On This Day

By PaulineLGBT

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…

January 1

Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) (1431), Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449), Huldrych Zwingli (1484), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (baptized) (1618), Edmund Burke (1729), Paul Revere (1735), Betsy Ross [Elizabeth Griscom] (1752), Alfred Stieglitz (1864), E.M. Forster (1879), Charles Bickford 1889), J. Edgar Hoover (1895), Xavier Cugat (1900), Barry Goldwater (1909), Dana Andrews (1909), Hank Greenberg (1911), Kim Philby (1912), Victor Reuther (1912), Noor Inayat Khan (1914), J.D. Salinger (1919), Ismail al-Faruqi (1921), Ernest ‘Fritz’ Hollings (1922), Maurice Béjart (1927), Joe Orton (1933), Eve Queler (1936), Frank Langella (1938), Alassane Ouattara (1942), Omar al-Bashir (1944), Jon Corzine (1947), Gary Johnson (1953), Christine Lagarde (1956), Morris Chestnut (1969), Christi Paul (1969), Verne Troyer (1969), Nicolle Dickson (1969) & Paul Lawrie (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Odo, Count of Paris (898), Haakon III of Norway (1204), Louis XII of France (1515), Christian III of Denmark (1559), James Francis Edward Stuart (‘the Old Pretender’) (1766), Johann Christian Bach (1782), Edwin Lutyens (1944), Hank Williams (1953), Duff Cooper (1954), Vincent Auriol (1966), Maurice Chevalier (1972), Grace Hopper (1992), Cesar Romero (1994), Shirley Chisholm (2004), Bob Matsui (2005), Claiborne Pell (2009), Patti Page [Clara Ann Fowler] (2013), Mario Cuomo (2015) & Jaap Schröder (2020) died on this day. Romans adopted the Julian calendar (45 BCE), Mohammed led an army of 10,000 to conquer Mecca (630), Russia adopted the Julian calendar (990), François I succeeded Louis XII as king of France (1515), Holland & Flanders adopted the Gregorian calendar (1583), Charles II crowned king of Scotland (1651), Samuel Pepys wrote the first entry in his diary (1660), Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit proposed a temperature scale & a system for making thermometers in a paper presented to the Royal Society in London (1724), Albany replaced New York City as the capital of the state of New York (1797), the Irish parliament voted to join Britain & form the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland (1801), Haiti gained independence from France, becoming the first state founded by formerly enslaved people (1804), Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” published anonymously in London (1818), William Lloyd Garrison published the first issue of the abolitionist journal “The Liberator” (1831), Michigan became the first state to abolish capital punishment (1847), the first public bath house opened in New York City (1852), Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), Franz Schubert’s “Missa Solemnis” premiered in Leipzig (1863), Paraguay’s capital Asunción fell to Brazilian forces led by General João de Souza da Fonseca Costa in the War of the Triple Alliance (1869), the City of New York annexed the Bronx (1874), the Reichsbank opened in Berlin (1876), Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India (1877), Johannes Brahms’ violin concerto in D major premiered in Leipzig (1879), the first Rose Parade held in Pasadena (1890), Eritrea made an Italian colony (1890), German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery of x-rays (1896), Cuba liberated from Spanish rule by the US, whose occupation would continue until 1902 (1899), Edward VII crowned Emperor of India in a durbar in Delhi (1903), Theodore Roosevelt shook a record 8,513 hands in one day (1907), Sun Yat-Sen founded the Republic of China (1912), T. E. Lawrence joined the forces of the Arabian Sheik Feisal al-Husayn (1917), Edsel Ford succeeded Henry Ford as president of the Ford Motor Company (1919), Christiania renamed Oslo (1925), the first air conditioned office opened in San Antonio (1928), Alcatraz became a federal prison (1934), Germany’s Reichstag enacted a Nazi eugenics law (‘Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring’) (1934), Mustafa Kemal Pasha named himself ‘Atatürk’ (Father of Turkey) (1935), Anastasio Somoza García became president of Nicaragua (1937), Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard started Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto (1939), Franklin Delano Roosevelt & Winston Churchill issued a declaration signed by representatives of 26 states calling for the creation of the United Nations (1942), Emperor Hirohito informed the people of Japan that he was not a god (1946), the Transport Act nationalized the British rail system (1948), the new constitution of the Italian Republic came into force (1948), Ho Chi Minh launched an offensive against French troops in Indochina (1950), China & North Korea launched a massive offensive against US & UN troops in Korea (1951), NBC broadcast the first live full color national telecast, the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena (1954), France returned the Saarland to Germany, becoming the 10th state of the Bundesrepublik (1957), the European Economic Community began operating (1958), Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic (1959), Chad became an autonomous republic within the Communauté Française (1959), Cameroon gained its independence from France (1960), Johnny Cash performed his first free concert in prison at San Quentin (1960), Rwanda granted internal self-government by Belgium (1962), al-Fatah wing of the PLO formed (1965), Col. Jean-Bédel Bokassa seized power in Central African Republic in a military coup d’état (1966), Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (1966), the United Kingdom, Ireland & Denmark joined the European Community (1973), H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman & John Mitchell convicted of crimes in the Watergate scandal (1975), Sweden changed its law of succession & Victoria was crowned princess (1980), Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” comic strip debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle (1980), Greece became the 10th member of the European Community (1981), Peru’s Javier Pérez de Cuéllar became the 5th Secretary-General of the United Nations (1982), Brunei became independent of Britain (1984), Spain & Portugal joined the European Community (1986), Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt began his term as the 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations (1992), the Czech Republic & Slovakia separated in Czechoslovakia’s ‘Velvet Divorce’ (1993), Chen Kaige’s film “Farewell My Concubine” —based on the novel by Lilian Lee & starring Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi and Gong Li — premiered in Hong Kong (1993), the European Community’s single market opened (1993), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect (1994), the Zapatista Army of National Liberation initiated twelve days of armed conflict in the Mexican state of Chiapas (1994), Austria, Sweden & Finland joined the European Union (1995), Gary Larson’s last “Far Side” cartoon strip published (1995), the Euro went into circulation in European Union member states participating in the Euro zone (1999), Bulgaria & Romania joined the European Union (2007); Bulgarian, Romanian & Irish Gaelic joined 20 other languages as official languages of the European Union (2007), António Guterres succeeded Ban Ki-moon as United Nations Secretary General (2017), same-sex marriage became legal in Austria (2019) & Jair Bolsonaro was sworn in as president of Brazil (2019) on this day.
 
 
January 2
 
Nathaniel Bacon (1647), James Wolfe (1727), František ‘Franz’ Xaver Brixi (1732), Alice Mary Robertson (1854), Count Folke Bernadotte (1895), Paul-Henri Spaak (1899), Robert Marshall (1901), Barry Goldwater (1902), Isaac Asimov (1920), Dan Rostenkowski (1928), John Considine (1938), Ian Brady [Ian Duncan Stewart] (1938), Hans Herbjørnsrud (1938), Jim Bakker (1939), Prince Norodom Ranariddh (1944), Jack Hanna (1947), Christopher Durang (1949), Cuba Gooding, Jr. (1968) & Taye Diggs (1971) were born #OnThisDay. Ovid (17), Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (1861), James Longstreet (1904), Emil Jannings (1950), Alan Hale, Jr. (1990), Dixy Lