia Pankhurst (1960), Clara Bow (1965), Felix Yussupov (1967), Oona O’Neill Chaplin (1991), William Safire (2009), James Traficant, Jr. (2014) & Hugh Hefner (2017) died on this day. Jerusalem’s city walls battered down by a Roman army (70), Norman invasion of England led by William the Conqueror (1066), the Battle of Płowce between Poland & the Teutonic Order (1331), Mexican revolutionary forces led by Agustín de Iturbide occupied Mexico City as Spanish withdraw, bringing an end to the Mexican War of Independence (1821), Jean-François Champollion announced he had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone (1822), Constantine I abdicated as king of Greece (1922), the Republic of China recognized by the US (1928), Toledo taken by Francisco Franco’s Nationalists (1936), Japan declared the aggressor against China by the League of Nations (1938), Warsaw’s surrender to Nazi Germany after 19 days of resistance (1939), the Axis formed by Nazi Germany, Italy & Japan through the Tripartite Pact (1940), Gen. Douglas MacArthur met Emperor Hirohito of Japan (1945), “The Tonight Show” premiered on NBC with Steve Allen (1954), Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” published (1962), Charles de Gaulle’s France vetoed British entry into the European Economic Community (1968), Angela Merkel won a second term as chancellor, leading the CDU/CSU to victory in Germany’s Bundestag elections (2009) & the US Securities & Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of securities fraud (2018) on this day.
September 28
Confucius (551 BCE), Nicolas Flamel (1330), Michael Praetorius [Schultze] (1571), Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, British prime minister (1768-70), Prosper Mérimée (1803), Georges Clémenceau, prime minister of France (Radical-Socialist Party: 1906-09, 1917-20) (1841), William S. Paley (1901), Ed Sullivan (1901), Bhagat Singh (1907), Al Capp [Alfred Gerald Caplin], cartoonist (Li’l Abner) (1909), Stephen Spender (1909), Maria Franziska von Trapp (1914), Peter Finch (1916), British Private Henry Tandey reportedly spared the life of Adolf Hitler (1918), William Windom (1923), Marcello Mastraoianni (1924), Madelein Kunin (1933), Brigitte Bardot (1934), Peter Egan (1946), Mira Sorvino (1967) & Naomi Watts (1968) were born #OnThisDay. Pompey the Great [Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus] (48 BCE), Louis the German, king of the Franks (876), Herman Melville (1891), Louis Pasteur (1895), Émile Zola (1902), Georg Simmel (1918), Edwin Hubble (1953), William Boeing (1956), Harpo Marx [Adolph] (1964), André Breton (1966), Gamal Abdel Nasser (1970), Pope John Paul I [Albino Luciani] (1978), Ferdinand Marcos (1989), Miles Davis (1991), Pierre Trudeau (2000), Patsy Mink (2002), Althea Gibson (2003), Elia Kazan (2003), Geoffrey Beene (2004) & Shimon Peres (2016) died on this day. Pompey the Great assassinated on Ptolemy’s orders after landing in Egypt (48 BCE), Procopius declared himself Roman emperor (365), Saint Wenceslaus murdered by his broth Boleslaus of Bohemia (935), William the Conqueror’s Norman troops landed at Pevensey Bay in Sussex (1066), Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay, naming California ‘San Miguel’ & claiming it for Spain (1542), Venetian troops took Athens from Ottoman Turkey (1687), Russian & Austrian troops occupied Berlin (1760), 9,000 American and 7,000 French troops began the siege of Yorktown (1781), Napoléon Bonaparte graduated from the elite École Militaire in Paris (1785), Oscar I crowned king of Sweden (1844), Opelousas Massacre in St Landry Parish (200 African Americans killed in Louisiana) (1868), Yellow River (Huáng Hé) floods killed upwards of 2 million in China (1887), German troops moved into Antwerp (1914), eight Chicago White Sox players indicted in the ‘Black Sox’ scandal (1920), Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin (1928), German-Soviet Frontier Treaty signed by Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov (1939), “Mildred Pierce” starring Joan Crawford released (1945), the constitution of the 5th French Republic adopted (1958), Guinea voters voted for independence from France (1958), “Hazel” starring Shirley Booth debuted on NBC (1961), Anwar Sadat succeeded Gamal Abdel Nasser as president of Egypt after his death (1970), First Lady Betty Ford’s radical mastectomy (1974), “Star Trek: The Next Generation” starring Patrick Stewart debuted on syndicated TV (1987), Yitzhak Rabin & Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accord establishing the Palestinian Authority (1995), Ariel Sharon led Zionist extremists up onto the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (2000), Trevor Noah succeeded Jon Stewart as host of “The Daily Show” (2015) & Elon Musk unveiled his SpaceX spacecraft Starship (2019) on this day.
October 4
Louis X of France (1289), Henry III of Castile and León (1379), Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515), Charles IX of Sweden (1550), Richard Cromwell (1626), Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720), Rutherford B. Hayes (1822), Frederic Remington (1861), Damon Runyon (1880), Engelbert Dollfuss (1892), Buster Keaton (1895), Charlton Heston (1923), Alvin Toffler (1928), Franz Vranitzky (1937), Jackie Collins (1937), Anne Rice (1941), Susan Sarandon (1946), Chuck Hagel (1946), Andreas Vollenweider (1953), Liev Schreiber (1967) & Ilhan Omar (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Teresa of Avila (1582), Rembrandt van Rijn (1669), John Campbell, 2nd duke of. Argyll (1743), Catherine Booth (1890), Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (1904), Al Smith (1944), Max Planck (1947), Janis Joplin (1970), Glenn Gould (1982), Võ Nguyên Giáp (2013), Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier (2014) & Diahann Carroll (2019) died on this day. Zhu Yuanzhang defeated Chen Youliang in the Battle of Lake Poyang (1363), the first English-language Bible published with translations by William Tyndale & Miles Coverdale (1537), Swedish forces defeated those of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III at the Battle of Wittstock (1636), German Chancellor Max von Baden telegraphed Woodrow Wilson seeking an armistice to end World War I (1918), Dick Tracy comic strip by Chester Gould debuted (1931), the first issue of Esquire magazine published (1933), Vichy France proclaimed the end of legal protection for Jews (1940), Corsica liberated by the Free French (1943), Sputnik launched from the USSR (1957), “Leave It To Beaver” debuted on CBS (1957), French Fifth Republic established (1958), Pope Paul VI called for an end to the Vietnam War (1966), Helmut Kohl confirmed as Bundeskanzler by a formal vote of the Bundestag (1982), The Last Emperor” directed by Bernardo Bertolucci & starring John Lone, Joan Chen & Peter O’Toole premieres at the Tokyo Film Festival (1987), televangelist Jim Bakker indicted on federal fraud charges (1988), Google executive Sheryl Sandberg appointed Facebook COO by Mark Zuckerberg (2008), George Papandreou’s PASOK defeated Greece’s governing New Democracy party in an electoral landslide (2009) & Michael Morton was released from prison after serving 25 years for a murder he didn’t commit following exoneration by DNA evidence (2011) on this day.
October 5
Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan, mistress of Louis XIV of France (1641), Mary of Modena, queen of James II of England (1658), Jonathan Edwards (1703), Francesco Guardi (1712), Denis Diderot (1713), Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont, Chevalier d’Éon (1728), Chester A. Arthur (1829), John Addington Symonds (1840), Louis Lumière (1864), Ray Kroc (1902), Arlene Saunders [Soszynski] (1930), Václav Havel (1936), Bob Geldof (1951), Imran Khan (1952), Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958), Maya Lin (1959), Guy Pearce (1967), Kate Winslet (1975) & Jesse Eisenberg (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis (1805), Shawnee Chief Tecumseh (1813), Jacques Offenbach (1880), Meir Kahane (1990), Mike Mansfield (2001), Rodney Dangerfield (2004), Steve Jobs (2011), Henning Mankell (2015), Chantal Akerman (2015) & Marcello Giordani (2019) died on this day. Mongol invasion of Japan directed by Kublai Khan (1274), Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera performed in Vienna for Maria Theresa (1762), Parisian women marched on Versailles to confront Louis XVI (1789), disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church in France (1793), Tecumseh defeated by William Henry Harrison in the Battle of the Thames (1813), Chief Joseph surrendered, ending the Nez Percé War (1877), Bulgaria declared its independence from Ottoman Turkey (1908), Portugal declared a republic (1910), Bulgaria entered World War I with the Axis powers (1915), Adolph Hitler wounded in the Battle of the Somme (1916), Norway voted for prohibition (1919), Locarno Conference (1925), Harry Truman gave the first presidential address televised from the White House (1947), Earl Warren sworn in as the 14th Chief Justice (1953), “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” premiered (1961), the Beatles’ first record “Love Me Do” released (1962), PBS formed as a US TV network (1970), Elton John’s album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” released (1973), Lech Wałęsa won the Nobel Peace Prize (1983), Eugene Hasenfus captured by Sandinista regime troops in Nicaragua, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal (1986), the Sunday Times of London reported that Israel was stockpiling nuclear arms (1986), Chileans voted 56-44% against extending Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1988), Israel banned Meir Kahane’s Kach Party (1988), the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize (1989), Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević resigned following mass demonstrations in the Bulldozer Revolution (2000), Gov. Jerry Brown signed the California ‘right to die’ bill into law (2015), Spain’s constitutional court suspended Catalonia’s parliament to prevent a declaration of independence (2017), Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment investigation published by the New York Times (2017) & the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege and Yazidi activist Nadia Murad for “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war” (2018) on this day.LikeCommentShare
October 6
Matteo Ricci (1552), Louis-Philippe (1773), Jenny Lind (1820), George Westinghouse (1846), Karol Maciej Szymanowski (1882), Le Corbusier [Charles Jeanneret] (1887), Maria Jeritza (1887), Carole Lombard [Jane Alice Peters] (1908), Thor Heyerdahl (1914), Fanny Lou Hamer (1917), Shana Alexander (1925), Paul Badura-Skoda (1927), Hafez al-Assad (1930) & Gerry Adams (1948) were born #OnThisDay. Charles the Bald, king of the Franks (877), William Tyndale (1536), Elisabeth of France, queen of Spain (1644), Charles Stewart Parnell (1891), Alfred Lord Tennyson (1892), Anwar Sadat (1981), Terence Cardinal Cooke, archbishop of New York (1983), Bette Davis (1989), Denholm Elliott (1992), Montserrat Caballé (2018) & Eddi Van Halen (2020) died on this day. Cimbri defeat a Roman army under Gnaeus Mallius Maximus at the Battle of Arausio (105 BCE), first Mennonite immigrants arrived in America & settled in Pennsylvania (1683), Louis XVI arrived in Paris with an escort of angry Parisian women (1789), the Reno brothers carried out the first train robbery in US history (1866), “Liebeslieder Walzer” of Johannes Brahms premiered (1869), the Moulin Rouge opened in Paris (1889), LDS (Mormon) Church ban on polygamy (1890), Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal arrested en route to Cuba via Spain & imprisoned in Barcelona (1896), Austria annexed Bosnia & Herzegovina (1908), “The Jazz Singer” — the first film with a soundtrack — released (1927), Joseph Stalin announced the Soviet Union’s nuclear capability (1951), Agatha Christie’s play “The Mousetrap” opened in London (1952), Spartacus”, directed by Stanley Kubrick & starring Kirk Douglas & Laurence Olivier, premiered in NYC (1960), the Yom Kippur War brought the US & the USSR to the brink of conflict (1973), the Gang of Four arrested in Beijing (1976), Gerald Ford declared “no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe” in his debate with Jimmy Carter (1976), military coup leader Major Gen. Sitiveni Rabuka declared Fiji a republic (1987), Slobodan Milošević resigned as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (2000) & Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as a US Supreme Court justice (2018) on this day.
October 7
Niels Bohr (1885), Henry Wallace (1888), Elijah Muhammad (1896), Heinrich Himmler (1900), Shura Cherkassky (1909), Fernando Belaúnde Terry (1912), Irina Nijinska (1913), Walt Rostow (1916), Desmond Tutu (1931), Charles Dutoit (1936), Joy Occhiuto Behar (1942), Oliver North (1943), John Mellencamp (1951), Vladimir Putin (1952), Yo-Yo Ma (1955), Jayne Torvill (1957), Simon Cowell (1959), Dan Savage (1964) & Li Yundi (1982) were born #OnThisDay. George Mason (1792), Edgar Allan Poe (1849), Hubert Parry (1918), Radclyffe Hall (1943), Clarence Birdseye (1956), Mario Lanza [Alfredo Arnold Cocozza] (1959), Allan Bloom (1992), Agnes de Mille (1993), Herblock [Herbert Lawrence Block] (2001), Anna Politkovskaya (2006), Irving Penn (2009), George Baker (2011) & Patrice Chéreau (2013) died on this day. Spain & the Holy League destroyed the Ottoman navy at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), George III banned white settlement north & west of the Alleghenies (1763), carbon paper patented in London by Ralph Wedgwood (1807), Cornell University opened (1868), Leon Gambetta fled Paris in a balloon (1870), Twofold Covenant between Germany & Austria-Hungary (1879), slavery in Cuba abolished by Spain (1886), uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau (1944), the German Democratic Republic formed from Russian occupation zone (1949), US forces crossed the 38th parallel for the first time in the Korean War (1950), Allen Ginsberg read his poem “Howl” for the first time at a poetry reading in San Francisco (1955), “Pillow Talk” film directed by Michael Gordon and starring Doris Day & Rock Hudson released (1959), John F. Kennedy & Richard Nixon debated US foreign policy in the second of four televised debates (1960), Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratification signed into law by JFK (1963), “The French Connection” directed by William Friedkin & starring Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider & Fernando Rey premiered in the US (1971), Hua Guofeng succeeded Mao Zedong as chair of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (1976), Hosni Mubarak became acting president of Egypt (1981), the first issue of “the Independent” published in London (1986), Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment (1991), Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for literature (1993), Fox News launched by Rupert Murdoch & Roger Ailes (1996), Matthew Shepard found tied to a fence in Wyoming (1998), US forces began their assault on the Taliban in Afghanistn (2001), Arnold Schwarzenegger elected governor of California (2003), Norodom Sihanouk abdicated as king of Cambodia (2004), Barack Obama apologized to Doctors without Borders President & the president of Afghanistan for the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz (2015), the Washington Post released a videotape of Donald Trump boasting of groping & kissing women without consent (2016) & a Romanian referendum to ban same sex marriage failed with only 20.4% voting (2018) on this day.
October 8
Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox (1515), Louis Vierne (1870), Juan Domingo Perón (1895), Gus Hall (1910), Spark Matsunaga (1916), Kiichi Miyazawa (1919), Tōru Takemitsu (1930), J. Carter Brown (1934), Paul Hogan (1939), Lynne Stewart (1939), Jesse Jackson (1941), Chevy Chase (1943), Joseph Rescigno (1945), Jean-Jacques Beineix (1946), Dennis Kucinich (1946), Johnny Ramone [Cummings] (1948), Sigourney Weaver [Susan Alexandra] (1949), Darrel Hammond (1955), Ursula von der Leyen (1958), Steve Coll (1958), CeCe Winans [Priscilla Marie Winans Love] (1964), Matt Damon (1970), Soon-Yi Previn (1970), Sadiq Khan (1970), Nick Cannon (1980) & Bruno Mars [Peter Gene Hernandez] (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Johann Georg I of Saxony (1656), Yongzheng, 4th emperor of the Qing dynasty (1735), Henry Fielding (1754), John Hancock (1793), Henri Cristophe of Haiti (1820), François-Adrien Boieldieu (1834), Franklin Pierce (1869), Wendell Wilkie (1944), Kathleen Ferrier (1953), Nigel Bruce (1953), Clement Attlee (1967), Fernando Lamas (1982), Leon Klinghoffer (1985), Willy Brandt [Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm] (1992), Jacques Derrida (2004), Paul Prudhomme (2015), Hugh Scully (2015), Jerry Kleczka (2017) & Jim Dwyer (2020) died on this day. Battle of Cibalae (314), Council of Chalcedon (451), Battle of Andernach (876), the Great Stand on the Ugra River between Ivan III of the Rus & Akhmat Kahn of the Great Horde (1480), William Blake began studying at the Royal Academy (1779), the first Hawaiian constitution proclaimed (1840), the Second Opium War (second Anglo-Chinese War) began with the Arrow Incident on the Pearl River (1856), Peshtigo fire in Wisconsin (1871), Great Fire of Chicago (1871), Emperor Franz Josef named Gustav Mahler director of the Vienna Court Opera (1897), Cole Porter & E. Ray Goetz’ musical “Paris” opened at the Music Box Theater in Manhattan (1928), Bruno Hauptmann indicted for the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son (1934), Nazi Germany annexed western Poland (1939), German troops occupied Romania (1940), building at concentration camp Birkenau began (1941), China’s offensive in the Korean War launched (1952), Harold Macmillan led the Conservative Party to victory in the British general election (1959), Algeria admitted to the UN (1962), Der Spiegel scandal over “Bedingt abwehrbereit” (“Conditionally prepared for defense”) report on the West German military (1962), the Post Office Tower opened in London, then the tallest building in England (1965), Che Guevara & his men captured in Bolivia (1967), the House of Representatives voted articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton (1998) & George W. Bush announced the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security (2001).
Robert de Sorbon (1201), John Fisher (1469), Heinrich Schütz (baptized) (1585), Charles X of France (1757), Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823), Camille Saint-Saëns (1835), Alfred Dreyfus (1859), Hank Patterson (1888), Nikolai Ivanovich Bikharin (1888), Mário de Andrade (1893), Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906), Jacques Tati (1907), E. Howard Hunt (1918), Irmgard Seefried (1919), Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (1935), Brian Blessed (1936), John Lennon (1940), Trent Lott (1941), Jackson Browne (1948), Sharon Osbourne (née Levy) (1952), Tony Shalhoub (19530, Scott Bakula (1954), Guillermo del Toro (1964), David Cameron (1966), Steve McQueen (1969), Marie Kondo (1984) & Bella Hadid [Isabella Khair Hadid] (1996) were born #OnThisDay. Gabriel Fallopius [Fallopio] (1562), Baltasar Carlos, son of Philip IV of Spain (1646), Claude Perrault (1688), Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, English mistress of Charles II of England (1709), Benjamin Banneker (1806), Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1841), Pope Pius XII [Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli] (1958), Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (1967), Oskar Schindler (1974), Jacques Brel (1978), Clare Booth Luce (1987), Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1994), Kukrit Pramoj (1995), Aileen Wournos (2002), & Geoffrey Howe (2015) died on this day. Charlemagne & Carloman crowned kings of the Franks (768), Charles the Bald crowned king of Lotharingia (869), Leif Ericson reached ‘Vinland’ (possibly L’Anse aux Meadows), the last of the 16,000 Jews expelled by Edward I left England (1290), the Hangul alphabet published in Korea (1446), Roger Williams banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony (1635), the British parliament reconvened in Oxford to avoid the Great Plague of London (1665), Yale University’s predecessor the Collegiate School of Connecticut chartered in New Haven (1701), Prussia’s declaration of war on France (1806), University of Ghent opened (1817), slavery abolished in Costa Rica (1824), the British & French siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War (1854), Rome incorporated into Italy by royal decree (1870), Aaron Montgomery launched his mail order business (1872), Antwerp fell to German troops (1914), Serbia surrendered to the Axis powers (1915), Alexander I of Yugoslavia & French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou assassinated in Marseille by member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization organized by Ustaša (1934), St. Paul’s cathedral in London bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain (1940), FDR approved what would become known as the Manhattan Project (1941), Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” opened on Broadway (1946), Tanganyika became independent from Britain as Tanzania (1961), Uganda achieved independence from Britain (1962), Harold Macmillan resigned as British prime minister & was replaced by Alec Douglas-Home (1963), Cambodia declared independence from France (1970), Howard Stern began broadcasting on WCCC in Hartford (1979), capital punishment abolished in France (1981), Strawberry Fields dedicated in Central Park (1985), Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” premiered in London (1986), “The Late Show with Joan Rivers” premieres on Fox TV (1986), 25,000 Greeks demonstrated against Angela Merkel in Athens (2012), Malala Yousafzai shot three times by a Taliban gunman in Swat (2012), Harvey Weinstein is fired from The Weinstein Company after allegations of sexual abuse (2017) & the UN’s World Food Programme was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (2020) on this day.
October 10
Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684), Benjamin West (1738), Giuseppe Verdi (1813), Paul Kruger (1825), Fridtjof Nansen (1861), Willi Apel *1893), Helen Hayes (1900), Alberto Giacometti (1901), R.K. Narayan (1906), Thelonious Monk (1917), Ed Wood (1924), James Clavell (1924), Adlai Stevenson III (1930), Harold Pinter (1930), Ben Vereen (1946), Charles Dance (1946), Willard White (1946), Daniel Pearl (1963), Steve Scalise (1965), Gavin Newsom (1967), Chris Ofili (1968) & Evgeny Kissin (1971) were born #OnThisDay. Nicias (413 BCE), Germanicus Julius Caesar (19), Abel Tasman (1659), William H. Seward (1872), Adolphus Busch (1913), Karol I of Romania (1914), Édith Piaf [Édith Giovanna Gassion] (1963), Édouard Daladier (1970), Sir Ralph Richardson (1983), Orson Welles (1985), Yul Brynner (1985), Clark Clifford (1998), Sirimavo Bandaranaike (2000), Christopher Reeve (2004), Milton Obote (2005) & Dame Joan Sutherland (2010) died on this day. Umayyad army led by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi defeated by Frankish Aquitainian force led by Charles Martel during Umayyad invasion of Gaul at the Battle of Tours (732), Sten Sture’s Swedish army defeated Christian I’s Danish army at the Battle of Brunkeberg (1471), the Duke of Somerset removed as Lord Protector & imprisoned by the Duke of Warwick (1549), France declared war on Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI (1733), Neptune’s moon Triton discovered by William Lassell (1846), Cuba’s revolt against Spain began (1871), the Great Chicago Fire finally extinguished after 3 days (1871), 1st dinner jacket (tuxedo) worn to autumn ball at Tuxedo Park, NY (1886), Barnard College founded in New York City after Columbia University refused to accept women (1889), the Women’s Social & Political Union founded by Emmeline Pankhurst to fight for women’s rights in Britain (1903), Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionaries overthrew the Manchu Qing dynasty (1911), Yuan Shikai installed as the 1st President of China (1913), Italy annexed the South Tirol/Alto Adige (1920), George Gershwin’s “Porgy & Bess” opened on Broadway (1935), the League of Nations denounced the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (1935), Germany completed its annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland (1938), the US Naval Academy opened in Annapolis (1845), Dwight Eisenhower apologized to Ghana’s finance minister Komla Agbeli Gbedemah over an incident of discrimination in Dover (1957), Vinland Map introduced by Yale University as being the first known map of America, drawn about 1440 (1965), US Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned after pleading no contest to allegations of tax fraud (1973), Harold Wilson led the Labour Party to victory in the British general election (1974), arrest of Jiang Qing (widow of Mao Zedong) reported (1976), Daniel Arap Moi succeeded Jomo Kenyatta as President of Kenya (1978), Anwar Sadat’s funeral service held in Cairo (1981), Malala Yousafzai & Kailash Satyarthi won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize (2014) & “Thor: Ragnarok” directed by Taika Waititi, starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and Cate Blanchett premiered in LA (2017) on this day.
October 11
Henry John Heinz (1844), Harlan Fiske Stone (1872), Eleanor Roosevelt (1884), Fred Trump (1905), Jerome Robbins [Rabinowitz] (1918), Joséphine-Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (1927), Russell Oberlin (1928), Patty Murray (1950), Dawn French (1957), Jane Krakowski (1968) & Cardi B [Belcalis Almanzar] (1992) were born #OnThisDay. Huldrych Zwingli (1531), Casimir Pulaski (1779), Meriwether Lewis (1809), Anton Bruckner (1896), Jean Cocteau (1963), Dorothea Lange (1965), Redd Foxx (1991), Werner von Trapp (2007) & Jörg Haider (2008) died on this day. Henry VIII of England declared “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X (1521), Huldrych Zwingli killed at the Battle of Kappel (1531), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V conferred his succession rights to the duchy of Milan on his son Philip (1540), ratification of the first partition treaty between France, Britain & the Netherlands, ultimately superseded by the War of the Spanish Succession (1698), French victory at the Battle of Rocoux (1746), slavery abolished in Maryland (1864), Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II rejected a treaty with Italy (1895), Boer War in South Africa (1899), German troops occupied Ghent (1914), Bulgaria entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers (1915), “Laura” directed by Otto Preminger starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews is released in NYC, New York (1944), the Chinese civil war between Jiang Kaishek’s Guomintang & Mao Zedong’s Communist Party (1945), the Viet Minh formally took over Hanoi & North Vietnam (1954), Second Vatican Council (21st ecumenical) convened by Pope John XXIII (1962), coup d’état in Panama against President Arnulfo Arias (1968), Apollo 7 launched (1968), John Lennon’s “Imagine” released (1971), “Saturday Night Live” created by Lorne Michaels premiered on NBC with George Carlin as host (1975), Bill Clinton & Hillary Rodham’s wedding (1975), Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing & the other members of the Gang of Four arrested & charged with plotting a coup (1976) the Mary Rose raised in Portsmouth after sinking in 1545 (1982), George H.W. Bush & Geraldine Ferraro participated in a vice-presidential debate (1984), Ronald Reagan banned import of South African Krugerrands into the US (1985), Ronald Reagan & Mikhail Gorbachev met in Iceland (1986), LGBT rights march in Washington, DC (1987), Prof. Anita Hill testified against Clarence Thomas (1991), the first three-way presidential debate with George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton & Ross Perot (1992), Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (2002), “30 Rock” premiered on NBC (2006) & India recorded 7 million cases of COVID-19 (2020) on this day.
October 12
Edward VI of England (1537), Ramsay MacDonald (1866), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872), Aleister Crowley (1875), Dick Gregory (1932), Luciano Pavarotti (1935), Chris Wallace (1947), Hugh Jackson (1968), Nancy Kerrigan (1969), Kirk Cameron (1970) & Li Wenliang (1986) were born #OnThisDay. Piero della Francesca (1492), Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II (1576), Hiroshige Ando (1858), Roger Taney (1864), Robert E. Lee (1870), Edith Cavell (1915), Anatole France [Jacques Anatole Thibault] (1924), Joseph Stilwell (1946), Sonia Henie (1969), Dean Acheson (1971), Alfred Landon (1987), Jay Ward (1989), David McLean [Eugene Joseph Huth] (the Marlboro Man) (1995), René Lacoste (1996), John Denver (1997), Matthew Shepard (1998) & Wilt Chamberlain (1999) died on this day. Bablyon fell to the army of Cyrus the Great of Persia (539), Christopher Columbus made landfall (probably Watling Island in the Bahamas) (1492), John Dudley, Earl of Warwick deposed Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset as Lord Protector (1549), Rudolf II succeeded Maximilian II as Holy Roman Emperor (1576), the Delft Explosion (1656), Charles VI crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Frankfurt (1711), Louis XVI’s brother the Count of Artois (the future Charles X) wrote to the Holy Roman Emperor requesting military intervention to effect a coup d’état against the revolutionary régime in France (1789), first Columbus Day celebration in the USA held in NYC (1792), a Bavarian royal wedding set the precedent for Oktoberfest (1810), Galunggung’s second eruption in Java destroyed the summit of the mountain (1822), British & French troops captured Beijing (1860), Brazilian Gen. João Propício Mena Barreto invaded Uruguay, initiating the War of the Triple Alliance (1864), President Ulysses Grant condemned the Ku Klux Klan (1871), British troops occupied Kabul (1879), the Pledge of Allegiance first recited in public schools on Columbus Day (1892), Theodore Roosevelt renamed the ‘Executive Mansion’ as ‘The White House’ (1901), British nurse Edith Cavell executed by the Germans in Belgium (1915), Christ the Redeemer statue consecrated in Rio de Janeiro (1931), John F. Kennedy & Richard Nixon’s third presidential debate (1960), Nikita Khrushchev addressed the UN General Assembly (1960), Inejiro Asanuma assassinated during a televised debate (1960), Equatorial Guinea declared its independence from Spain (1968), Richard Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to replace Spiro Agnew as vice-president (1973), Hua Guofeng succeeded Mao Zedong as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (1976), Sid Vicious charged with the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen (1978), Margaret Thatcher escaped death in an IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton (1984), Oscar Arias of costa Rica won the Nobel Peace Prize (1987), Michael Dukakis & George H.W. Bush’s second presidential debate (1988), Nawaz Sharif ousted in a coup d’état in Pakistan led by Pervez Musharraf (1999), 202 killed in a terrorist attack in a Bali nightclub (2002), Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental work (2007), the European Union awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (2012), Evo Morales re-elected president of Bolivia (2014) & 57 were killed by the Bubonic plague in Madagascar (2017).
October 13
Lady Jane Grey (1537), Rudolf Virchow (1821), Lillie Langtry [Emilie Charlotte Le Breton] (1853), Robert Walker (1918), Yves Montand [Ivo Livi] (1921), Margaret Thatcher (1925), Nana Mouskouri (1934), Paul Simon (1941), Mike Barnicle (1943), Edwina Currie (1946), Mordechai Vanunu (1954), Maria Cantwell (1958), Jamal Khashoggi (1958), Marie Osmond (1959), Ari Fleischer (1960), Nancy Kerrigan (1969), Sacha Baron Cohen (1971), Billy Bush (1971), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989), Tiffany Trump (1993), Jimin [Park Ji-min] (1995) & Joshua Wong (1996) were born #OnThisDay. Claudius (54), Nichiren (1282), Joachim Murat (1815), Maximilian I of Bavaria (1825), Maria Feodorovna of Russia (Dagmar of Denmark) (1928), Milton Hershey (1945), Sydney Webb (1947), Clifton Webb [Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck] (1966), Ed Sullivan (1974), Stephen Ambrose (2002), Gary Collins (2012), Bhumibol Adulyadej [Rama IX], King of Thailand (1946-2016) (2016) & Dario Fo (2016) died on this day. Nero succeeded Claudius as Roman emperor after he was poisoned by his wife & niece & Nero’s mother Agrippina (54), Philip IV of France ordered the arrest of the Knights Templar & Grand Master Jacques de Molay (1307), Henry Bolingbroke crowned Henry IV of England in Westminster Abbey (1399), Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion against Henry VIII’s break with Rome (1536), Frederik III decreed absolute monarchy in Denmark (1660), Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI’s troops occupied Temesvar (1716), the Continental Congress authorized the creation of the the first American naval force — the precursor to the United States Navy (1775) the Colorado grand jury investigating the case of child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in December 1996 was dismissed & the Boulder County district attorney announced no indictments would be made due to insufficient evidence (1775), “Old Farmer’s Almanac” first published by Robert Thomas (1792), cornerstone laid for the Executive Mansion (White House) in Washington, D.C. (1792), B’nai B’rith founded in NYC (1943), Battle of Harper’s Ferry (1864), Maryland voters voted to adopt a new constitution that abolished slavery (1864), Gustav Mahler gave his first public piano performance at the age of 10 (1870), revival of Hebrew language by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda & friends (1881), Greenwich in London established as the universal time meridian of longitude (1884), Turkey’s capital transferred from Istanbul to Ankara (1923), Mecca taken by Saudi forces led by Abdulaziz Ibn Saud (1924), Noël Coward’s “Cavalcade” premiered in London (1931), Italy declared war on Germany (1943), “Kukla, Fran & Ollie” premiered (1947), “All About Eve” directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz & starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter premiered (1950), first issue of “L’Express” published in Paris (1955), third presidential debate between Richard Nixon & John F. Kennedy (1960), Edward Albee’s play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” opened on Broadway starring actress Uta Hagen (1962), Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes (1972), Swaziland promulgated a new constitution banning political parties (1978), carbon dating proved the Shroud of Turin to be a fake (1988), the Colorado grand jury investigating the case of child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in December 1996 was dismissed & the Boulder County district attorney announced no indictments will be made due to insufficient evidence (1999), 33 miners rescued from the Copiapó mine in Chile after 69 days (2010), Bob Dylan awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (2016), archaeologists announced the discovery of Arabic characters ‘Allah’ & ‘Ali’ on Viking funeral costumes from a grave in Gamla Uppsala (2017) & Pope Francis defrocked two Chilean bishops for alleged sexual abuse of minors (2018) on this day.
October 14
Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada (1420), Claude de France (1499), James II of England (1633), William Penn (1644), George Grenville (1712), Francis Lightfoot Lee (1734), Ferdinand VII of Spain (1784), Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871), Éamon de Valera (1882), Katherine Mansfield (1888), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890), Lilian Gish (1893), E.E.. Cummings (1894), Hannah Arendt (1906), Lê Ðức Thọ (1911), C. Everett Koop (1916), Lawrence Herkimer (1925), Roger Moore (1927), Gary Graffman (1928), Mobutu Sese Seku (1930), Farah Pahlavi (1938), Ralph Lauren (Lipschitz) (1939), Cliff Richard (1940), Katha Pollitt (1949), Isaac Mizrahi (1961), George Floyd (1973), Natalie Maines (1974), Usher (Raymond IV) (1978) & Ben Wishaw (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Harold II of England (Godwinson) (1066), Jacques Arcadelt (1568), František ‘Franz’ Xaver Brixi (1771), Erwin Rommel (1944), Errol Flynn (1959), Paul Ramadier (1961), Edith Evans (1976), Bing Crosby [Harry Lillis Crosby] (1977), Emil Gilels (1985), Leonard Bernstein (1990), Julius Nyerere (1999), Gerry Studds (2006), Simon MacCorkindale (2010), Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (2011), Arlen Specter (2012), Mathieu Kérékou (2015), Harold Bloom (2019), Sulli [Choi Jin-ri] (2019) died on this day. William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings (1066), Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeated Edward II of England at Byland (1322), Mary, Queen of Scots’ trial began (1586), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s collection of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” published (1892), Theodore Roosevelt shot while campaigning in Milwaukee (1912), Adolf Hitler sounded in a British gas attack in Ypres (1918), A. A. Milne’s book “Winnie the Pooh” published (1926), George Gershwin and Ira Gershin’s musical “Girl Crazy” starring Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman premiered in NYC (1930), Nazi Germany announced its withdrawal from the League of Nations (1933), London bombed by the German Luftwaffe during the Blitz (1940), Jewish uprising in the Nazi concentration camp in Sobibor (1943), the Unité d’Habitation designed by Le Corbusier is officially inaugurated in Marseille (1952), Madagascar became the autonomous Malagasy Republic within the French Community (1958), Martin Luther King, Jr. awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1964), Nikita Khrushchev replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1964), newly rebuilt Euston Station opened in London (1968), Olaf Palme formed a government in Sweden (1969), first gay & lesbian march on Washington (1979), 6,000 Unification Church couples wedded in Korea (1982), Ronald Reagan proclaimed a ‘War on Drugs’ (1982), coup in Grenada launched by deputy prime minister Bernard Coard (1983), Elie Wiesel awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1986), Aung San Suu Kyi awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1991), Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin & Shimon Peres awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1994), “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” premiered on the E! network (2007), Plácido Domingo awarded the first $1 million Birgit Nilsson Prize (2009), Barack Obama murdered Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (2011), terrorist bomb attack in Mogadishu killed more than 300 (2017), Harvey Weinstein expelled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (2017), Spain imposed direct rule on Catalonia after an independence referendum (2017) & nine Catalan separatist leaders imprisoned for sedition by Spain’s Supreme Court (2019) on this day.
October 15
Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] (70 BCE), Temür Khan, second emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1294-1307) (1265), Akbar, 3rd Mughal emperor of India (1556-1605) (1542), José Miguel Carrera, first president of Chile (1811-14) (1785), Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (1795), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844), Paul Reynaud (1878), P.G. Wodehouse (1881), Carol II of Romania (1893), Hiram Fong (1906), John Kenneth Galbraith (1908), Yitzhak Shamir (1915), Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1917), Mario Puzo (1920), Italo Calvino (1923), Lee Iacocca (1924), Karl Richter (1926), Michel Foucault (1926), Linda Lavin (1937), Mac Collins (1944), Sali Berisha (1944), Penny Marshall (1943), Haim Saban (1944), Kay Ivey (1944), Richard Carpenter (1946), Emeril Lagasse (1959) & Dominic West (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Abd al-Rahman III, Umayyad emir (912-29) & caliph of Córdoba (929-961) (961), Antoine Laumet de La Mothe Cadillac (1730), Tadeusz Kościuszko (1817), Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1817), Mata Hari [Margaretha Geertruida Zelle] (1917), Raymond Poincaré (1934), Pierre Laval (1945), Hermann Göring (1946), Cole Porter (1964), the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam organized mass draft card burnings across the US (1965), Sylvester Magee (1971), Carlo Gambino (1976), Thomas Sankara (1987), Norodom Sihanouk (2012), Claude Cheysson (2012) & Paul Allen (2018) died on this day. Henry VIII of England ordered bowling lanes installed in Whitehall (1520), Hernán Cortés named governor of Mexico by Charles I of Spain (Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) (1522), Torsåker witch trials began (the largest witch trials in Sweden ended with 71 beheaded & burned) (1674), Edward Gibbon inspired to begin work on “The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire” (1764), Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on the island of St. Helena (1815), the first Cliff House opened in San Francisco (1863), Chiricahua Apache leader Victorio killed in Texas (1880), Captain Alfred Dreyfus arrested & accused of espionage in France (1894), Claude Debussy’s symphonic sketch “La Mer” premiered in Paris (1905), Mata Hari [Margaretha Geertruida Zelle] executed in Paris for spying for Germany (1917), André Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto” published by Éditions du Sagittaire in Paris (1924), La Guardia Airport opened in Queens (1939), Charlie Chaplin’s satirical film “The Great Dictator” released (1940), Hideki Tojo appointed prime minister of Imperial Japan (1941), Jews confined to the Warsaw Ghetto by Nazi Germany on pain of death (1941), Hermann Göring’s suicide in prison (1946), Gerald Ford married Elizabeth Bloomer (1948), “I Love Lucy” debuted on CBS (1951), “Charlotte’s Web” by E. B. White & illustrated by Garth Williams published by Harper & Brothers (1952), Henri Cartier-Bresson’s influential photography book “The Decisive Moment” published (1952), William J. Brennan, Jr. appointed to US Supreme Court (1956), Byron ‘Whizzer’ White appointed to US Supreme Court (1962), Ludwig Erhard succeeded Konrad Adenauer as chancellor of West Germany (1963), the Black Panther Party created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland (1966), Anwar Sadat succeeded Gamal Abdel Nasser as president of Egypt (1970), Dolly Parton’s single “Jolene” released (1973), first vice-presidential debate between Democratic & Republican nominees between Walter Mondale & Bob Dole (1976), military coup in El Salvador forcing President Carlos Romero to flee (1979), President Thomas Sankara killed in a coup in Burkina Faso (1987), Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize (1990), Clarence Thomas confirmed to the US Supreme Court by the Senate (52-48) (1991), Nelson Mandela and South African President F. W. de Klerk awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1993), Cassini Saturn probe launched (1997), 11 killed when the Staten Island ferry Andrew J. Barberi collided with a pier at the St. George ferry terminal (2003), the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) won a plurality of seats in parliament, (62), led by 32-year-old Sebastian Kurz (2017) & the Thai military junta issued an emergency decree banning public gatheirngs & pro-democracy protests against the junta & the king (2020) on this day.
October 16
Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663), Noah Webster (1758), Itō Hirobumi (1841), Oscar Wilde (1854), David Ben-Gurion (1886), Eugene O’Neill (1888), Michael Collins (1890), Enver Hoxha (1908), Angela Lansbury (1925), Günter Grass (1927), Charles Colson (1931), Paul Monette (1945), Tim Robbins (1958), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (1962) & Naomi Osaka (1997) was born #OnThisDay. Lucas Cranach der Ältere (1553), Hugh Latimer (1555), Nicholas Ridley (1555), Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1621), François de Malherbe (1628), Grigory Potemkin (1791), Marie Antoinette (1793), Jean de Brunhoff (1937), Alfred Jodl (1946), Hans Frank (1946), Joachim von Ribbentrop (1946), Wilhelm Keitel (1946), George Marshall (1959), Hale Boggs (1972), Moshe Dayan (1981), Mario del Monaco (1982), Arthur Grumiaux (1986), Cornel Wilde [Kornel Lajos Weisz], Shirley Booth (1992), Audra Lindley (1997), James A. Michener (1997), Etta Jones (2001), Pierre Salinger (2004), Ursula Howells (2005), Deborah Kerr (2007), Barbara West (2007) & Barbara Billingsley (2010) died on this day. Jadwiga crowned female king of Poland (1384), Napoleon’s troops defeated by Prussia, Austria & Russia in the Battle of Leipzig (the largest battle in Europe before World War I) (1813), most of the Palace of Westminster in London burnt down in a fire (1834), Charlotte Brontë’s novel “Jane Eyre” published (1847), John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in Virginia (1859), Brigham Young University founded in Provo (1875), Anglo-German Treaty on China (1900), Booker T. Washington invited to dine at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt (1901), Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” premiered at the Choralion-Saal in Berlin (1912), George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna (1913), Britain declared war on Bulgaria (1915), Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US in Brooklyn (1916), the Walt Disney Company founded (1923), Locarno Pact (1925), Mao Zedong & 25,000 Communist troops began the Long March (1934), Warsaw Ghetto established by German Governor-General Hans Frank (1940), Aaron Copland & Agnes de Mille’s ballet “Rodeo” premiered in NYC (1942), Mayor Ed Kelly opened Chicago’s new subway system (1943), Nazis rounded up Jews in Rome & sent them to Auschwitz (1943), 10 Nazi leaders hanged as war criminals after Nuremberg war trials, including Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop & Alfred Jodl (1946), the first edition of C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe” published in London (1950), the Cuban Missile Crisis began (1962), China became the fifth nuclear power (1964), Harold Wilson led the Labour Party to victory in the British general election (1964), Americans Tommie Smith (gold 19.83 WR) & John Carlos (bronze) gave the Black Power salute on the 200m medal podium during the Mexico City Olympics (1968), Henry Kissinger & Le Duc Tho controversially awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1973), Maynard Jackson elected first black mayor of Atlanta (1973), Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla elected Pope John Paul II (1978), Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy,” premiered in NYC (1981), Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1984), Baby Jessica rescued from a well. in Texas (1987), Augusto Pinochet arrested in London (1998), Panama Papers Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia killed by a car bomb in Malta (2017), Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denied murdering Jamal Khashoggi in a meeting with Donald Trump (2018) & French teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by 18 year-old Islamist militant in Paris suburb of Éragny (2020) on this day.
October 17
August III of Poland (1696), Georg Büchner (1813), Yaa Asantewaa (1840), Herbert Howells (1892), Shinichi Suzuki (1898), Nathanael West (1903), Pope John Paul I [Albino Luciano] (1912), Jerry Siegel (1914), Arthur Miller (1915), Rita Hayworth [Margarita Cansino] (1918), Montgomery Clift (1920), Tom Poston (1921), Jimmy Breslin (1930), Robert ‘Evel’ Knievel (1938), Margot Kidder (1948), Richard Roeper (1959), Doug McMillon (1966), Wyclef Jean (1969), Eminem [Marshall Bruce Mathers III] (1972) & Matthew Macfadyen (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Agrippina the Elder (33), Sir Philip Sidney (1586), René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1757), Frédéric Chopin (1849), Julia Ward Howe (1910), Yaa Asantewaa (1921), Wieland Wagner (1966), Henry Pu Yi (1967), Raymond Aron (1983), Alberta Hunter (1984), Ralph Abernathy (1990) & ‘Tennessee’ Ernie Ford (1991) died on this day. Mt. Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis & Stabiae (79), David II of Scotland captured by Edward III of England at the Battle of Neville’s Cross in Calais (1346), Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II at the Second Battle of Kosovo (1448), Tomas de Torquemada appointed inquisitor-general of Spain (1483), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V left the Netherlands for Spain (1556), the future Charles II fled England (1651), execution of the Nine Regicides who signed the death warrant of Charles I (1660), Ivan VI became tsar of Russia (1740), British General John Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga during the American Revolutionary War (1777), resolution approved by Texans creating the Texas Rangers (1835), Bernhard von Bülow became Germany’s chancellor (1900), Amadeo Giannini’s Bank of Italy (Bank of America) opened in San Francisco (1904), Serbia & Greece declared war on Ottoman Turkey (1912), Al Capone sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion (1931), “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” directed by Frank Capra & starring James Stewart & Jean Arthur released (1939), “Around the World in 80 Days” — based on the book by Jules Verne, directed by Michael Anderson & starring David Niven & Cantinflas — premiered in New York (1956), the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced an oil embargo of the US & other countries supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War (1973), Mother Teresa of Calcutta awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1979), “The Sally Jessy Raphael Show” with Sally Jessy Raphael debuted on KSDK” (1983), Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law appropriating $100 million for the Nicaraguan Contras (1986), “The Colbert Report” hosted by Stephen Colbert debuted (2005), US population reached 300 million (2006), the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal (2007), Iran’s attempt to create the world’s largest sandwich (1,500 metres) failed when crowds eat it before it can be measured (2008), Lance Armstrong lost a host of endorsements in the wake of his doping scandal (2012) & Jacinda Ardern led the Labour Party to a landslide re-election victory in New Zealand’s general election (2020) on this day.
October 18
Luca Giordano (1634), Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663), Johan Georg IV, elector of Saxony (1668), Giovanni Canale, a.k.a., ‘Canaletto’ (1697), Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741), Heinrich von Kleist (1777), Rama IV [Phra Chomklao Chaoyuhua], king of Thailand (1851-68) (1804), Henri Bergson (1859), D.T. Suzuki (1870), Lotte Lenya Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer, Felix Houphoet-Boigny (1905), Konstantinos Mitsotakis (1918), Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919), Melina Mercouri (1920), Jesse Helms (1921), Chuck Berry Charles Andersen, Klaus Kinski Naksynski, George C. Scott (1927), Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1929), Frank Carlucci (1930), Vytautas Landsbergis (1932), Peter Boyle (1935), Dawn Wells (1938), Lee Harvey Oswald (1939), Mike Ditka (1939), Christopher Shays (1945), Sheila White (1950), Wendy Wasserstein (1950), Pam Dawber (1951), Chuck Lorre (1952), Martina Navratilova (1956), Erin Moran (1960), Jean-Claude Van Damme (1960), Wynton Marsalis (1961) & Zac Efron (1987) were born #OnThisDay. Margaret Tudor, queen of Scots (1541), John Taverner (1545), Maria, queen of Hungary & governor of the Netherlands (1558), Jacob Jordaens (1678), Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (1744), Jean-Dominique, comte de Cassini (1845), Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1865), Charles Gounod (1893), Ludwig III of Bavaria (1921), Thomas Edison (1931), José Ortega y Gasset (1955), Sebastian Kresge (1966), Walt Kelly (1973), Leo Strauss (1973), Bess Truman (1982), Pierre Mendès-France (1982), Nancy Dickerson (1997), Gwyneth ‘Gwen’ Verdon (2000), Kam Fong Chun (2002) & Wynand Breytenbach (2002) died on this day. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (1009), Anglo-Saxons defeated by Danish Vikings at the Battle of Ashingdon (1016), the University of Heidelberg opened (1386), Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile (1469), the Treaty of Montpellier between Louis XIII & French Huguenots (1622), the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle signed ending War of Austrian Succession (1748), Mason-Dixon Line agreed upon (1767), African-American poet Phillis Wheatley freed from slavery (1775), British troops destroyed the Yuanmingyuan (Summer Palace) in Beijing (1860), the US took formal possession of Alaska after paying Russia $7.2 million for the territory (1867), anti-socialist laws enacted by Germany’s Reichstag (1878), the US took control of Puerto Rico (1898), Gustav Mahler’s 5th symphony premiered in Cologne (1904), E. M. Forster’s novel “Howards End” published (1910), the Treaty of Lausanne concluding the Italo-Turkish War enabled Italy to annex Libya (1912), Schoenstatt Movement founded in Germany (1914), Czechoslovakia declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire (1918), British Broadcasting Company (BBC) founded (1922), film adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical “West Side Story” released (1961), James Watson (US), Francis Crick (UK) & Maurice Wilkins (UK) won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work in determining the structure of DNA (1962), Walt Disney’s animated musical adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” film released (1967), the US Olympic Committee suspends Tommie Smith & John Carlos for giving the Black Power salute to protest racism and injustice against African-Americans during Olympic medal ceremony (1968), the Clean Air Act became law in the US (1972), Andreas Papandreou’s PASOK won Greece’s parliamentary elections (1981), Gen. Jaruzelski elected Communist Party leader in Poland (1981), Israel’s supreme court upheld the ban on Meir Kahane’s Kach Party as racist (1988), “Roseanne” premiered on ABC (1988), Erich Honecker resigned as East Germany’s head of state (1989), Hungary adopted a post-Communist constitution (1989), NASA launched STS 34 (Atlantis 5) into orbit (its 62nd manned space mission) (1989), Guggenheim Musueum opened in Bilbao (1997) & Benazir Bhutto escaped an assassination attempt upon her return to Pakistan after 8 years in exile (2007).
October 19
Min Jayeong 민자영 (a.k.a., Queen Min , a.k.a., Empress Myeongseong 명성황후) of Korea (1851), Auguste Lumière (1862), Louis Mumford (1895), Erna Berger (1900), Emil Gilels (1916), Louis Althusser (1918), LaWanda Page [Alberta Peal] (1920), Jack Anderson (1922), Bernard Hepton (1925), Joel Feinberg (1926), John le Carré [David Cornwell] (1931), Robert Reed (1932), Sylvia Browne (1936), Peter Max (1937), Michael Gambon (1940), Simon Ward (1941), Divine [Harris Glenn Milstead] (1945), John Lithgow (1945), Patricia Ireland (1945), Kenneth Washington (1947), Prince Laurent of Belgium (1963), Ty Pennington [Gary Tygert Burton] (1964), Amy Carter (1967) & Pedro Castillo (1969) were born #OnThisDay. King John of England (1216), Jonathan Swift (1745), George Pullman (1897), Edna St. Vincent Millay (1950), Elizabeth Arden (1966), Jacqueline du Pré (1987), Petra Kelly (1992) & Tom Bosley (2010) died on this day. Hannibal Barca & the Carthaginian army defeated by Roman legions under Scipio Africanus, at the Battle of Zama, ending 2nd Punic War (202 BCE), Carthage captured by the Vandales under Gaiseric (439), the Second Peace of Thorn ended the Thirteen Years’ War (1466), the 26 Martyrs of Japan executed by crucifixion on the island of Shikoku (1596), British forces under General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown at 2 pm, ending the US Revolutionary War (1781), the Edict of Toleration issued by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1781), the Gazette of the United States published an essay by ‘Phocion’ accusing Thomas Jefferson of having an affair with an enslaved woman (1796), Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grande Armée began their retreat from Moscow (1812), Richard Wagner’s opera “Tannhäuser” premiered in Dresden (1845), Edward Elgar’s “Pomp & Circumstance March” premieres in Liverpool (1901), the First Battle of Ypres (1914), Russia & Italy declared war on Bulgaria (1915), Leon Trotsky & his followers were expelled from the Soviet Politburo by Joseph Stalin (1926), Mao Zedong’s army reached Shanxi at the end of the Long March (1935), US & UN forces entered Pyongyang (1950), US forces returned to the Philippines (1944), Harry Truman formally terminated the state of war with Germany (1951), Mauritania granted independence from France (1960), the first Blockbuster video rental store opened in Dallas (1985), the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 508 points — 22.6% — on ‘Black Monday’ (1987), “Dances with Wolves” directed by Kevin Costner & starring Kevin Costner & Mary McDonnell premiered in Washington, D.C. (1990), Cher’s “Believe” single released (1999), Mother Teresa of Calcutta beatified by Pope John Paul II (2003), Saddam Hussein went on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity (2005), Justin Trudeau led the Liberal Party to a majority of 184 in the parliamentary elections in Canada (2015), Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton’s third presidential debate (2016), at 37, Jacinda Ardern became the youngest leader in New Zealand in 161 years, forming a coalition government led by the Labour Party (2017) & a Ming handscroll painting “Ten Views of Lingbi Rock” by Wu Bin sold for 512.9 million yuan ($77 million) at auction in Beijing, a new world record for a classical Chinese art (2020) on this day.
October 20
Andrea Della Robbia (1435), Sir Christopher Wren (1632), Nicolas de Largillière (1656), Stanislaus Leszczyński, king of Poland (1677), Pauline Bonaparte (1780), Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784), Arthur Rimbaud (1854), John Dewey (1859), Charles Ives (1874), Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Sr. (1877), Bela Lugosi [Blaskó] (1882), Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton [LeMothe] (1890), Jomo Kenyatta (1891), Arlene Francis (1907), Will Rogers, Jr. (1911), Hershel Bernardi (1923), Art Buchwald (1925), Joyce Brothers (1927), Li Peng (1928), Mickey Mantle (1931), Michiko, empress of Japan (1934), Jerry Orbach (1935), Danny Boyle (1956), Ivo Pogorelić (1958), Viggo Mortensen (1958), Kamala Harris (1964), Sunny Hostin (1968), Michelle Malkin (1970), Snoop Dogg [Calvin Broadus] (1971) & John Krasinski (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Conrad Hohenstauren (last Duke of Swabia) (1268), Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI (1740), Richard Francis Burton (1890), Eugene V. Debs (1926), Anne Sullivan [Johanna Macy] (1936), Henry L. Stimson (1950), Herbert Hoover (1964), Samora Machel (1986), Anthony Quayle (1989), Burt Lancaster (1994), Jack Lynch (1999), Jane Wyatt (2006), Bob Guccione (2010), Muammar Gaddafi (2011), Oscar de la Renta (2014) & Wim Kok (2018) died on this day. The first Crusaders arrived in Antioch during the First Crusade (1097), Tokugawa victory in the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), Georg Ludwig von Hannover crowned king of England (1714), Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg Erblande, succeeding Charles VI (1740), the US Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase (1803), Napoleon abolished the Kingdom of Westphalia (1813), the Sunday Times of London’s first issue published (1822), Ottoman Turkish defeat at the Battle of Navarino (1827), amnesty proclaimed for escaped slaves of Surinam (1862), Bolivia & Chile signed a treaty ending the War of the Pacific (1904), Tsar Nicholas II allowed the Polish people to speak Polish in order to stem rebellion in Poland (1905), Leopold II sold the Congo to Belgium (1908), Norwegian Roald Amundsen set out for the South Pole (1911), Germany agreed to concessions in order to secure an armistice ending World War I (1918), Mao Zedong led Communists to Yanan in Shaanxi, ending the Long March (1935), Gen. Douglas MacArthur & the US 6th Army landed on Leyte (1944), the House Un-American Activities Committee launched its witch hunt of suspected communists in Hollywood (1947), “The Return of the King” — the 3rd & final volume of “The Lord of the Rings” by J. R. R. Tolkien — published by George Allen and Unwin in London (1955), Peter, Paul & Mary’s debut folk album “Peter, Paul & Mary” reached No. 1 on US album charts (1962), West German Chancellor Willy Brandt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1971), Queen Elizabeth II opened the Sydney opera house designed by Jørn Utzon (1973), Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson & Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus resigned, refusing Richard Nixon’s orders to discharge Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in ‘the Saturday Night Massacre’ (1973), subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz sentenced to 6 months in jail (1987), Muammar Gaddafi & Moatassem Gaddafi killed in Libya (2011), Joko Widodo elected president of Indonesia (2014), Laquan McDonald shot dead by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke (2014), Pixar’s “Coco premiered at the Morelia film festival (2017) & the US Department of Justice sued Google over its illegal search & search advertising monopoly (2020) on this day.
October 21
George, Duke of Clarence (brother of Edward IV & Richard III) (1449), Domenico Zampieri (1581), Nicolaus Bernouilli (1687), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772), Alfred Nobel (1833), Georg von Siemens (1839), Giuseppe Giacosa (1847), Ted Shawn (1891), Peter Graves (1911), Sir Georg Solti [György Stern] (1912), John Birks ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie (1917), Sir Malcolm Arnold (1921), Liliane de Bettencourt (1922), Joyce Randolph (1924), Celia Cruz (1924), Ursula K. Le Guin (1929), Judith ‘Judge Judy’ Sheindlin (1942), Tariq Ali (1943), Benjamin Netanyahu (1949), Shulamit Ran (1949), David Lascelles, Earl of Harewood (1950), Peter Mandelson (1953), Carrie Fisher (1956), Ken Watanabe (1959) & Kim Kardashian (1980) was born #OnThisDay. Charles VI of France (1422), Horatio Nelson (1805), Jack Kerouac (1969), John T. Scopes (1970), Hans Asperger (1980), François Truffaut (1984), Melchior Ndadaye (1993), Linda Goodman (1995), Maxene Andrews (1995), Alan, Baron Sainsbury (1998), George McGovern (2012), Ben Bradlee (2014) & Gough Whitlam (2014) died on this day. Ferdinand Magellan & his fleet reached Cape Virgenes and become the first Europeans to sail into the Pacific Ocean (1520), English parliament refused to recognize Philip of Spain as king (1555), Admiral Horatio Nelson killed defeating Napoleon’s French & Spanish forces at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), Florence Nightingale & 38 nurses sent to tend to British soldiers in the Crimean War (1854), Jacques Offenbach’s operetta ” Orpheus in the Underworld” (Orphée aux Enfers) premieres in Paris (1858), German chancellor Otto von Bismarck declared an end to ‘socialism’ (1878), Japanese invasion of Taiwan (1895), Battle of Warsaw (1914), President Warren G. Harding condemned lynching of African Americans in a speech in Alabama (1921), Chinese forces occupied Tibet (1950), the death penalty abolished in Belgium (1950), Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright opened in Manhattan (1959), John F. Kennedy & Richard Nixon’s fourth presidential debate (1960), “My Fair Lady” directed by George Cukor & starring Rex Harrison & Audrey Hepburn premiered in New York (1964), 116 children & 28 adults died as a coal waste heap slid and engulfed a school in the Welsh town of Aberfan (1966), Willy Brandt elected chancellor of (West) Germany (1969), the Unification Church wed 777 couples in Korea (1970), Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for literature (1971), William H Rehnquist & Lewis F Powell nominated to the US Supreme Court by Nixon, following the retirement of Justices Hugo Black & John Harlan (1971), Ferdinand & Imelda Marcos indicted on racketeering charges (1988), coup in Burundi & assassination of the president (1993), Oscar Pistorius sentenced to five years in prison for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (2014), German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed the official German view of the Holocaust despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that it was launched by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (2015), the Spanish government suspended Catalonia’s autonomy as Catalonian separatists pressed for independence from Spain (2017), Thailand’s King Vajiralongkorn stripped his royal consort Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi of her titles (2019) & Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party lost its majority in parliamentary elections in Canada but won a plurality sufficient to form a minority government (2019) on this day.
October 22
Magnus Huss (1807), Franz Liszt (1811), Collis P. Huntington (1821), Leopold Damrosch (1832), Sarah Bernhardt (1844), Louis Riel (1844), Alfred Douglas (‘Bosey’) (1870), Giovanni Martinelli (1885), Bảo Đại (1913), Robert Capa (1913), Joan Fontaine (1917), Timothy Leary (1920), Georges Brasens (1921), John Chafee (1922), Robert Rauschenberg (1925), Donald McIntyre (1934), Derek Jacobi (1938), Tony Roberts (1939), Charles Keating (1941), Annette Funicello (1942), Catherine Deneuve [Dorleac] (1943), Haley Barbour (1947), Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme (1948), Jeff Goldblum (1952), Brian Boitano (1963) & Helmut Lottie [Lotigiers](1969) were born #OnThisDay. Charles Martel (741), Gian Galeazzo, duke of Milan (1494), Alessandro Scarlatti (1725), Paul Cézanne (1906), Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd (1934), Frank Damrosch (1937), Paul Tillich (1965), Pablo Casals [Pau Casals i Defilló] (1973), Arnold J. Toynbee (1975), Nadia Boulanger (1979), Kingsley Amis (1995), Miary Wickes [Wickenhauser] (1995), Soupy Sales [Milton Supman] (2009), Russell Means (2012) & Raymond Leppard (2019) died on this day. New York’s original Metropolitan Opera House had its grand opening with a performance of the opera “Faust” (1883), “Now, Voyager” film directed by Irving Rapper & starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid & Claude Rains premiered in New York (1942), Laos gained independence from France (1953), West Germany joined NATO (1954), Konrad Adenauer re-elected chancellor of West Germany (1957), first American casualties in the Vietnam War (1957), 75,000 Flemings demanded equal rights & Flemish language in Belgium (1961), John F. Kennedy’s TV address on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), Jean-Paul Sartre declined a Nobel Prize (1964), LBJ signed the Highway Beautification Act into law (1965), UN Security Council Resolution 338 re a cease fire to end the Yom Kippur War (1973), Sgt. Leonard Matlovich given a general discharge from the Air Force after coming out as gay (1975), the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi arrived in NYC for medical treatment (1979), South Korea’s new constitution came into effect (1980), the former Uruguayan dictator Gregorio Álvarez sentenced to 25 years in prison for aggravated murder of 37 Uruguayan dissidents who had fled to Argentina (2009), Lance Armstrong stripped of his seven Tour de France titles (2012), “Thor: The Dark World” — directed by Alan Taylor, starring Chris Hemsworth & Natalie Portman — premieres in London (2013), Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan agreed on a deal to jointly control former Kurdish territory in Northern Syria (2019), legislation for Northern Ireland legalizing same-sex marriage and abortion comes into effect (2019), Bill Taylor testified that President Donald Trump tied aid to Ukraine to demands the country open an investigation into the Biden family (2019) & Goldman Sachs agreed to pay record $3 billion to end probe into its role in 1MDB corruption scandal to regulators in the US, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia (2020) on this day.
October 23
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (63), Peter II, tsar of Russia (1715), Gustav Albert Lortzing (1801), Pierre Athanase Larousse (1817), Frank Sutton (1923), Ned Rorem (1923), John Carson (1925), Jim Bunning (1931), John Heinz (1938), Pelé [Edson Arantes do Nascimento] (1940), Michael Crichton (1942), Ang Lee (1954), Paul Kagame (1957), Michael Eric Dyson (1958), Weird Al Yankovic [Alfred Matthew] (1959), Sanjay Gupta (1969), Ryan Reynolds (1976) & Meghan McCain (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Marcus Junius Brutus (42 BCE), San Juan de Capistrano (1456), Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (1869), Théophile Gautier (1872), Abraham Geiger (1874), Georg von Siemens (1901), Rama V [Chulalongkorn], King of Thailand (1868-1910) (1910), Al Jolson (1950), Christian Dior (1957), Louis Althusser (1990), Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford (2002), Soong Mei-ling [Madame Chiang Kai-shek] (2003), Robert Merrill [Moishe Miller] (2004) & Tom Hayden (2016) died on this day. Octavian & Mark Antony defeated Brutus at the Second Battle of Philippi (42 BCE), Charles V crowned Holy Roman Emperor (1520), the remnants of the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s Spanish Armada returned to Santander (1588), the War of Jenkins’ Ear began with Robert Walpole’s declaration of war on Spain (1739), failed coup d’état against Napoléon Bonaparte, emperor of the French (1812), Walt Disney’s animated film “Dumbo” released (1941), Battle of Leyte in the Philippines (1944), Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1958), the Smurfs first appeared in the story “Johan & Pirlouit” by Belgian cartoonist Peyo (1958), Richard Nixon agreed to turn over White House tape recordings to Judge John Sirica (1973), Hungary proclaimed the end of Communist rule (1989), Clarence Thomas sworn in as a US Supreme Court justice (1991), anti-abortion terrorist James Charles Kopp murdered Dr. Bernard Slepian (1998), Chechen rebels stormed a theater in Moscow, taking 800 Russians hostage (2002), Adele’s song “Hello” released (2015), Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared the killing of Jamal Khashoggi premeditated murder (2018), Megyn Kelly criticized for her comments on her NBC show supporting blackface (2018) & “Bohemian Rhapsody” —a biopic about Freddie Mercury directed by Bryan Singer & starring Rami Malek —premieres in London (2018) on this day.
October 24
Domitian (51), Emmerich Kálmán (1882), Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (1891), Moss Hart (1904), Tito Gobbi (1913), Luciao Berio (1925), Johan Galtung (1930), David Nelson (1936), F. Murray Abraham (1939), David Sainsbury (1940), José E. Serrano (1943), Kevin Kline (1947), Kweisi Mfume (1948), Malcolm Turnbull (1954), B.D. Wong (1960), Mary Bono (1961), Drake [Aubrey Drake Graham] (1986) & PewDiePie [Felix Kjellberg] were born #OnThisDay. Hugh Capet, king of France (987-996) (996), Jane Seymour (1537), Tycho Brahe (1601), Daniel Webster (1852), George Cadbury (1922), Louis Renault (1944), Vidkun Quisling (1945), Franz Lehár (1948), G.E. Moore (1958), Jackie Robinson (1972), David Oistrakh (1974), Jessica Savitch (1983), Gene Roddenberry (1991), Raul Julia (1994), Harry Hay (2002), Rosa Parks (2005), Immanuel C.Y. Hsu (2005), Maureen O’Hara [FitzSimons] (2015), Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino (2017) & Robert Guillaume [Williams] (2017) died on this day. Chartres cathedral dedicated in the presence of Louis IX of France (1260), the Treaty of Brétigny ratified at Calais, marking the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1360), Johannes Kepler succeeded Tycho Brahe as imperial mathematician to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1601), the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War (1648), the third partition of Poland (1795), Felix Mendelssohn performed in public for the first time at age 9 in Berlin (1818), William Lassell discovered the moons of Uranus, Ariel & Umbriel (1851), Johann Strauss’ operetta “Der Zigeunerbaron” (The Gypsy Baron) premiered in Vienna (1885), first barrel ride down Niagara Falls (1901), German & Austrian forces crushed the Italian army at the Battle of Caporetto (1917), coup d’état in Brazil against Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa (the last president of the First Republic) led by Getúlio Vargas (1930), the George Washington Bridge dedicated (1931), nylon stockings sold for the first time in Wilmington (1939), Maréchal Philippe Pétain met Adolf Hitler (1940), the United Nations born as its charter came into effect (1945), Bernard Baruch introduced the term ‘Cold War’ (1948), Harry Truman declared the war with Germany officially over (1951), Dwight Eisenhower pledged US support to South Vietnam (1954), Soviet troops invaded Hungary, making Imre Nagy prime minister (1956), Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph line (1961), Soviet ships approached Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), “The Manchurian Candidate” — directed by John Frankenheimer, starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey — released (1962), Northern Rhodesia gained independence from Britain as Zambia (1964), Richard Burton gave Elizabeth Taylor a 69-carat Cartier diamond costing $1.5 million (1969), Salvador Allende elected president of Chile by Congress (1970), end of the Yom Kippur War (1973), American televangelist Jim Bakker sentenced to 45 years in prison for fraud, later reduced to eight years on appeal (1989), Walt Disney Concert Hall — the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, designed by Frank Gehry — opened in downtown Los Angeles (2003), the Concorde made its final flight (2003), the first International Day of Climate Action (2009), the remains of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco removed from a mausoleum in the Valley of the Fallen & reburied in a private family vault in Madrid (2019) on this day.
October 25
Thomas Weekles (1576), Elisabeth Farnese, princess of Parma & queen of Spain (1692), William Grenville, British prime minister (1759), Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800), Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825), Georges Bizet (1838), Pablo Picasso (1881), Father Charles Coughlin (1891), Henry Steele Commager (1902), Minnie Pearl [Sarah Ophelia Colley] (1912), Klaus Barbie (1913), Marion Ross (1928), Annie Girardot (1931), Bobby Knight (1940), Helen Reddy (1941), James Carville (1944), Ransom Wilson (1951), Samantha Bee (1969), Midori [Gotō] (1971), Katy Perry [Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson] (1984) & Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant, heir apparent to the Belgian throne (2001) were born #OnThisDay. Gaius Plinius Secundus [Pliny the Elder] (79), Geoffrey Chaucer (1400), George II of England (1760), Frank Norris (1902), Alexander, king of Greece (1920), Frank Sprague (1934), Robert Delaunay (1941), Virgil Fox (1980), Ariel Durant (1981), Forrest Tucker (1986), Vincent Price (1993), Mildred Natwick (1994), Bobby Riggs (1995), Richard Harris (2002), Paul Wellstone (2002), Jacques Barzun (2012) & Nigel Davenport (2013) died on this day. Seljuk Turks defeated German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum (1147), Henry V’s English longbows defeated a much larger French army at the Battle of Agincourt (1415), Giovanni Cassini discovered Saturn’s moon Iapetus (1671), George III became king of England (1760), more than a hundred killed in the infamous ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War (1854), he first performance of the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Boston with Hans von Bülow as soloist (1875), premiere of Johannes Brahms’ 4th Symphony in E (1885), Georges Clémenceau succeeded Ferdinand Sarien as prime minister of France (1906), US Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall convicted of accepting $100,000 bribe in the Teapot scandal (1929), Dubuque Archbishop Francis Beckman denounced swing music (1938), Jean Anouilh’s play “La Répétition ou l’Amour Puni” premiered in Paris at the Théâtre Marigny (1950), Austria’s sovereignty restored as the last Allied occupation forces left (1955), John Steinbeck awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1962), the United Nations voted to expel Taiwan & give the China seat to the People’s Republic of China (1971), Richard Nixon vetoed the War Powers Resolution (1973), the US invasion of Grenada (1983) & Chileans voted to replace Augusto Pinochet’s authoritarian constitution with a new one (2020).
October 26
Zhengde, the 10th Ming emperor of China (1491), Domenico Scarlatti (1685), Georges Danton (1759), C.W. Post (1854), Mahalia Jackson (1911), Jackie Coogan (1914), François Mitterrand (1916), Mario Biaggi (1917), Edward Brooke (1919), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Sha of Iran (1941-79) (1919), Holly Woodlawn (1946), Pat Sajak (1946), Hillary Clinton (1947), Carlos Agostinho do Rosário (1954), Evo Morales (1959), Uhuru Kenyatta (1961), Cary Elwes (1962), Keith Urban (1967) & Seth MacFarlane (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Alfred the Great (900), Philipp Nicolai (1607), Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1749), William Hogarth (1764), Carlo Collodi (1890), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1902), Itō Hirobumi (1909), Brazil declared war on Germany (1917), Hattie McDaniel (1952), Walter Gieseking (1956), Níkos Kazantzákis (1957), Hans Knappertsbusch (1965), Igor Sikorsky (1972), Park Chung-hee (1979), Marcello Caetano (1980), William Samuel Paley (1990) & Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (2019) died on this day. Sir Thomas More appointed Lord Chancellor of England (1529), George III addressed the British parliament about the American Revolution (1775), Benjamin Franklin set sail for France to represent the Continental Congress & garner French support for the American Revolution (1776), the Directoire (Directory) created as the new ruling régime in Revolutionary France (1795), Willem I of the Netherlands declared Dutch the official language of Brussels (1822), the Erie Canal opened (1825), Belgian rebels occupied Antwerp (1830), Wyatt Earp’s shootout with the Clanton-McLaury gang at the OK Corral in Tombstone (1881), “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases” first published by African American journalist Ida B. Wells in Memphis (1892), dissolution of the union between Norway & Sweden (1905), Itō Hirobumi was assassinated by Korean nationalist An Jung-geun in Harbin (1909), Park Chung-hee assassinated (1979), Margaret Sanger arrested for advocating birth control (1916), Cecil Chubb bequeathed Stonehenge to the British nation (1918), Gertrude Bell appointed honorary director of antiquities in Baghdad (1922), Eugene O’Neill’s play cycle “Mourning Becomes Electra” premiered in Manhattan (1931), Maharajah of Jammu & Kashmir joined India (1947), end of the British military occupation of Iraq (1947), Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta (1950), South Korean troops reached the Chinese border (1950), Winston Churchill led the Conservative Party to victory in the British general election (1951), Trieste returned to Italy (1954), the first issue of the Village Voice published in Manhattan (1955), PanAm flew the first transatlantic jet from New York to Paris (1958), Confederate guerilla leader William ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson killed in a Union ambush in Missouri (1864), “Doonesbury” debuted in 28 newspapers (1970), the United Nations voted to replace Taiwan with the People’s Republic of China (1971), Edwin Land introduced the Polaroid SX-70 camera in Miami (1972), Richard Nixon released the first batch of Watergate tapes (1973), Transkei’s independence not recognized outside of South Africa (1976), Trinidad & Tobago became a republic (1976), Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat named joint winners of 1978 Nobel Peace Prize (1978), Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea is assassinated by KCIA head Kim Jae-kyu. Choi Kyu-ha becomes the acting President (1979), Ozzy Osbourne inspired nineteen-year-old John McCollum’s suicide (1984), peace accord between Israel & Jordan (1994), Britain’s House of Lords voted to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament (1999), Laurent Gbagbo took over as president of Côte d’Ivoire following a popular uprising against President Robert Guéï (2000), George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into law (2001), the Moscow theater siege ended when Vladimir Putin sent troops to storm the theater & kill more than 50 Chechen rebels & 150 hostages (2002), Dilma Rousseff re-elected president of Brazil (2014), Jacinda Ardern sworn in as prime minister of New Zealand, becoming the world’s youngest female head of government (2018), Donald Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc arrested for sending 14 pipe bombs to prominent US Democrats (2018), Sinéad O’Connor announced her conversion to Islam (2018), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in a US raid on ISIS in Syria (2019) & Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed by the US Senate (2020) on this day.
October 27
Yi Seong-gye, Taejo of Joseon, king of Korea (1335), Catherine de Valois, wife of Henry V & queen of England (1401), Captain James Cook (1728), Niccolo Paganini (1782), Isaac Singer (1811), Theodore Roosevelt (1858), Emily Post (1872), Dylan Thomas (1914), Oliver Tambo (1917), Nanette Fabray [Ruby Fabares] (1920, Roy Lichtenstein (1923), Ruby Dee (1924), Warren Christopher (1925), H.R. Haldeman (1926), Dominick Argento (1927), Sylvia Plath (1923), Maurice Hinchey (1938), John Cleese (1939), Maxine Hong Kingston (1940), John Gotti (1940), Carrie Snodgress (1945), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945), Peter Martins (1946), Terry Anderson (1947), Fran Lebowitz (1950), Roberto Benigni (1952), Marla Maples (1963), Matt Drudge (1966) & Kelly Osbourne (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Athelstan I of England (939), Ivan the Great, Grand Prince of Moscow (1505), Michael Servetus (1553), Akbar, third Mughal emperor of India (1605), Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge (1897), Franco Alfano (1954), Lew Parker [Austin Lewis Jacobs] (1972), Father Charles Coughlin (1979), Elliott Roosevelt (1990), Ugo Tognazzi (1990), Xavier Cugat (1990), Walter Berry (2000), Néstor Kirchner (2010), Hans Werner Henze (2012) & Lou Reed (2013) died on this day. Constantine saw his vision of the holy cross before the Battle of Milvian Bridge (312), Edmund I succeeded Athelstan I as king of England (939), founding of the city of Amsterdam (1275), Portuguese admiral Afonso de Albuquerque captured the Persian fortress of Ormuz on Hormuz Island (1507), British invasion under George Villiers of the French island of Île de Ré (1627), two Quakers who fled England in 1656 to escape religious persecution executed in Massachusetts (1659), Philadelphia founded by William Penn (1682), publication of the Federalist Papers in New York newspapers under the pseudonym “Publius” (written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay) (1787), Pinckney’s Treaty [Treaty of San Lorenzo] signed by Spain & the US (1795), Napoleon’s French army entered Berlin (1806), the US annexed Florida from Spain (1810), Giuseppe Garibaldi’s second march on Rome (1867), Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed arrested on corruption charges (1871), Joseph Glidden applied for a patent on his barbed wire design (1873), premiere of Claude Debussy’s “Nocturnes” (1901), Mayor George McClellan opened the New York City subway (1904), conclusion of the first trial in the Eulenberg Affair in Germany (1907), 20,000 women marched in New York City for voting rights (1917), Benito Mussolini forced the resignation of Liberal prime minister Luigi Facta as part of the Fascist takeover of the Italian government (1922), DuPont announced its new synthetic polyamide fiber will be called ‘nylon’ (1938), Albert Camus’ play “The State of Siege” (L’État de Siège) premiered in Paris (1948), Léopold Sédar Senghor founded the Senegalese Democratic Bloc (BDS) (1948), Eisenhower offered US aid to South Vietnam Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm (1954), Walt Disney’s 1st TV show, “Disneyland”, premiered on ABC (1954), WISN TV channel 12 (ABC) began broadcasting in Milwaukee (1954), “Rebel Without a Cause” —directed by Nicholas Ray, starring James Dean and Natalie Wood, — released (1955), Mongolia & Mauritania became the 102nd & 103rd members of the United Nations (1951), Black Saturday during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), Namibia detached from South Africa by the United Nations (1966), Ralph Nader established Nader’s Raiders (1969), Mobutu Sese Seku renamed the Congo ‘the Republic of Zaire’ (1971), Jimmy Carter signed Hawkins-Humphrey full employment bill into law (1978), St. Vincent & the Grenadines’ independence from Britain (1979), Andrew Young elected mayor of Atlanta (1981), China’s population reached one billion (1982), ‘Big Bang’ British bank deregulation (1986), South Korean voters approved a democratic constitution for the Republic of Korea (1987), British postage stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of JRR Tolkien’s birth (1992), the US prison population reached one million (1994), Helmut Kohl resigned as chancellor after his party suffered a landslide defeat in Bundestag elections in Germany (1998), gunmen killed Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Parliament Chairman Karen Demirchyan & 6 other members of the Armenian parliament (1999), riots in Paris after the deaths of two Muslim teenagers (2005), the Catalan parliament unilaterally declared independence from Spain (2017), 11 people killed & six injured in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in an anti-Semitic attack (2018) & the Nxivm sex cult leader Keith Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison for sex trafficking, racketeering, fraud and other crimes (2020) on this day.
October 28
Desiderius Erasmus (1466), Cornelius Jansen (1585), John Laurens (1754), Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837), Gilbert Grosvenor (1875), Howard Hanson (1896), Edith Head (1897), Evelyn Waugh (1903), Francis Bacon (1909), Jonas Salk (1914), Jack Soo [Goro Suzuki] (1917), Cleo Laine (1927), Joan Plowright (1929), David Dimbleby (1938), Jane Alexander (1939), Coluche [Michel Colucci] (1944), Telma Hopkins (1948), Caitlyn Jenner [born Bruce Jenner] (1949), Robert Mellors (1949), Surin Pitsuwan (1949), Annie Potts (1952), Bill Gates (1955), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956), Julia Roberts (1967), Sophie, Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein (1967), Brad Paisley (1972) & Joaquin Phoenix (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Roman emperor Maxentius (312), Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan (1468), Jahangir, 4th Mughal emperor of India (1627), Stefano Landi (1639), John Locke (1704), Prince George of Denmark, Prince Consort of Anne of England (1708), Anna Ivanova Romanova, empress of Russia (1730-40) (1740), Abigail Adams (1818), Bernhard von Bülow (1929), Alice Brady (1939), Doris Duke (1993), Ted Hughes (1998), James MacArthur (2010) & Tadeusz Mazowiecki (2013) died on this day. Maxentius proclaimed Roman emperor (306), Roman emperor Maxentius drowned at the age of 34, defeated by Constantine the Great at the Battle of Milvian Bridge (312), Beijing designated the capital of Ming China by the Yongle emperor (1420), Robert Dowland appointed court lutenist by James I of England (1612), La Rochelle surrendered to Cardinal Richelieu, ending Huguenot resistance to the French government (1628), Harvard University founded (1636), Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift published by Benjamin Motte in London (1726), Ivan VI became tsar of Russia (1740), 18,000 Peruvians killed by an earthquake that demolished Lima & Callao (1746), New York accepted $30,000 to renounce its claim to Vermont (1790), Eli Whitney applied for a patent on the cotton gin (1793), Michael Faraday demonstrated his electrical generator dynamo (1831), Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty (1886), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducts first performance of his Symphony No. 6 in B Minor (“Pathetique”) (1893), Kaiser Wilhelm II fired chancellor Leo von Caprivi & prime minister Botho zu Eulenburg (1894), St. Louis police began using fingerprints (1904), Belgian-British Union Minière du Haut Katanga mining company created in the Belgian Congo (1906), the Alpensynphonie of Richard Strauss premiered in Berlin (1915), Tomáš G. Massaryk declared Czechoslovakia independent in the midst of the collapse of the Habsburg empire (1918), German sailors’ mutiny began (1918), Congress overrode Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the Volstead Act establishing prohibition (1919), Benito Mussolini led fascists in a march on Rome (1922), Mussolini’s Italy invaded Greece (1940), Israel’s flag adopted (1948), Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Ernest Hemingway (1954), WMVS-TV PBS channel 10 in Milwaukee began broadcasting (1957), Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli elected Pope John XXIII (1958), groundbreaking for Shea Stadium in Queens (1961), Nikita Khrushchev ordered the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba (1962). the Gateway Arch completed in St. Louis (1965), the House of Commons voted 356 to 244 in favor of joining the European Community (1971), Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby indicted in the Valerie Plame case (2005), “Bee Movie” premiered in the US & the UK (2007), the Peshawar bombing killed 117 & wounds 213 (2009) & Spain’s central government imposed direct rule on Catalonia, dismissing the regional government (2017) on this day.LikeCommentShare
October 29
James Boswell (1740), Franz von Papen (1879), Fanny Brice (1891), Joseph Goebbels (1897), A.J. Ayer (1910), Bill Mauldin (1921), Carl Djerassi (1923), Geraldine Brooks (1925), Jon Vickers (1926), Ralph Bakshi (1938), Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (1938), Melba Moore [Beatrice] (1945), Richard Dreyfuss (1947), David Remnick (1958), Winona Ryder (1971) & Tracee Ellis Ross (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Walter Raleigh (1618), Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d’Alembert (1783), Maria Anna Mozart (1829), Nathan Bedford Forrest (1877), George McClellan (1885), Leon Czolcosz (1901), Joseph Pulitzer (1911), G.I. Gurdjieff (1949), Gustav V of Sweden (1950), Louis B. Mayer (1957), Woody Herman (1987), Kenneth MacMillan (1992), Franco Corelli (2003) & Jimmy Savile (2011) died on this day. Cyrus the Great of Persia entered Babylon, freeing Jewish captives & allowing them to return home (539), Conradin von Hohenstaufen executed with Frederick of Baden by Charles of Sicily (1268), first witchcraft trial in Paris (1390), Sir Walter Raleigh beheaded for treason by James I of England (1618), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made the first use of the long s (∫) for integral, helping discover integral & differential calculus (1675), Court of Oyer & Terminer, convened for Salem witch trials, dissolved (1692), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” premiered at the National Theater of Bohemia in Prague (1787), Spain declared war on Morocco (1859), the International Committee of the Red Cross formed (1863), Lord Salisbury granted Cecil Rhodes a charter for British South Africa Company (1888), Queen Victoria granted Cecil Rhodes a charter for Zambezia (1889), Stanley Park dedicated in Vancouver (1889), Aristide Briand became Prime Minister of France for the 3rd time (1915), Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared the establishment of the Turkish republic (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti) established to replace the defunct Ottoman Empire (1923), Stanley Baldwin led the Conservative Party to victory in the British general election, replacing the minority Labour government (1924), Cole Porter’s musical “Red Hot & Blue” — starring Ethel Merman, Jimmy Durante, & Bob Hope — opened at the Alvin Theatre in Manhattan (1936), Cole Porter’s musical “Let’s Face It” opened at the Imperial Theatre in Manhattan (1941), the Alaska highway was completed (1942), Belgium, Luxembourg & Netherlands formed the Benelux Union (1947), NBC anchors Chet Huntley & David Brinkley first broadcast “The Huntley–Brinkley Report” (1956), Israel invaded the Gaza Strip & the Sinai Peninsula, provoking the Suez Crisis (1956), Boris Pasternak refused the Nobel Prize for Literature (1958), René Goscinny’s “Asterix” — with illustrations by Albert Uderzo — first published in the French magazine “Pilote” (1959), the United Republic of Tanganyika & Zanzibar renamed the United Republic of Tanzania (1964), “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” published (1965), the National Organization of Women founded in Washington D.C. with Betty Friedan as president (1966), South Africa’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission presented its report (1998), Al-Jazeera broadcast a video in which Osama bin Laden admitted direct responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2004), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became the first woman elected president of Argentina (2007), Penguin & Random House merged to form the world’s largest publishing house (2012), the People’s Republic of China ended its 35-year one-child policy (2015), Paul Ryan elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, succeeding John Boehner (2015), Jair Bolsonaro elected president of Brazil (2018), Angela Merkel announced she would step down as CDU party leader & would not seek re-election as chancellor of the FRG (2018), new research showed that the cacao tree was first used in Ecuador by Mayo Chinchipe culture 5000 years ago, not in central America as previously thought (2018) & Keir Starmer suspended Jeremy Corbyn from the British Labour Party for criticizing its report on anti-Semitism in the party (2020) on this day.
October 30
October 31
Philippe de Vitry (1291), Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632), Meindert Hobbema (1638), John Keats (1795), Jiang Kaishek (1887), Eduard Franz (Zorro) (1902), Barbara Bel Geddes (1922), Norodom Sihanouk, king of Cambodia (1922), Jimmy Savile (1926), Andrew Sarris (1928), Dan Rather (1931), Hobart ‘Hobie’ Alter (1933), Michael Landon (1936), Ali Farka Touré (1939), Jane Pauley (1950), John Candy (1950), Jozef Stolorz (1950), Zaha Hadid (190), Gen. Antonio Taguba (1950), Brian Stokes Mitchell (1957), Reza Pahlavi, crown prince of Iran (1960), Peter Jackson (1961), Dermot Mulroney (1963) & Vanilla Ice [Robert Van Winkle] (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Eleanor of England, queen of Castile (1214). Fra Bartolommeo (1517), Ernest Augustus, duke of Cumberland & king of Hanover (1765), Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1834), Egon Schiele (1918), Harry Houdini [Erich Weisz] (1926), Edward Stettinius, Jr. (1949), Indira Gandhi (1984), Joseph Campbell (1987), John Houseman (1988), Joseph Papp (1991), Federico Fellini (1993), River Phoenix (1993), P.W. Botha (2006), Theodore Sorenson (2010) & Sean Connery (2020) died on this day. Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, inadvertently launching the Protestant Reformation (1517), Michelangelo Buonarroti finished painting “The Last Judgement” in the Sistine Chapel (1541), George Frideric Handel’s opera “Tamerlano” premiered at the King’s Theatre in London (1724), Giacomo Casanova escaped from prison in Venice by climbing onto the roof (1756), George III addressed parliament for the first time since the Declaration of Independence (1776), Girondins executed in Paris during the Reign of Terror (1793), unable to cross the Donner Pass, the Donner party constructed a winter camp (1846), British invasion of the Waikato provoked resumption of the Maori Wars (1863), Nevada admitted as the 36th state of the union (1864), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral work “Capriccio Espagnol” premiered in St. Petersburg (1887), Britain & France declared war on Turkey (1914), the last successful cavalry charge in history took place during the Battle of Beersheba (1917), Banat Republic formed (1918), Romania annexed Bessarabia (1920), 15-year-old Anteo Zamboni immediately killed after his failed assassination attempt on Benito Mussolini (1926), TV broadcasting began in Belgium (1953), Algerian revolution against French rule began (1954), Britain & France joined Israel in bombing the Suez Canal (1956), streetcar service ended in Brooklyn (1956), Joseph Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s tomb (1961), “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” horror film released directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Bette Davis & Joan Crawford (1962), Nguyen Van Thieu became the first president of South Vietnam’s Second Republic (1967), the Milwaukee Bucks won their first game 9198), LBJ ordered a halt to the US bombing of North Vietnam (1968), Solidarnosc (Solidarity) union recognized by the government of Poland (1980), Indira Gandhi assassinated by her bodyguards, succeeded by son Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister of India (1984), Galileo Galilei reinstated by the Roman Catholic Church 359 years after his excommunication (1992), Mahathir Mohamad resigned as prime minister of Malaysia after 22 years in power, replaced by deputy prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (2003) & the House of Representatives voted to formalize impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump (2019) on this day.
November 1
Antonio Canova (1757), Spencer Perceval (1762), Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden (1778), Benjamin Guinness (1798), Stephen Crane (1871), Eugen Jochum (1902), Michael Denison (1915), James J. Kilpatrick (1920), Victoria de los Ángeles (1923), Suleyman Demirel (1924), Edward Said (1935), Charles Koch (1935), Larry Flynt (1942), Marcia Wallace (1942), Yuko Shimizu (Hello, Kitty) (1946), Jim Steinman (1947) & Tim Cook (1960) were born #OnThisDay. Francesco Sforza (1535), Jean Nicolet (1642), Charles (Carlos) II of Spain (1700), Alexander III of Russia (1894), Theodor Mommsen (1903), Dale Carnegie (1955), Georgios Papandreou (1968), Ezra Pound (1972), Pier Paolo Pasolini (1975), Mamie Eisenhower (1979), King Vidor (1982), René Lévesque (1987), Joseph Papp (1991), Desmond Shawe-Taylor (1995), Yma Sumac [Chavarri] (2008), Dorothy Howell Rodham (2011) & Fred Thompson (2015) died on this day. All Saints Day made compulsory by Pope Gregory IV throughout the Frankish kingdom (835), the first recorded use of modern name for Austria in the ‘Ostarrîchi Document’ (996), Phillip II crowned king of France at age 14 at Reims (1179), Michelangelo’s paintings on ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican first exhibited (1512), premiere of William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello” (1604), premiere of William Shakespeare’s last play, “The Tempest” (1611), Louis XIII’s troops occupied La Rochelle, the epicenter to Huguenot resistance in France (1628), Louis XIV’s France & Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I signed a secret anti-Dutch treaty (1671), British New York divided into 12 counties (1683), the Lisbon earthquake killed more than 50,000 in Portugal (1755), the British parliament enacted the Stamp Act on the American colonies (1765), the Spanish Mission de San Juan Capistrano founded in California (1776), John Adams became the first president to live in the White House (1800), the Wiener Kongreß (Congress of Vienna) opened to re-draw the map of Europe after the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars (1814), Abraham Lincoln appointed Gen. George McClellan commander of the Army of the Potomac (1861), Nicholas II succeeded his father as tsar after the death of Alexander III (1894), the first bare-breasted woman (a Zulu) appeared in National Geographic Magazine (1896), Mustafa Kemal Atatürk took Constantinople from Mehmed VI, proclaiming the Turkish Republic & abolishing the Ottoman Empire (1922), T.S. Eliot’s play “Murder in the Cathedral” premiered in London (1935), Harry Truman survived an assassination attempt (1950), Jet magazine founded by John H. Johnson (1951), Gen. Fulgencio Batista elected president of Cuba (1954), Sen. Joseph McCarthy censured by the US Senate (1954), the Front de Libération Nationale launched the Algerian War of Independence against France (1954), Imre Nagy government withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact (1956), Patrice Lumumba arrested in the Belgian Congo (1959), the Benelux treaty went into effect (1960), he Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album goes #1 in US & stays #1 for 11 weeks (1969), Jimmy Carter raised the minimum wage from $2.30 to $3.35 an hour, effective from 1.1.81 (1977), Bolivia military coup under Gen. Busch (1979), Antigua & Barbuda gained independence from Britain (1981), Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned as Margaret Thatcher’s deputy prime minister (1990), George H.W. Bush called Saddam Hussein worse than Adolf Hitler (1990), University of Iowa mass shooting (1991), the Maastricht Treaty creating the Treaty on European Union went into effect (1993) James Cameron’s film “Titanic” premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival (1997), Google’s Gmail becomes the world’s most popular e-mail service (2012), Palau became the first country to ban sunscreen & its chemicals which bleach coral reefs (2018) & Google employees staged a mass walkout to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment (2018) on this day.
November 2
Edward V of England (1470, Anne of Austria, fourth wife of Philip II of Spain (1549), Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699), Daniel Boone (1734), Marie-Antoinette, queen of France (1755), Joseph Radetzky von Radetz (1766), James Knox Polk (1795), Mehmed V, 35th & last Ottoman sultan (1844), Georges Sorel (1847), Warren G. Harding (1865), Aga Khan III (1877), Alice Brady (1892), Luchino Visconti (1906), Burton ‘Burt’ Lancaster (1913), Ray Walston (1914), John Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Preston Candover (1927), Paul Johnson (1928), Patrick Buchanan (1938), Queen Sofía [Princess Sophia of Greece & Denmark], queen consort of King Juan Carlos I of Spain (1938), Richard Serra (1939), Shere Hite [Shirley Diana Gregory] (1942), Stefanie Powers [Paul] (1942), Patrice Chéreau (1944), Giuseppe Sinopoli (1946), David Brock (1962), David Schwimmer (1966) & Scott Walker (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1483), Jenny Lind (1887), Simon Guggenheim (1941), George Bernard Shaw (1950), Dmitri Mitropoulos (1960), James Thurber (1961), Ngô Đình Diệm (1963), Willie Sutton (1980), Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, 1st president of the United Arab Emirates (2004) & Theo van Gogh (2004) died on this day. Lennart Torstenson led Swedish troops to victory over Archduke Leopold of Austria at the Second Battle of Breitenfeld (a.k.a., the First Battle of Leipzig) (1642), Gov. Josiah Winslow led Pymouth colonists in an attack on the Narragansetts in King Philip’s War (1675), Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his army after the end of the American Revolution (1783), the Treaty of Fulda signed after the Battle of Leipzig (1813), the Second Seminole War began (1835), Franklin Pierce elected president (1852), John Brown found guilty of murder & inciting slave revolt (1859), Union General John C. Frémont relieved of command and replaced by David Hunter (1861), James Garfield elected president (1880), Theodor Herzl arrived in Jerusalem (1898), the Daily Mirror began publishing (1903), J.P. Morgan locked bankers in his library to force them to find a way to avert a banking crisis in New York (1907), Russia declared war on Ottoman Turkey (1914), Battle of Verdun (1916), Balfour Declaration (1917), Warren Harding elected president (1920), coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I, 225th emperor of Ethiopia’s Solomonic dynasty (1930), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) established (1936), Harry Truman defeated Thomas Dewey in one of the biggest upsets in US presidential history (1948), the Netherlands recognized its former colony Indonesia as a sovereign state (1949), Pakistan became an Islamic republic (1953), Strom Thurmond became the first to be elected to the US Senate by a write-in vote (1954), Hungary appealed to the U for assistance in the face of a Soviet invasion (1956), Charles Van Doren confessed that the TV quiz show “Twenty-One” was fixed (1959), Penguin Books cleared of obscenity for publishing DH Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1960), Ngô Đình Diệm assassinated in a coup d’état mounted by the South Vietnamese army (1963), Faisal succeeded Saud as king of Saudi Arabia (1964), the Atlanta Braves trade then MLB home run king Hank Aaron to Milwaukee Brewers for outfielder Dave May (1974), Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford (1976), Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” premiered in London (1979), Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law establishing Dr Martin Luther King Jr. holiday (1983), Christine Todd Whitman became the first woman elected governor of New Jersey (1993), Rudy Giuliani elected the first Republican mayor since 1965 (1993) & George W. Bush was re-elected president (2004).
November 3
Lucan (39), Annibale Carracci (1560), Samuel Scheidt (1587), Aurangzeb (1618), August Gottlieb Meißner (1753), Stephen F. Austin (1793), William Cullen Bryant (1794), Karl Baedeker (1801), Vincenzo Bellini (1801), Jubal Early (1816), Emperor Meiji [Mutsuhito], 122nd emperor of Japan (1867-1912) (1852), Gustaf Tenggren (1896), André Malraux [Berger] (1901), Leopold III of Belgium (1901), James Reston (1909), Alfredo Stroessner (1912), Russell Long (1918), Charles Bronson (1921), Monica Vitti [Ceciarelli] (1931), Thomas J. Manton (1932), Jeremy Brett (1933), Michael Dukakis (1933), Amartya Sen (1933), Terrence McNally (1939), Mazie Hirono (1947), Anna Wintour (1949), Roseanne Barr (1952), Jim Cummings (1952), David Ho (1952), David Viscount Linley (1961), Colin Kaepernick (1987) & Kendall Jenner (1995) were born #OnThisDay. Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond & patriarch of the Tudor dynasty (1456), Olympe de Gouges (1793), Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond and patriarch of the Tudor Dynasty (1794), Annie Oakley [Phoebe Ann Moses] (1926), Alfred Wegener (1930), Solomon Guggenheim (1949), Henri Matisse (1954), Mary Martin (1990), Jean-Bédel Bokassa (1996) & Ernst Gombrich (2001) were born on this day. Liège sacked by Charles le Téméraire’s Burgundian troops (1468), English parliament enacted the Act of Supremacy making Henry VIII & all subsequent monarchs the Head of the Church of England (1534), George Frideric Handel underwent a failed eye operation (1752), French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges guillotined (1793), John Adams elected second president of the United States (1796), the Times of India — the world’s largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper — founded as the Bombay Times & Journal of Commerce (1838), Ulysses S. Grant elected president (1868), Menelik II crowned emperor of Ethiopia (1889), William McKinley elected president (1896), Panama declared its independence from Colombia (1903), William Howard Taft elected president (1908), first modern elastic brassiere is patented by New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob (1913), Poland proclaimed independent from Russia (1918), dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire (1918), the Kiel sailors’ mutiny sparked widespread revolt in Germany (1918), the Bank of Italy renamed the Bank of America (1930), Getúlio Dornelles Vargas seized power in Brazil in a bloodless coup d’état (1930), Franklin Delano Roosevelt won a second term as president (1936), Emperor Hirohito proclaimed a new constitution for Japan (1946), the Chicago Tribune published an issue with its notorious “Dewey defeats Truman” headline (1948), the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” televised for the first time on CBS (1956), Laika launched to her death in Sputnik 2 (1957), Meredith Willson’s musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” opened on Broadway (1960), the UN General Assembly unanimously elected U Thant as acting Secretary-General after the death of Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash (1961), Lyndon Baines Johnson elected president in a landslide (1964), Salvador Allende inaugurated as president of Chile (1970), Klansmen & neo-Nazis shot & killed five members of the Communist Workers Party (1979), Ronald Reagan’s secret arms sales to Iran revealed by the Lebanese magazine Ash Shirra (1986), Gro Harlem Brundtland toof office as prime minister of Norway (1990), Bill Clinton elected president (1992), Carol Moseley Braun the first African American woman elected to the US Senate (1992), Dolly Parton’s song “I Will Always Love You” released by Whitney Houston (1992), “Shakespeare in Love” directed by John Madden & starring Gwyneth Paltrow & Joseph Fiennes premiered in New York (1998) & One World Trade Center officially opened on the old World Trade Center site (2014) on this day.
November 4
Guido Reni (1575), Anthony van Hoboken (1756), G.E. Moore (1873), Will Rogers (1879), Walter Cronkite (1916), Art Carney (1918), Martin Balsam (1919), Doris Roberts (1925), Shakuntala Devi (1929), Didier Ratsiraka (1936), Loretta Swit (1937), Robert Mapplethorpe (1946), Laura Bush (1946), Amadou Toumani Touré (1948), Traian Băsescu (1951), Kathy Griffin (1960), Ralph Macchio (1961), Matthew McConaughey (1969) & Puff Daddy [Sean Combs] (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Felix Mendelssohn (1847), Wilfred Owen (1918), Gabriel Fauré (1924), Manuel Azaña (1940), Jacques Tati (1982), Gilles Deleuze (1995), Yitzhak Rabin (1995), Richard Wollheim (2003), Michael Crichton (2008) & Andy Rooney (2011) died on this day. Arno River flood in Florence (1333), Joan of Arc & Charles d’Albret liberated the heavily fortified town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier after a siege (1429), Christian II of Denmark crowned king of Sweden (1520), Thomas Cardinal Wolsey arrested on charges of treason (1529), Frederick V crowned king of Bohemia (1619), the Teatro San Carlo opened in Naples (1737), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Symphony No. 36” premiered in Linz (1783), the Newport Rising in Britain (1839), Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd (1842), Count Camillo Benso di Cavour appointed prime minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia (1852), James Buchanan elected 15th president (1856), University of Washington founded in Seattle (1861), Venetia annexed by the Kingdom of Italy (1866), Samuel Tilden elected governor of New York (1874), Johannes Brahms’ 1st Symphony in C premiered in Karlsruhe (1876), Grover Cleveland elected to his first term as president, defeating James G. Blaine (1884), Alexander Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor” debuted at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg (1890), the Prince of Wales opened the first London Underground station at Stockwell (1890), Russian Tsar Nicholas II visited German Emperor Wilhelm II at Potsdam (1910), poet Wilfred Owen killed in battle a week before the armistice ending World War I (1918), the Sturmabteilung (SA) ‘Brown Shirts’ formed by Adolf Hitler (1921), Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi assassinated by a right-wing fanatic in Tokyo (1921), Howard Carter’s Egyptian workers discovered the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings (1922), Calvin Coolidge elected president (1924), Stanley Baldwin led the Conservative Party to victory over Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Party in the British general election (1924), Miriam (Ma) Ferguson elected governor of Texas, one of the first two women elected governor of a US state (1924), T. S. Eliot wins Nobel Prize for literature (1948), US troops vacated Pyongyang (1950), Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president, defeating Adlai Stevenson (1952), Soviet tanks crushed the popular uprising in Hungary (1956), Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli crowned as Pope John XXIII (1958), John Lennon utters his infamous line at a Royal Variety Performance in London, “Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And for the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry…” (1963), Arno River flooding killed 113 in Florence & destroyed countless works of art (1966), the UN Security Council voted a weapon embargo against South Africa’s apartheid regime (1977), 500 Iranian students loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini seized the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 90 hostages for 444 days (1979), Libyan invasion of Chad (1980), Ronald Reagan elected president, defeating Jimmy Carter (1980), Alexanderplatz demonstrations in East Berlin (1989), “Dances With Wolves” released (1990), Imelda Marcos returned from exile to the Philippines (1991), Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin assassinated in Tel Aviv (1995), “Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone” — the first film adaptation of the books by J. K. Rowling — released (2001), Chinese authorities arrested cyber-dissident He Depu for signing pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress (2002), Barack Obama elected the first African American president, defeating John McCain (2008), Tim Scott became the first African-American in the South elected to the US Senate since the Reconstruction (2014), Justin Trudeau sworn in as prime minister of Canada (2015), the Paris Agreement on climate change went into effect (2016), Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military offensive & state of emergency in northern region of Tigray (2020) on this day.
November 5
Hans Sachs (1494), Pietro Longhi (1701), Eugene V. Debs (1855), Will Durant (1885), Walter Gieseking (1895), Natalie Schafer (1900), Roy Rogers (1911), Vioven Leigh (1913), Ike Turner (1931), Art Garfunkel (1941), Sam Shepard III (1943), Bernard-Henri Lévy (1948), Pepper LaBeija [William Jackson] (1948), Tony Evers (1951), Kris Jenner (1955), Bryan Adams (1959), Tilda Swinton (1960) & Tatum O’Neal (1963) were born #OnThisDay. Casimir the Great of Poland (1370), Angelica Kauffmann (1807), Maria Feodorovna, second wife of Tsar Paul I of Russia (1828), George M. Cohan (1942), Art Tatum (1956), René Goscinny (1977), Al Capp (1979), Vladimir Horowitz (1989), Fred MacMurray (1991), Robert Maxwell (1991), Isaiah Berlin (1997), Bülent Ecevit (2006), Shirley Verrett (2010) & Geoffrey Palmer (2020) died on this day. Akbar succeeded his father Humajun as sultan of Delhi (1556), Akbar’s Mughal army defeated Hem Chandra Vikra maditya’s Hindu army at the Second Battle of Panipat (1556), Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot foiled (1605), Battle of Rossbach (1757), British & French forces defeated the Russian army at Inkerman (1854), Ambrose Burnside replaced George McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac (1862), Ulysses Grant re-elected president (1872), Bedřich Smetana’s “Má Vlast” premiered at Žofín Palace in Prague (1882), Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Till Eulenspiegel” premiered (1894), Italian troops seized the Ottoman provinces of Tripoli & Cyrenaica (1911), Woodrow Wilson defeated William Howard Taft & Theodore Roosevelt (1912), Ludwig III crowned king of Bavaria (1913), Britain declared war on Turkey and annexes Cyprus (1914), Sinclair Lewis awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1930), Parker Brothers’ board game “Monopoly” introduced (1935), Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected to a third term (1940), the order given to the Japanese military to bomb Pearl Harbor (1941), John F. Kennedy elected to the House of Representatives (1946), “How to Marry a Millionaire” directed by Jean Negulesco, starring Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable & Marilyn Monroe (1953), the opening of the Wiener Staatsoper with a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Fidelio” (1955), Britain & France escalated the Suez Crisis, landing troops at Port Said (1956), Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey & George Wallace (1968), Ella Grasso elected governor of Connecticut, the first woman elected governor of a US state not related to the previous governor (1974), Bill Clinton re-elected president, defeating Bob Dole (1996), Saddam Hussein sentenced to death (2006), Fort Hood mass shooting (2009), Bill de Blasio elected mayor of New York City (2013) & the Collins Dictionary named ‘binge-watch’ the word of the year, followed by ‘transgender’ (2015) on this day.
November 6
Agrippina the Younger [Julia Agrippina] (a.k.a., Agrippinilla) (15), Juana la Loca (1479), Suleiman the Magnificent (1494), Thomas Kyd (1558), Charles II of Spain (1661), Colley Cibber (1671), Adolphe Sax (1814), Charles Dow (1851), John Philip Sousa (1854), Nikolaĭ Nikolaevich, Grand Duke of Russia (1856), Renato Capecchi (1923), Jeanette Schmid (1924), Mike Nichols [Mikhail Peschkowsky] (1931), Michael Schwerner (1939), Ruth Messinger (1940), James Bowman (1941), Sally Field (1946), Nigel Havers (1949), Michael Cunningham (1952), Maria Shriver (1955), Ethan Hawke (1970), Pat Tillman (1976), Emma Stone (1988) & Conchita Wurst [Thomas Neuwirth] were born #OnThisDay. Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden (1632), Heinrich Schütz (1672), Hans Hermann von Katte (1730), Catherine the Great of Russia (1796), Charles X of France (1836), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1893), Maximilian of Baden (1929), Edgar Varèse (1965), Charles Munch (1968), Elisabeth Grümmer (1986) & Gene Tierney (1991) died on this day. Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden killed in the Battle of Lützen at 37 (1632), the Treaty of Bromberg between Brandenburg & Poland (1657), Abraham Lincoln elected the 16th president of the United States (1860), Jefferson Davis elected to a six-year term as president of the Confederacy (1861), Benjamin Harrison won more electoral votes than Grover Cleveland, who won the popular vote in the presidential election (1888), William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan (1900), the US recognized a newly independent Panama (1903), Charles Evans Hughes elected governor of New York, defeating William Randolph Hearst (1906), the Bolshevik Revolution launched with the bombardment of the Winter Palace in Petrograd (1917), New York’s state constitution amended to give women the right to vote in state elections (1917), the Republic of Poland proclaimed (1918), Herbert Hoover elected president, defeating Al Smith (1928), Swedes started the tradition of eating pastries to commemorate Gustavus Adolphus (1928), Franklin Delano Roosevelt re-elected (1940), “Meet the Press” debuted on NBC (1947), Dwight Eisenhower re-elected president, defeating Adlai Stevenson (1956), British soldiers stormed Port Said, deepening the Suez Crisis (1956), Saudi Arabia abolished slavery (1962), the UN condemned South Africa’s apartheid regime (1962), Abe Beame first Jewish mayor of New York City elected (1973), Ronald Reagan elected president, defeating Walter Mondale (1984), Ronald Reagan signed an immigration reform bill into law (1986), “The English Patient” premiered in LA (1996), Australians voted narrowly to retain the monarchy (1999), “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” premiered in London (2005), Barack Obama re-elected defeating Mitt Romney (2012), 2018 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York became the youngest person ever elected to the US House of representatives at 29 years (2018) on this day.
November 7
Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm (994), Francisco Zurbarán (1598), Jean-Baptiste Eugène Estienne (1860), Marie Curie (1867), Leon Trotsky (1879), Konrad Lorenz (1903), Albert Camus (1913), Billy Graham (1918), Dame Joan Sutherland (1926), Joni Mitchell [Roberta Joan Anderson] (1943), David Petraeus (1952), Hélène Grimaud (1969) & Lorde [Ella Yelich-O’Connor] (1996) were born #OnThisDay. Godfrey Kneller (1723), Butch Cassidy [Robert LeRoy Parker] (1908), Eleanor Roosevelt (1962), John Nance Garner (1967), Steve McQueen (1980), Will Durant (1981), Lawrence Durrell (1990), tom of Finland [Touko Laaksonen] Alexander Dubček (1992), Howard Keel (2004), Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (2006), Janet Reno (2016) & Leonard Cohen (2016) died on this day. Ensisheim Meteorite (1492), Niccolo Machiavelli exiled from Florence by the Medici (1512), Henri II of France took Calais from Mary Tudor of England (1558), Pierre Gassendi observed the first ever transit of Mercury predicted by Kepler (1631), Louis XIV of France declared of age (1651), the Treaty of the Pyrenees signed by France & Spain (1659), Empress Elizabeth of Russia proclaimed her nephew Peter of Holstein-Gottorp (later Peter III) her heir (1742), Paris made it illegal for women to wear trousers without a police permit (annulled in 2013) (1800), Gen. William Henry Harrison defeated the Native Americans of the Tecumesh Confederation at the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811), James Monroe re-elected president (1820), Alton abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy shot dead (age 34) by pro-slavery mob in Illinois (1837), Zachary Taylor elected president (1848), Thomas Nast’s cartoon depicting the Republican Party as an elephant (1874), Edward Bouchet became the first African American to receive a Ph.D from a US college (Yale) (1876), Samuel Tilden won the popular vote in the presidential election but Rutherford B. Hayes claimed an electoral college victory with disputed electoral votes (1876), the Deutsche Opernhaus (now the Deutsche Oper Berlin) opens in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg with a production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” (1912), the New Republic’s first issue published (1914), Qingdao & the German colony on the Shandong peninsula captured by Japanese forces (1914), Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich warned Tsar Nicholas of the potential for an uprising (1916), Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress (1916), Woodrow Wilson re-elected president, defeating Charles Evans Hughes (1916), Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace & overthrew the provisional government in the Red October Revolution in Russia (1917), Kurt Eisner overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria in a revolutionary uprising (1918), Hungary enacted a law barring Habsburg succession to the throne (1921), the Museum of Modern Art opened in the Hecksher Building in New York (1929), Fiorello La Guardia elected the 99th mayor of New York City (1933), Franklin Delano Roosevelt broadcast in French, the first US president to broadcast in a foreign language (1942), Franklin Delano Roosevelt re-elected to an unprecedented fourth term, defeating Thomas Dewey (1944), the Suez Crisis ended with a ceasefire (1956), Richard Nixon told the media they wouldn’t have him to kick around anymore after losing election for governor of California (1962), Lyndon Baines Johnson signed a bill into law creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (1967), Joe Biden elected to the US Senate (1972), Richard Nixon re-elected president, defeating George McGovern (1972), “Gone With the Wind” broadcast on TV (1976), Marion Barry, Jr. elected Washington, D.C.’s first African American mayor (1978), George W. Bush & Al Gore both unable to claim victory in an inconclusive presidential election ultimately resolved by the US Supreme Court (2000), Hillary Clinton elected to the US Senate, becoming the first First Lady to win public office while still First Lady (2000), Virginian Danica Roem became the first openly transgendered person elected to a state legislature in the US (2017), the world’s oldest figurative painting of a beast at least 40,000 years old identified in Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave in Indonesian Borneo (2018) & Queen Elizabeth II confirmed she was no longer buying clothes made with real fur (2019) on this day.
November 8
Nerva (30), Julian of Norwich (1342), Vlad Tepeș (Dracula) (1431), Johann Sigismund of Brandenburg (1572), Francesco Gonzaga (1590), Charles X Gustav of Sweden (1622), Edmond Halley (1656), Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern, queen of Prussia as wife of Frederik II (1715), Désirée Clary, queen of Sweden & Norway (1818-44) (1777), Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831), Milton Bradley (1836), Bram Stoker (1847), Gottlob Frege (1848), René Viviani (1863), Qiu Jin (1875), Hermann Rorschach (1884), Prajadhipok, Rama VII, last absolute king of Siam (1925–35) (1893), Dorothy Day (1897), Margaret Mitchell (1900), Esther Rolle (1920), Christiaan Barnard (1922), Jack Kilby (1923), Joe Flynn (1924), Patti Page [Clara Ann Fowler] (1927), Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr. (1927), Bert Berns (1929), Morley Safer (1931), Stéphane Audran (1932), Alain Delon (1935), Minnie Ripperton (1947), Bonnie Raitt (1949), Wayne LaPierre (1949), Alfre Woodard (1952), Rickie Lee Jones (1954), Michael D. Brown (1954), Kazuo Ishiguro (1954), Richard Curtis (1956), Chi Chi LaRue [Larry David Paciotti] (1959), Gordon Ramsay (1966) & Parker Posey (1968) were born #OnThisDay. St. Martin de Tours (397), Otto, Graf von Habsburg (1111), Conrad von Hohenstaufen (1195), Louis VIII of France (1226), Duns Scotus (1308), Robert Catesby (1605), John Milton (1674), John ‘Doc’ Holliday (1887), Cesar Franck (1890), Mohammed Nadir Shah, king of Afghanistan (1929-33) (1933), Gaetano Mosca (1941), Norman Rockwell (1978), Yvonne de Gaulle (1979), Vyacheslav Molotov [Skryabin] (1986), Jean Marais (1998) & Alex Trebek (2020) died on this day. Roman Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the state religion (392), uprising against Piero de’ Medici in Florence (1494), first meeting of Aztec emperor Moctezuma II & Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés in Tenochtitlan (1519), the Bodleian Library at Oxford University opened (1602), Battle of the White Mountain (1620), William Penn’s Charter of Privileges guaranteed religious freedom for the colony in Pennsylvania (1701), Bourbon whiskey distilled from corn by Elijah Craig in Kentucky (1789), Abraham Lincoln re-elected to a second term (1864), Germany recognized Leopold II of Belgium’s Congo Free State (1884), Montana admitted as the 41st state (1889), Grover Clevelend elected president (1892), Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays (1895), Theodore Roosevelt elected president, defeating Alton Parker (1904), Victor Berger elected to Congress from Milwaukee, becoming the first socialist elected to Congress (1910), Adolf Hitler staged the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich (a failed coup d’état) (1923), Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected president, defeating incumbent Herbert Hoover (1932), Adolf Hitler survived an assassination attempt (1939), Newt Gingrich spearheaded the ‘Republican Revolution,’ leading Republicans to winning the House & Senate (1994), “The Ten Commandments” released (1956), John F. Kennedy elected president, defeating Richard Nixon (1960), Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African American popularly elected to the US Senate (1966), Ronald Reagan elected governor of California (1966), the Earl of Lucan disappeared after his nanny was found murdered in London (1974), Ed Koch elected mayor of New York City (1977), George H.W. Bush elected president, defeating Michael Dukakis (1988), Douglas Wilder elected the first African American governor of Virginia & of any state since Reconstruction (1989), Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf elected president of Liberia, the first woman elected to lead an African country (2005), Donald Trump elected president, defeating Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote (2016), Priti Patel resigned from the British government after her secret meetings with Israeli officials were revealed (2017) & Rudy Giuliani held his infamous press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia (2020) on this day.
November 9
Isabella of Valois, queen consort of Richard II of England (1389), Albrecht III Achilles, Kurfürst (Elector) of Brandenburg (1414), Benjamin Banneker (1731), Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802), Bernhard von Langenbeck (1810), Ivan Turgenev (1818), A.P. Hill (1825), Émile Gaboriau (1832), Edward VII of England (1841), Stanford White (1853), Jean Monnet (1888), Anthony Asquith (1902), Hedy Lamarr (1914), Sargent Shriver (1915), Spiro Agnew (1918), Choi Hong-hi (1918), Thomas Ferebee (1918), Su Beng [Lim Tiau-hui] (1918), Byron de la Beckwith (1920), Dorothy Dandridge (1922), Imre Lakatos (1922), Imre Kertész (1929), Carl Sagan (1934), Ingvar Carlsson (1934), Mary Travers (1936), Thomas Quasthoff (1959) & Bryn Terfel (1965) were born #OnThisDay. Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria & Governor of the Spanish Netherlands (1641), Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1778), Guillaume Apollinaire [Kostrowitsky] (1918), Henry Cabot Lodge (1924), Ramsay MacDonald (1937), Neville Cahmberlain (1940), Sigmund Romberg (1951), Chaim Weizmann (1952), Abdulaziz Ibn Saud (1953), Dylan Thomas (1953), Charles Bickford (1967), charles de Gaulle (1970), John Mitchell (1988), Art Carney (2003), Stieg Larsson (2004), Ed Bradley (2006) & Amadou Toumani Touré (2020) died on this day. Piero the Unfortunate was overthrown & forced to flee Florence in a republican revolt against the Medici (1494), Swedish nobles executed by Christian II (1520), Henry VIII sent Catherine Howard to the Tower of London (1541), Atlantic Monthly’s first issue published (1857), Gen. Ambrose Burnside assumed command of the Union Army of the Potomac (1862), Gen. Ulysses Grant issued an order banning Jews from serving under him (1862), the Cullinan Diamond (the largest ever discovered) presented to Edward VII on his birthday (1907), Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated as a republic was proclaimed in Germany (1918), Benito Mussolini founded the Partito Nazionalista Fascista in Italy (1921), Adolf Hitler fled after his failed coup d’état ended with 16 dead in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich (1923), Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP (Nazi party) formed the Schutzstaffel (SS) (1925), Shanghai taken by Japanese troops (1937), Li’l Abner cartoonist Al Capp created Sadie Hawkins Day (1938), Nazis initiated Kristallnacht in Germany & Austria (1938), Ernst Lubitsch’s film “Ninotchka” premiered (1939), Cambodia’s independence from France (1953), “Bridge over Troubled Water” single recorded by Simon & Garfunkel (1969), the Berlin Wall opened (1989), capital punishment completely abolished for all crimes in the United Kingdom (1998) & Russian history professor Oleg Skolove was discovered with the severed arms of his murder victim in St. Petersburg (2019) on this day.
November 10
Charles le Téméraire (1433), Martin Luther (1483), Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565), François Couperin (1668), George II of England (1683), William Hogarth (1697), Oliver Goldsmith (1730), Friedrich von Schiller (1759), Patrick Pearse (1879), Arnold Zweig (1887), Claude Rains (1889), Mikhail Kalashnikov (1919), Richard Burton (1925), Ennio Morricone (1928), Screaming Lord [David Edward] Sutch (1940), David Stockman (1946), Neil Gaiman (1960) & Hugh Bonneville (1963) were born #OnThisDay. Arthur Rimbaud (1891), Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1938), Leonid Brezhnev (1982), Ken Saro-Wiwa (1995), Jacques Chaban-Delmas (2000), Irv ‘Kup’ Kupcinet (2003), Dino De Laurentiis (2010) & Helmut Schmidt (2015) died on this day. René Descartes had the dream that inspired his “Meditations on First Philosophy” (1619), failed coup d’état against Cardinal Richelieu’s régime in France (1630), France banished Louis Napoléon to the United States (1836), Henry Morton Stanley encountered David Livingstone at Ujiji (1871), Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Corporation (1911), Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands after the revolution in Germany (1918), Poland’s independence proclaimed by Józef Piłsudski (1918), Erich Maria Remarque’s novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” published (1928), Walt Disney began serving as an FBI informant (1940), Vichy France occupied by Nazi German troops (1942), Gen. Enver Hoxha became leader of Albania (1945), William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for literature (1950), “Sesame Street” debuted on PBS (1969), UN General Assembly approved a resolution equating Zionism with racism (1975), the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior (1975), Todor Zjikov resigned as president of the Communist Party of Bulgaria (1989), “Home Alone” premiered in Chicago (1990), Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop) were hanged by Nigeria’s military junta (1995), Peter Max pleaded guilty to tax fraud (1997), & the “¿Por qué no te callas?” (“Why don’t you shut up?”) incident occurred between Juan Carlos of Spain & Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez (2007) on this day.
November 11
Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (1050), Bartolomé de las Casas (1484), Paracelsus (1493), Ottavio Piccolomini (1599), Guido Starhemberg (1657), Carlos IV of Spain (1748), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821), Édouard Vuillard (1868), Vittorio Emmanuele III, king of Italy (1869), Ernest Ansermet (1883), George S. Patton (1885), René Clair (1898), William Proxmire (1915), Kurt Vonnegut (1922), Jonathan Winters (1925), Bibi Andersson (1935), Barbara Boxer (1940), Daniel Ortega (1945), Jigme Singye Wangchuk, king of Bhutan (1955), Stanley Tucci (1960), Demi Moore [Guynes] (1962) & Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Nat Turner (1831), Søren Kierkegaard (1855), Józef Wieniawski (1912), Liliuokalani [Lydia Kamakaʻeha], last queen of Hawaii (1891-93) (1917), ‘Typhoid Mary’ Mallon (1938), Jerome Kern (1945), Alexander Calder (1976), H.R. Haldeman (1993), Yasser Arafat (2004), Peter Drucker (2005) & Robert Vaughn (2016) died on this day. Pope Julius II elected (1503), the Mayflower ‘Pilgrims’ landed at Cape Cod & signed the Mayflower Compact (1620), Battle of Dürenstein (1805), Washington Irving’s “Salmagundi” periodical published, the first to associate the name ‘Gotham’ with New York City (1807), Nat Turner was executed in Virginia for leading a slave revolt (1831), Chile declared war on Bolivia & Peru (1836), Battle of Avay in the War of the Triple Alliance (1868), anarchist Haymarket martyrs August Spies (b. 1855), Albert Parsons (b. 1848), Adolph Fischer (b. 1858) & George Engel (b. 1836) executed (1887), Washington admitted to the Union as the 42nd state (1889), Maurice Ravel’s “Jeux d’Eau” premiered (1901), Kaiser Karl I of Austria abdicated (1918), Poland’s independence declared (1918), World War I armistice came into effect (1918), the Cenotaph monument to British war dead designed by Edwin Lutyens unveiled in Whitehall (1920), Warren Harding dedicated the Tom of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington cemetery (1921), eternal flame lit for the Tom of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (1923), Palace of the Legion of Honor dedicated in San Francisco (1924), Route 66 opened, running 2,448 miles (3,940 kilometers) from Chicago to Santa Monica (1926), cornerstones laid for the opera house & veteran’s building in San Francisco (1931), Kate Smith sang Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” for the first time (1939), Jews in Vichy France ordered to wear a yellow Star of David (1842), “The Two Towers” — the second volume of “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien — published by George Allen & Unwin in London (1954), soprano Maria Callas made her final public appearance in Sapporo (1974), Angola’s independence from Portugal (1975), Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam removed from office by Governor General Sir John Kerr (1975), Anthony Kennedy nominated to the US Supreme Court (1987), Vincent Van Gogh’s “Irises” sold for a record $53.6 million at auction (1987), Romanian students demonstrated in Bucharest (1989), the Church of England approved the ordination of female priests (1992), the Sewol ferry captain was found guilty of gross negligence (2014) on this day.
November 12
Claude de Valois (1547), Jeanne Mance (1606), Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729), Tiradentes (1746), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815), Bahá’u’lláh (1817), Aleksandr Porfirievich Borodin (1833), Auguste Rodin (1840), Sun Yat-Sen (1866), Harry Blackmun (1908), Amon Göth (1908), Roland Barthes (1915), Grace Kelly (1929), Norman Mineta (1931), Jalal Talabani (1933), Charles Manson (1934), Lucia Popp [Poppová] (1939), Neil Young (1945), Hassan Rouhani (1948), Jack Reed (1949), Megan Mullally (1958), Nadia Comăneci (1961), Naomi Wolf (1962), Ian Bremmer (1969), tonya Harding (1970), Ryan Gosling (1980) & Anne Hathaway (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Canute the Great, king of Denmark, Norway & England (1035), Duncan II of Scotland (1094), Canute II of Denmark (2012), Stephen Gardiner (1555), Colley Cibber (1757), Percival Lowell (1916), Emmuska Orczy (1947), Umberto Giordano (1948), William Holden [Beedle] (1981), Eve Arden (1990), Leah Rabin (2000), Penny Singleton (2003), Richard Pasco (2014), Marge Roukema (2014), Liz Smith (2017), Stan Lee (2018) & Jerry Rawlings (2020), died on this day. Tibetan troops occupied Chang’an for 15 days (764), Charles XI established absolute monarchy in Sweden (1682), Gen. George Washington forbade recruiting officers from African American enlistees in the Continental Army (1775), Jean Sylvain Bailly (astronomer & first mayor of Paris) guillotined during the Reign of Terror (1793), Jules Leotard performed the first flying trapeze circus act (in. Paris) & designed garment that bears his name (1859), the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) closed in Paris after drawing 50 million visitors (1900), Norway held a referendum with voters endorsing monarchy over a republic (1905), Spain’s prime minister José Canalejas y Méndez assassinated by an anarchist book shopping in Madrid (1912), Kaiser Karl abdicated as emperor as Austria was declared a republic (1918), Adolf Hitler arrested for attempted coup d’état (‘Beer Hall Putsch’) (1923), Leon Trotsky expelled from the Soviet Communist Party (1927), Nobel Prize for literature awarded to American playwright Eugene O’Neill (1936), Hermann Goering announced he wants Madagascar as a Jewish homeland (1938), Japan’s prime minister Hideki Tojo sentenced to death by the Tokyo war crimes tribunal (1948), Ellis Island closed (1954), Lee Kuan Yew co-founded the People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore (1954), Ferdinand Marcos elected 10th president of Philippines (1965), Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai Massacre story via Dispatch News Service (1969), Yuri Andropov succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (1982), Akihito enthroned as the 125th emperor of Japan (1990), the World Wide Web first proposed by CERN computer scientists Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau (1990), Indonesian soldiers opened fire on a crowd of protesters in Dili in illegally occupied East Timor, killing at least 250 (1991), Taliban forces abandoned Kabul as the Northern Alliance advanced toward the capital of Afghanistan (2001), American Airlines flight #587 crashed on the Rockaway peninsula of Queens, killing 260 (2001), Scott Peterson convicted of murder (2004) & Silvio Berlusconi resigned as prime minister of Italy (2011) on this day.
November 13
Edward III of England (1312), Philip I, Landgraf von Hessen (1504), John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718), JiaQing, 5th Qing emperor of China (1760), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850), Louis Brandeis (1856), Hermione Baddeley (1906), C. Vann Woodward (1908), Gunnar Björnstrand (1909), Lon Nol (1913), Fred Phelps (1929), Garry Marshall (1934), George Carey (1935), Joe Mantegna (1947), Art Malik (1952), Merrick Garland (1952), Chris Noth (1954), Whoopi Goldberg [Caryn Johnson] (1955), Greg Abbott (1957), Jimmy Kimmel (1967) & Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Malcolm III, king of Scotland (1093), Albert I of Brandenburg (1170), Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1460), George Grenville (1770), Gioachino Rossini (1868), Camille Pissaro (1903), Émile Durkheim (1917), Elsa Schiaparelli (1973), Karen Silkwood (1974), Vittorio de Sica (1974), Antal Doráti (1988) & Vine Deloria, Jr. (2005) died on this day. Æþelræd Unræd (Æþelræd the Unready) ordered the St. Brice’s Day Massacre of Danes in England, the first recorded genocide of the Anglo-Saxon era (1002), Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Nothing is certain but death & taxes…” (1789), the Stamford bull run came to an end after 700 years (1839), Big Ben rang out from the Palace of Westminster’s Victoria Tower for the first time (1856), “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad first published in one volume by William Blackwood in Edinburgh (1902), Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” released (1940), first artificial fingernails sold (1952), the US Supreme Court ruled racial segregation on buses in Alabama unconstitutional (1956), the Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ first professional concert in London (1959), “Toy Story 2” premiered in the US (1999), the House of Representatives voted articles of impeachment against the president of the Philippines Joseph Estrada (2000), George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing military tribunals against foreigners (2001), trial of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán began in New York (2018), Bolivian opposition senator Jeanine Áñez assumed interim presidency of Bolivia after the resignation of Evo Morales (2019), Boris Johnson dumped his chief advisor Dominic Cummings (2020) & Harry Styles became the first-ever solo male star on the cover of US Vogue (2020) on this day.
November 14
William III of England (1650), Robert Fulton (1765), Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805), Claude Monet (1840), Sonia Delaunay (1885), Jawaharlal Nehru (1889), Mamie Eisenhower (1896), Aaron Copland (1900), Louise Brooks (1906), Astrid Lindgren (1907), Harrison Salisbury (1908), Joseph McCarthy (1909), Rosemary DeCamp (1910), Barbara Hutton (1912), Eric Crozier (1914), Sherwood Schwartz (1916), Lisa Otto (1919), Brian Keith (1921), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922), Narciso Yepes (1927), McLean Stevenson (1927), Leonie Rysanek (1928), Wendy [Walter] Carlos (1939), P.J. O’Rourke (1947), Charles, Prince of Wales (1948), Zhang Yimou (1951), Dominique de Villepin (1953), Condoleezza Rice (1954), Bryan Stevenson (1959) & Adam Walsh (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Song Taizi (976), Alexander Nevsky (1263), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1716), Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth (1734), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1831), Gwangxu emperor of China (1908), Booker T. Washington (1915), Booker T. Washington (1915), Saki (1916), Manuel de Falla (1946), Jane Byrne (2014), Gwen Ifill (2016) & Katherine ‘Scottie’ MacGregor (2018) died on this day. Charles VI crowned king of France at the age of 12 (1380), Samuel Pepys reported on the first blood transfusion (between dogs) (1666), “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville first published by Harper & Brothers in the US (1851), Charles J. Guiteau put on trial for the assassination of US President James Garfield (1881), Nellie Bly [Elizabeth Cochrane] began her venture to circumnavigate the globe in under 80 days (1889), Ottoman religious leader Sheikh ul-Islam called for a holy war on behalf of the empire against the Allies in World War I (1914), Hungarian popular uprising crushed by Soviet tanks (1956), Apollo 12 luanched from Cape Kennedy (1969), Sidney Lumet’s film “Network” premiered in LA & NYC (1976), “Murphy Brown” starring Candice Bergen premiered on CBS (1988), Michael Heseltine challenged Margaret Thatcher’s leadership of the British Conservative Party (1990), “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” released, based on the 2nd book of the series by J. K. Rowling (2002), “Moana” premiered in LA (2016), Robert Mugabe ousted by Zimbabwe’s army (2017), & some of Marie Antoinette’s jewelry was auctioned off in Geneva (2018) on this day.
November 15
William Pitt the Elder (1708), William Herschel (1738), Jérôme Bonaparte, king of Westphalia (1807-13) (1784), Gerhart Hauptmann (1862), Felix Frankfurter (1882), Georgia O’Keeffe (1887), Erwin Rommel (1891), Averell Harriman (1891), Olga Nikolaevna, eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II (1895), Sacheverell Sitwell (1897), Aneurin Bevan (1897), Annunzio Mantovani (1905), Curtis LeMay (1906), Count Claus Schenck von Sauffenberg (1907), Jorge Bolet (1914), Howard Baker (1925), Ed Asner (1929), J.G. Ballard (1930), [Sally] Petula Clark (1932), Sam Waterston (1940), Daniel Barenboim (1942) & Jonny Lee Miller (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Byzantine emperor Justinian I (565), Johannes Kepler (1630), Christoph Willibald Gluck (1787), Cixi, empress dowager of China (1908), Lionel Barrymore (1954), Tyrone Power (1958), Fritz Reiner (1963), Jean Gabin (1976), Margaret Mead (1978), Alger Hiss (1996), Stokely Carmichael (1998) & Roy Clark (2018). Thomas Wolsey invested as a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church (1515), William of Orange’s army landed in England at the beginning of the Glorious Revolution (1688), the Articles of Confederation approved by the Continental Congress (1777), Charles Darwin reached Tahiti aboard HMS Beagle (1835), European powers agreed on rules in the ‘Scramble for Africa’ at the Berlin Conference (1884), Dom Pedro II deposed as emperor & a republic declared in Brazil (1889), King Gillette patented the Gillette razor blade (1904), Georges Clemenceau named prime minister of France (1917), Franklin Delano Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. (1939), Elvis Presley’s film debut “Love Me Tender” premiered (1956), two million demonstrated across the United States in the Vietnam War Moratorium (1969), Jimmy Carter welcomed the Shah of Iran to Washington, D.C. (1977), QEII’s art advisor Sir Anthony Blunt exposed as a Soviet spy (1979), George H.W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act of 1990 into law (1990), Helmut Kohl re-elected as chancellor by the Bundestag by a single vote (341-340) (1994), Hu Jintao elected general secretary of the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party (2002), Robert Mugabe ousted by the army & Emmerson Mnangagwa appointed interim president of Zimbabwe (2017), Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Salvator Mundi” sold for $450.3 million at auction in New York, world record price for any artwork (2017), & David Hockney’s “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold for $90.3 million in New York, a record for a living artist (2018) on this day.
November 16
Tiberius Claudius Nero (42 BCE), Leonardo Loredan (1436), Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henri IV of France & queen consort of England (1609), Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d’Alembert (1717), David Kalākaua, king of Hawaii (1836), W.C. Handy (1873), Paul Hindemith (1895), Jim Jordan (1896), Lawrence Tibbett (1896), Oswald Mosley (1896), Joan Lindsay (1896), Burgess Meredith (1907), José Saramago (1922), Alice Adams (1930), Chinua Achebe (1930), Salvatore Riina (1930), Elizabeth Drew (1935), Robert Nozick (1938), Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977) & Pete Davidson (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Henry III of England (1272), Friedrich Wilhelm von Preußen (1797), Carl von Clausewitz (1831), Louis Riel (1885), Clark Gable (1960), Sam Rayburn (1961), Alan Watts (1973), Lucia Popp (1993), Georges Marchais (1997), Milton Friedman (2006) & Melvin Laird (2016) died on this day. Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro captured Inca Emperor Atahualpa (1532), Ivan the Terrible attacked his son Ivan Ivanovich, who died three days later (1581), Gustavus Adolphus killed at the Battle of Lützen (1632), the Elector of Brandenburg declared king of Prussia (1700), Fort Washington in Manhattan captured by the British 91776), Fyodor Dostoevsky sentenced to death (commuted later to hard labor) (1849), the National Rifle Association chartered in New York (1871), 6,000 Armenians massacred by Ottoman Turks in Kurdistan (1894), Count Witte named prime minister of Russia (1905), Oklahoma became the 46th state (1907), Arturo Toscanini began conducting at the Metropolitan Opera (1908), British troops occupied Tel Aviv & Jaffa (1917), Nazi Germany began bombing Madrid (1936), Joseph Goebbels’ anti-Semitic screed published (1941), the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO) founded (1945), Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical “The Sound of Music” opened at the Lunt Fontanne Theater in Manhattan (1959), Mỹ Lai massacre first reported (1969), ABBA began their first European tour (1974), René Levesque’s Parti Québécois won elections in Quebec (1976), Benazir Bhutto’s PPP won the first free elections in Pakistan in 11 years (1988), Ronald Reagan hosted a state dinner for Margaret Thatcher (1988), “Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone” (the first film adaptation of the book series by J. K. Rowling) premiered in the US (2001), François Hollande declared France at war with ISIS in an address to parliament (2015), the CIA concluded that Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi (2018), in a BBC interview, Prince Andrew denied he’d engaged Jeffrey Epstein’s underage minors for paid sex (2019) on this day.
November 17
Vespasian (9), Flavius Claudius Julianus [Julian the Apostate] (331), Bronzino (1503), Nicola Coypel (1690), Louis XVIII of France (1755), Bernard Montgomery (1887), Lee Strasberg (1901), Isamu Noguchi (1904), Charles Mackerras (1925), Rock Hudson (1925), Gordon Lightfoot (1938), Martin Scorsese (1942), Danny DeVito (1944), Lorne Michaels [Lipowitz], Rem Koolhaas (1944), Terry Branstad (1946), Howard Dean (1948), John Boehner (1949), Dean Martin, Jr. (1951) & RuPaul [Andre Charles] (1960) were born #OnThisDay. Valentinian the Great (375), Reginald Cardinal Pole (1558), Mary Tudor (1558), Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre (1562), Thomas Pelham=Holles, first duke of Newcastle (1768), Charlotte von Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen of England (1818), Auguste Rodin (1917), Audre Lorde (1992), Esther Rolle (1998), Abba Eban (2002) & Salvatore Riina (2017) died on this day. England, Spain & the Holy Roman Empire concluded the anti-French Treaty of Westminster (1511), Elizabeth Tudor succeeded Mary Tudor as queen of England (1558), Peace of the Pyrenées between France & Spain (1659), Ecuador & Venezuela seceded from Gran Colombia (1831), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Oberto Conte di Bonfacio” premiered in Milan (1839), Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “Linda di Chamounix” premiered in London (1842), Ambrose Thomas’ opera “Mignon” premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris (1866), the Suez Canal opened (1869), Buda & Pest unified to form Budapest (1873), Dahomey (Benin) became a French protectorate (1903), the Eulsa Treaty between Korea & Japan (1905), Mehmed VI — the last Ottoman sultan — taken to Malta on a British warship (1922), JFK opened Dulles International Airport (1962), Oakland Raiders fans outraged when NBC switched to “Heidi” with just 65 seconds left in the game with the New York Jets (1968), Lt. William Calley went on trial for the My Lai Massacre (1970), Richard Nixon told AP, “I am not a crook” (1973), “Yentl” premiered (1983), the Velvet Revolution began in Czechoslovakia (1989), NAFTA bill passed by the US House of Representatives (1993), coup d’état led by Gen. Sani Abacha against the civilian government of Nigeria (1993), 62 killed in the Luxor massacre in Egypt (1997), Alberto Fujimori removed from office as president of Peru (2000), Arnold Schwarzenegger sworn in as governor of California (2003), the Church of England approved ordination of female priests (2014), Charlie Sheen confirmed his HIV-positive status (2015), Ireland’s first same-sex wedding (2015) & Iran’s supreme leader the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called protestors ‘thugs’ for demonstrating against higher gas prices (2019) on this day.
November 18
Louis-Jacques Daguerre (1787) Sojourner Truth [Isabella Baumfree] (1797), William Schwenck Gilbert (1836), Nicholas Nikolaevich Romanov (1856), Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860), Amelita Galli-Curci (1882), George Gallup (1901), Imogene Coca (1908), Johnny Mercer (1909), Luis Somoza Debayle (1922), Alan Shepard (1923), Ted Stevens (1923), Mickey Mouse (1928), Margaret Atwood (1939), Brenda Vaccaro (1939), Linda Evans (1942), Wilma Mankiller (1945), Jameson Parker (1947), Elizabeth Perkins (1960), Owen Wilson (1968), Megyn Kelly (1970) & Christian Siriano (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Albrecht, first margrave of Brandenburg (1170), Louis Philippe, duc d’Orléans (1785), Ernst August, duke of Cumberland & king of Hanover (1851), Chester Alan Arthur (1886), Marcel Proust (1922), Niels Bohr (1962), Henry Wallace (1965), Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (1969), Man Ray (1976), Kurt Schuschnigg (1977), Jim Jones (1978), U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan (1978), Dorothy Kirsten (1992) & Cab[ell] Calloway (1994) died on this day. St. Peter’s Basilica consecrated in Rome (1626), Charles François Félix operated on the king of France, removing Louis XIV’s anal fistula (1686), the first Unitarian minister in the US was ordained in Boston (1787), Haitians defeated the French at the Battle of Vertières (1803), the Netherlands & Belgium signed the Treaty of Zonhoven (1833), letter by Göttingen Seven — including Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm — published protesting the recission of Hanover’s constitution (1837), Prince Carl of Denmark became King Haakon VII of Norway (1905), British Gen. Douglas Haig ended the 1st Battle of the Somme after more than a million casualties (1916), Belgian troops re-entered Brussels, ending the four-year-long German occupation (8.20.14) (1918), George Bernard Shaw accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature but refused the prize money (1926), Walt Disney released “Steamboat Willie,” the first sound cartoon starring Mickey Mouse (1928), Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai, a Buddhist association later renamed Soka Gakkai, is founded by Japanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi & Josei Toda (1938), Germany & Italy recognized the fascist regime of Francisco Franco (1936), Morocco independent of France (1956), Nikita Khruschchev told NATO ambassadors, “We will bury you!” at a reception in Moscow (1956), “Ben-Hur” premiered in Manhattan (1959), J. Edgar Hoover described Martin Luther King, Jr. as a “most notorious liar” (1964), US Roman Catholic bishops ended the rule against eating meat on Fridays (1966), Jim Jones ordered the mass suicide of 918 members of the People’s Temple of Jonestown in Guyana (1978), Iran-Contra affair Congressional report issued (1987), Spike Lee’s film “Malcolm X” released in the US (1992), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) bill passed by the US House of Representatives (1993), former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo arrested on charges of electoral sabotage in the Philippines (2011) & US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reversed US policy regarding illegal Israeli West Bank settlements as illegal (2019) on this day.
November 19
Charles I of England (1600), René Caillé (1799), Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805), James Garfield (1831), Hiram Bingham (1875), Clifton Webb [Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck] (1889), Quentin Roosevelt (1897), Tommy Dorsey (1905), Peter Drucker (1909), Adrian Conan Doyle (1910), Indira Gandhi (1917), Gene Tierney (1920), Géza Anda (1921), Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926), Larry King (1933), Jack Welch (1935), Robert White (1936), Dick Cavett (1936), Emin Aristakesian (1936), Michel Decoust (1936), Yuan T. Lee (1936), José Molina [Quijada] (1937), Ted Turner (1938), Garrick Utley (1939), Calvin Klein (1942), Gary Ackerman (1942), Annette Guest (1954), Kathleen Quinlan (1954), Tom Scheckel (1954), Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954), Ann Curry (1956), Alison Janney (1959), Meg Ryan (1961), Jodie Foster (1962), Rocco DiSpirito (1966), Jack Dorsey (1976) & Prince Gaston d’Orléans (2009) were born #OnThisDay. Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich (1581), Johann Hermann Schein (1630), Nicholas Poussin (1665), Franz Schubert (1828), Emma Lazarus (1887), Joe Hill [Joel Hägglund] (1915), Ervin Goffman (1982), George Aiken (1984), Stepin Fetchit [Lincoln Perry] (1985), Christina Onassis (1988) & Charles Manson (2017) died on this day. Mongols defeated at Hakata Bay in their first invasion of Japan (1274), Pope Paul III opened the Council of Trent (1544), Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich died three days after being attacked by his father Ivan the Terrible (1581), the Jacobin Club formed in Paris (1794), the Rijksmuseum founded (1798), Alfred Lord Tennyson succeeded William Wordsworth as British poet laureate (1850), Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address (1863), William Magear ‘Boss’ Tweed convicted of defrauding the City of New York & sentenced to 12 years (1873), the US Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 55 to 39 (1919), demonstration for a French language university in Ghent (Gand) (1922), the Oklahoma State Senate ousted Gov. Walton for anti-Ku Klux Klan measures (1923), Joseph Stalin expelled Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Politburo (1926), Leopold III of Belgium visited Adolf Hitler (1940), the Soviet army launched Operation Uranus, its counteroffensive against Nazi German forces in the Battle of Stalingrad (1942), Rainier III crowned as the 30th ruling prince of Monaco (1949), the first issue of the National Review published (1955), Todor Zjivkov became prime minister of Bulgaria (1962), Kellogg’s Pop Tarts created (1965), Pelé scored his thousandth goal in a soccer game (1969), Willy Brandt led the SPD to victory in the Bundestag elections (1972), Patty Hearst is freed on $15 million bail (1976), Ronald Reagan & Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time (1985), an arrest warrant issued for Michael Jackson (2003), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – part 1″ — the seventh film based on the books by J. K. Rowling — released worldwide (2010) & Robert Mugabe gave a televised address in which he refused to resign as president of Zimbabwe (2017).
November 20
Peregrine White (born aboard the Mayflower) (1620), Wilfred Laurier (1841), Selma Lagerlöf (1858), Edwin Hubble (1889), Reginald Denny (1891), Chester Gould (1900), Fran Allison (1907), Alistair Cooke (1908), Pauli Murray (1910), Otto von Habsburg (1912), Irina Nijinska (1913), Emilio Pucci (1914), Hu Yaobang (1915), Robert Byrd (1917), Jim Garrison (1921), Nadine Gordimer (1923), Robert F. Kennedy (1925), Kaye Ballard (1925), Kenneth Schermerhorn (1929), Richard Dawson (1932), René Kollo (1937), Dick Smothers (1939), Joe Biden (1942), Meredith Monk (1942), Norman Greenbaum (1942), Bishop Paulos Faraj Rahho (1942) & Judy Woodruff (1946) were born #OnThisDay. Anton Rubinstein (1894), Leo Tolstoy Lev Nikolayevich, Alexandra, queen of England (1925), José Primo de Rivera (1936), Maud, queen of Norway (1938), Francesco Cilea (1950), Benedetto Croce (1952), Francisco Franco (1975), Giorgio de Chirico, Amintore Fanfani (1999), Robert Altman (2006), Ian Smith (2007), H.C. Robbins Landon (2009), Chalmers Johnson (2010), Sylvia Browne (2013) & Jan (née James) Morris (2020) died on this day. Diocletian proclaimed emperor by the Roman legions (284), Uyghur khan Bögü, khan conquered the Chinese capital Lo-Yang (762), Edward I proclaimed king of England after the death of Henry III (1272), Jean Sans Peur, duc de Bourgogne, reached a truce with Louis de Valois, duc d’Orléans (1407), first meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece (1431), Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera “Fidelio” premiered at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien (1805), Second Treaty of Paris (1815), Britain, Prussia, Austria & Russia signed a treaty of alliance (1815), Howard University founded in Washington, D.C. (1866), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet” published by Ward & Lock for £25 (1886), Gustav Mahler’s first symphony premiered in Budapest (1889), Jules Massenet’s opera “Grisélidis” by Jules Massenet premiered in Paris (1901), Gustav Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde” (The Song of the Earth) premiered in Munich (1911), Garrett Morgan awarded a patent for the three-position traffic signal (1923), José Antonio Primo de Rivera executed by a republican firing squad in Spain (1936), the first documented anti-Semitic broadcast in the history of radio made by Father Coughlin (1938), Hungary, Slovakia & Romania joined the Axis Powers (1940), 24 Nazi leaders went on trial in Nuremberg for war crimes (1945), Princess Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten (1947), the Universal Declaration of Children’s Rights adopted by the United Nations (1959), the People’s Republic of China approved for membership of the United Nations by the General Assembly (1970), Anwar Sadat of Etyp became the first Arab leader to address the Israeli Knesset (1977), “Terms of Endearment” premiered in New York (1983), Windsor Castle damaged by fire (1992), Alan Cranston censured by the US Senate for his corrupt dealings with Charles Keating (1993), Diana’s TV interview discussing her marriage with the Prince of Wales (1995), Phil Spector indicted on murder charges (2003), Bayard Rustin posthumously awareded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama (2013), Choi Soon-sil charged in a corruption scandal engulfing Park Geun-hye’s administration in South Korea (2016), Prince Andrew announced his withdrawal from public duties following the scandal over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein (2019) on this day.
November 21
Voltaire [François-Marie Arouet] (1694), Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768), Samuel Cunard (1787), Henrietta ‘Hetty’ Green (1834), Victoria, queen of Prussia & empress of Germany (1840), Harold Nicolson (1886), René Magritte (1898), Christopher Tolkien (1924), Marlo Thomas (1937), Natalia Makarova (1940), Tweetie Pie (1942), Dick Durbin (1944), Goldie Hawn (1945), Lorna Luft (1952), Tina Brown (1953), Nicollette Sheridan (1963), Björk (1965), Michael Strahan (1971) & Carly Rae Jepsen (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Philippe, duc de Bourgogne (1361), Henry Purcell (1695), Franz Josef, emperor of Austria (1916), Bill Bixby (1993), Quentin Crisp (1999) & David Cassidy (2017) died today. Judas Maccabaeus recaptured Jerusalem (164 BCE), Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier & Marquis d’Arlandes made the first manned free balloon flight in a Montgolfier balloon (1783) Russia’s Tsar Alexander I petitioned for a Jewish state in Palestine (1818), Richard Strauss’ opera “Feuersnot” premiered in Dresden (1901), China banned the opium trade (1906), Cole Porter’s musical “Anything Goes” opened at the Alvin Theatre in Manhattan (1934), Ella Fitzgerald won Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem (1934), Belgian government ministers in London criticized Leopold III for surrendering to Germany (1943), Piltdown Man declared a hoax by the British Natural History Museum (1953), Verrazano-Narrows bridge opened (1964), Gen. William Westmoreland told reporters the US was winning the Vietnam War (1967), Thomas Alva Edison announced his invention of the phonograph (1877), “Dallas” episode revealed who shot J.R. (1980), coup d’état by Gen. Hafez al-Assad in Syria, George H.W. Bush signed a bill into law banning smoking on most domestic flights in the US (1989), France’s François Mitterrand voiced support for a proposed UN resolution that would authorize the use of force in the Persian Gulf (1990), Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood issued an apology for unwelcome sexual advances (1992), Israel granted Jonathan Pollard citizenship (1995), Robert Mugabe’s resignation letter read in Zimbabwe’s parliament during impeachment proceedings (2017), CBS/PBS host Charlie Rose fired after allegations of sexual harassment by eight women (2017), Mount Agung erupted on Bali (2017), Guatemalan soldier Santos López Alonzo sentenced to 5,160 years for killing 171 people in Dos Erres during the civil war (2018), & the first of a series of national strikes launched in Colombia against the government of Iván Duque & proposed cuts to pensions (2019) on this day.
November 22
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick (1428), Marie de Guise, queen consort & regent of Scotland (1515), René-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle (1643), Abigail Adams (1744), Rasmus Rask (1787), Thomas Cook (1808), George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans] (1819), Cecil Sharp (1859), John Nance Garner (1868), André Gide (1869), Enver Pasha (1881), Charles de Gaulle (1890), Hoagland ‘Hoagy’ Carmichael (1899), Joaquín Rodrigo (1901), Doris Duke (1912), Benjamin Britten (1913), Claiborne Pell (1918), Rodney Dangerfield [John Cohen] (1921), Peter Hall (1930), Robert Vaughan (1932), Terry Gilliam (1940), Billie Jean King (1943), Peter Adair (1943), Kent Nagano (1951), Jamie Lee Curtis (1958), Mariel Hemingway (1961), Sumi Jo (1962), Mark Ruffalo (1967), Scarlett Johansson (1984) & Oscar Pistorius (1986) were born #OnThisDay. Martin Frobisher (1594), Robert Clive (1773), Arthur Sullivan (1900), Jack London (1916), Lorenz Hart (1943), Aldous Huxley (1963), C.S. Lewis (1963), John F. Kennedy (1963), Mae West (1980), Maurice Béjart (2007), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (2017) & Stephen Cleobury (2019) died on this day. Friedrich II crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Pope Honorius III (1220), Vasco da Gama became the first European explorer to round the Cape of Good Hope (1497), Henry Purcell’s “Welcome to All the Pleasures” premiered in London (1683) Karel (Charles) XII left captivity in Turkey to return to Sweden (1714), Edward Teach (a.k.a., ‘Blackbeard’) killed off North Carolina’s Outer Banks during a bloody battle with a British naval force (1718), Charles Grey (2nd Earl Grey) became British prime minister (1830), Peter Stolypin introduced agrarian reforms allowing peasants to withdraw from their communes & assert private ownership of their plots of land in Russia (1906), Ypres razed by the German bombing of Belgium (1914), Marshal Józef Piłsudski became the first president (dictator) of Poland, assuming dictatorial powers (1918), Polish forces attacked the Jewish community of Lemberg (Lvov) (1918), the Imperial Conference ended with Britain granting autonomy to its terrtories within the British Commonwealth (1926), George Gershwin’s musical “Funny Face” premiered in Manhattan (1927), Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro” premiered in Paris (1928), Elijah Muhammad founded the Nation of Islam in Detroit (1930), Ferde Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite” premiered in a performance by Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago (1931), “Meet Me in St. Louis” premiered in St. Louis (1944), John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Lyndon Baines Johnson sworn in as the 36th president (1963), 1965 “Miss Goodall & the Wild Chimpanzees” broadcast on CBS (1965), Juan Carlos I proclaimed king of Spain (1975), Cathy Guisewite’s comic strip “Cathy” debuted (1976), Margaret Thatcher announced her resignation as British prime minister (1990), “Toy Story” released (1995), Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor of Germany (2005), 12-year-old Tamir Rice shot dead by Cleveland police (2014), Ratko Mladić (the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’) convicted of genocide (2017) & the Torre Pendente (Leaning Tower of Pisa)’s tilt was reduced (2018) on this day.
November 23
Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great (912), Alfonso the Wise, king of Castile & Leon (1221), Jean de Dunois, ‘Bastard of Orléans’ (1402), Franklin Pierce (1804), Manuel de Falla (1876), Boris Karloff [William H. Pratt] (1887), Harpo Marx [Adolph] (1888), Erté [Romain de Tirtoff] (1892), Bobby Rush (1946), Diana Quick (1946), Charles ‘Chuck’ Schumer (1950), Ludovico Einaudi (1955), Robin Roberts (1960), Nicolás Maduro (1962) & Miley Cyrus (1992) were born #OnThisDay. Louis, duc d’Orléans (1407), Thomas Tallis (1585), Richard Hakluyt (1616), Claude Lorrain (1682), Hans Willem, Baron Bentinck & Earl of Portland (1709), Elbridge Gerry (1814), André Malraux [Berger] (1976), Merle Oberon (1979), Roald Dahl (1990), Klaus Kinski (1991), Louis Malle (1995), Mary Whitehouse (2001), Betty Comden (2006), Philippe Noiret (2006), Larry Hagman (2012), Carol Neblett (2017) & David Dinkins (2020) died on this day. Seville capitulated to Ferdinand III of Castile (1248), Louis, duc d’Orléans, brother of Charles VI of France, assassinated in Paris on the orders of Jean Sans Peur, duc de Bourgogne (1407) Perkin Warbeck executed (1499), John Milton’s “Areopagitica” published (1644), Blaise Pascal’s mystical experience (1654), Hector Berlioz’ “Harold en Italie” premiered (1834), Cutty Sark launched in Dumbarton (1869), William Magear ‘Boss’ Tweed delivered to New York City authorities after his capture in Spain (1876), Enrico Caruso made his US debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Rigoletto” (1903), Cecil B. DeMille’s first version of “The Ten Commandments” premiered in the US (1923), the first issue of “Life” published (1936), Romania signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany, Italy & Japan, joining the Axis powers in World War II (1940), John F. Kennedy’s body lay in repose in the East Room of the White House (1963), the People’s Republic of China seated in the UN Security Council (1971), Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon sentenced to life for the assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten (1979), Ronald Reagan signed NSDD-17 giving the CIA the authority to recruit Contras to make war on Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime (1981), Susan Boyle releases her debut album “I Dreamed a Dream” (2009), Yahya Jammeh banned ‘Khatna’ (female genital mutilation) in Gambia (2015), Italian designers Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana apologized for a culturally insensitive video & media posts insulting Chinese culture & canceled their Shanghai fashion show (2018) on this day.
November 24
Baruch ‘Benedict’ de Spinoza (1632), Junípero Serra (1713), Laurence Sterne (1713), Zachary Taylor (1784), Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784), Carlo Lorenzini Collodi (1826), Lilli Lehmann (1848), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864), Scott Joplin (1868), Alben Barkley (1877), Dale Carnegie (1888), John Lindsay (1921), William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925), Alfredo Kraus (1927), Marlin Fitzwater (1942), Candy Darling [James Slattery] (1944), Ted Bundy (1946), Stanley Livingston (1950), Thierry Lhermitte (1952), Arundhati Roy (1961) & Todd Beamer (1968) were born #OnThisDay. John Knox (1572), Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (1741), Mohawk Chief Thayendangegea (a.k.a., Joseph Brant) (1807), William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1848), Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1891), Georges Clémenceau (1929), Diego Rivera (1957), Lee Harvey Oswald (1963), Freddie Mercury [Farrokh Bulsara] (1991), John Rawls (2002), Florence Henderson (2016) & Carol Neblett (2017) died on this day. James V’s Scottish army defeated by an English army at the Battle of Solway Moss (1542), Dutch explorer Abel Tasman reached Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) (1642), Carl Maria von Weber’s opera “Das Waldmädchen” premiered in Freiburg (1800), Mohawk Chief Thayendanegea (‘a.k.a., Joseph Brant) died (1807), Charles Darwin “On the Origin of Species” published (1859), Victorien Sardou’s play “La Tosca” premiered in Paris (1887), the US House of Representatives voted 346 to 17 to approve contempt citations for the ‘Hollywood Ten’ (1947), Mali granted autonomy within the Communauté Française (1958), the last Dutch troops left New Guinea (1962), Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald (1963), Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu became president of Zaire (1965), Lt. William Calley charged with the massacre of over 100 civilians in My Lai Vietnam in March 1968 (1969), a US Senate report confirmed that US troops in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange (1979), Li Peng replaced Zhao Ziyang as premier of the People’s Republic of China (1987), “Gangnam Style” became the most viewed YouTube video in history (2012), Emmersom Mnangagwa sworn in as president of Zimbabwe, replacing Robert Mugabe (2017), 18 women accused Jean-Claude Arnault with ties to the Nobel Prize Committee of sexual assault & harassment in Dagens Nyheter (2017) & Michael Bloomberg announced his presidential candidacy (2019).
November 25
Caterina Cornaro, queen of Cyprus (1454), Yi Hwang (1501), Lope Félix de Vega Carpio (1562), Piet Heyn (1566)), Caterina da Bragança, queen of England (1638), Jean-François Séguier (1703), Franz Xaver Gruber (1787), Andrew Carnegie (1835), Karl Benz (1844), Carrie Nation (1846), Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, Grand Duchess of Hesse (1876), Pope Pope John XXIII [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli] (1881), Wilhelm Kempff (1895), Virgil Thomson (1896), Helen Gahagan Douglas (1900), Rudolf Höss (1900), Joe DiMaggio (1914), Augusto Pinochet (1915), Ricardo Montalbán (1920), José Napoléon Duarte (1925), Martin Feldstein (1939), Rosa Von Praunheim [Holger Mischwitzky] (1942), Jeffrey Skilling (1953), John F. Kennedy, Jr. (1960), Christina Applegate (1971), Dominic Cummings (1971), Barbara Pierce Bush (1981) & Jenna Bush Hager (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Andrea Doria (1560), Edward Alleyn (1626), Alfonso XII of Spain (1885), Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson (1949), Dame Myra Hess (1965), Upton Sinclair (1968), Yukio Mishima (1970), U Thant (1974), Harold Washington (1987), Flip Wilson (1998), Tom Wicker (2011), Fidel Castro (2016), Russell Oberlin (2016) & Diego Maradona (2020) died on this day. Malcolm II (Máel Coluim mac Cináeda) succeeded as king of Scots by his son Donnchad (1034), Baldwin IV defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard (1177), beginning of the siege of Granada (1491), Elizavetna Petrovna’s coup d’état makes her empress of Russia (1741), British forces left New York City (1783), Benjamin Banneker’s first Farmer’s Almanac published (1792), the US Army destroyed the village of Cheyenne in retaliation for the Little Bighorn massacre (1876), Woody Woodpecker’s debut in Walter Lantz’s “Knock Knock” (1940), Agatha Christie’s play “The Mousetrap” opened in London’s West End (1952), Clement Attlee’s resignation as Labour Party leader (1955), Dwight Eisenhower’s mild stroke (1957), Senegal’s autonomy within the Communauté Française (French Community) (1958), John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery (1963), Mobutu Sese Seku’s coup d’état in the Congo (1965), Yukio Mishima’s ritual seppuku following his failed coup d’état (1970), Robert Muldoon led the National Party to victory in New Zealand’s general election (1978), coup d’état in Burkina Faso (1980), Oliver North’s secretary Fawn Hall smuggled Iran-Contra documents out of his office (1986), Ronald Reagan’s attorney general Edwin Meese publicly acknowledged the Iran-Contra affair (1986), Lech Wałęsa won Poland’s first popular election (1990) & Donald Trump pardoned Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI (2020) on this day.
November 26
John Harvard (1607), Dagmar of Denmark, a.k.a., Maria Feodorvna, tsaritsa of Russia (1847), Ferdinand de Saussure (1857), Maud of Wales, queen of Norway (1869), Heinrich Brüning (1885), Bruno Hauptmann (1899), Eugene Ionesco (1909), Eric Sevareid (1912), Earl Wild (1915), Charles M. Schulz (1922), George Segal (1924), Eugene Istomin (1925), Gregorio Álvarez (1925), Robert Goulet (1933), Rich Little (1938), Tina Turner [Anna Mae Bullock] (1939), Jerry Kleczka (1943) & La Cicciolina [Ilona Staller] (1951) were born #OnThisDay. Blanche of Castile (1252), Isabella I of Castille (1504), Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1857), Otto Theodor von Manteuffel (1882), Sojourner Truth (1883), Tommy Dorsey (1956), Amelita Galli-Curci (1963) & Bernardo Bertolucci (2018) died on this day. Octavian (a.k.a., Augustus), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus & Mark Antony formed the Second Triumvirate (43 BCE), Vlad III Dracula defeated Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great & Stephen V Bathory & became the ruler of Wallachia for the third time (1476), Louis XIV’s France declared war on the Netherlands (1688), George Washington convened the first US cabinet meeting (1791), the last weekly installment of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” published in the literary periodical “All the Year Round” (1859), Charles Lutwidge Dodgson sent Alice Liddell a handwritten copy of a manuscript called “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground” (1862), Lewis Carrolls “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” published (1865), T.E. Lawrence published a detailed report on the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule (1916), Howard Carter opened Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt (1922), theologian Karl Barth arrested by the Nazis (1934), Nazi Germany began walling off the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw (1940), Lebanon granted independence by France (1941), Frankin Delano Roosevelt signed a bill into law establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day (1941), “Casablanca” premiered in Manhattan (1942), Heinrich Himmler ordered the destruction of the Auschwitz 7 Birkenau crematoria (1944), first Polaroid camera sold in Boston (1948), China launched a massive counterattack in the Korean War (1950), “The Price is Right” debuted on NBC (1956), Rose Mary Woods told a court she accidentally erased 18.5 minutes from Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes (1973), Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme found guilty of attempting to assassinate Gerald Ford (1975), Rajiv Gandhi led the Congress Party to defeat in the general election in India (1989), “Up Late with Alec Baldwin” cancelled after only five episodes (2013) & a fraudulent election sparked massive protests in Honduras (2017) on this day.
November 27
Song emperor Xiaozong of China (1127), Françoise d’Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon, second wife of Louis XIV of France (1635), Henri François d’Aguesseau, Chancellor of France (1668), Anders Celsius (1701), Michele Puccini (1813), Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, granddaughter of George III (1833), Charles Koechlin (1867), Chaim Weizmann (1874), Charles Beard (1874), Tiny Rowland [Roland Fuhrop] (1917), Alexander Dubček (1921), Benigno Aquino, Jr. (1932), Gail Sheehy (1937), Bruce Lee [Lee Yuen Kam] (1940), James Marshall ‘Jimi’ Hendrix (1942), Barbara Anderson (1945), Steve Bannon (1953), Bill Nye the Science Guy (1955), Caroline Kennedy (1957), Tim Pawlenty (1960), Yulia Tymoshenko (1960), Eric Menendez (1971) & Hilary Hahn (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Horace (8 BCE), Clovis (511), Guillaume Dufay (1747), Jacopo Sansovino (1570), Ada Lovelace (1852), Eugene O’Neill (1953), Arthur Honegger (1955), Harvey Milk (1978), George Moscone (1978), Lotte Lenya (1981), Alain Peyrefitte (1999), Ken Russell (2011) & Phyllis Dorothy P.D. James (2014) died on this day. Marcus Aurelius conferred the title ‘imperator’ on his son Commodus (176), Christopher Columbus returned to La Navidad colony, finding it destroyed by the first native American uprising against Spanish rule led by Taíno leader Caonabo (1493), Kraków declared a free republic by the Congress of Vienna (1815), Alfred Nobel’s will established the Nobel Prize (1895), “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (Thus Spake Zarathustra) by Richard Strauss — inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical novel — premiered in Frankfurt (1896), Spain established a protectorate in Morocco (1912), Ignacy Jan Paderewski resigned as prime minister of Poland (1919), the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade held in Manhattan (1924), the Treaty of Locarno ratified by the German Reichstag (1925), Béla Bartok’s ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin” premiered in Keulen (1926), Félix Houphouet-Boigny became president of Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Patrice Lumumba fled Léopoldville (1960), Charles de Gaulle vetoed British entry into the European Community for the second time (1967), the US Senate confirmed Gerald Ford as vice-president 92-3 (1973), Dan White assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone & Supervisor Harvey Milk in City Hall (1978), fire destroyed part of the Hofburg palace in Vienna (1992), Helen Clark became the first female prime minister in New Zealand’s history after leading the Labour Party to victory over the National Party (1999) & Prince Harry & Meghan Markle announced their engagement (2017).
November 28
Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV & queen of Scotland (1489), John Bunyan (1628), Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632), Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon (1661), William Blake (1757), John Stephens (1805), Maximilian II of Bavaria (1811), Friedrich Engels (1820), Anton Rubinstein (1829), Alfonso XII or Spain (1857), Henry Bacon (1866), Stefan Zweig (1881), Ernst Röhm (1887), José Iturbi (1895), James Eastland (1904), Nancy Mitford (1904), Alberto Moravia (1907), Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908), Gloria Grahame (1923), Berry Gordy, Jr. (1929), Gary Hart (1936), Manolo Blahnik (1942), Randy Newman (1943), Rita Mae Brown (1944), Ed Harris (1950), Jon Stewart [Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz] (1962) & Anna Nicole Smith [Vickie Hogan] (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Edward Plantagenet (1499), Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1680), Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1794), Washington Irving (1859), `Abdu’l-Bahá (1921), Enrico Fermi (1954), Wilhelmina, queen of the Netherlands (1962), Léon M’ba (1967), Rosalind Russell (1976), Fernand Braudel (1985), Jeffrey Dahmer (1994), Leslie Nielsen (2010), Luc Bondy (2015), Grant Tinker (2016) & Dave Prowse (2020) died on this day. Albanian George Kastriotis Skanderbeg & his forces liberated Kruja in central Albania from the Ottomans and raise the Albanian flag (1443), Ferdinand Magellan became the first European explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic on his quest to circumnavigate the globe (1520), William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (1582), Panama declared its independence from Spain (1821), Ka Lahui (Hawaiian Independence Day): the Kingdom of Hawaii recognized by the United Kingdom & France as an independent state (1854), women voted in New Zealand’s general election, the first national election in which women voted (1893), Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Féin in Dublin (1905), Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 premiered at the New Theatre in New York City, with the composer as soloist and the New York Symphony Society conducted by Walter Damrosch (1909), Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated as king & emperor (1918), Bucovina voted to join the kingdom of Romania (1918), Nancy Astor became the first woman elected to the British House of Commons (1919), Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow indicted for the January 1933 killing of Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis (1933), Hans Frank, Nazi Governor-General of Poland, organized Judenrat (1939), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill & Joseph Stalin met in Tehran (1943), Chad, Congo (Brazzaville) & Mauritania became autonomous within the Communauté Française (1958), the monarchy in Burundi overthrown in a coup d’état (1966), John Lennon fined £150 for unauthorized drug possession (1968), the Arab League recognized Palestine (1973), the Democratic Republic of East Timor proclaimed (1975), Lee Kuan Yew resigned, ending his term as Singapore’s longest-serving prime minister (1990), John Major elected Conservative Party leader, succeeding Margaret Thatcher as British prime minister (1990), Norway voted narrowly against joining the European Community (1994) & “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (the first of the three Hobbit film series directed by Peter Jackson) premiered in Wellington (2012) on this day.
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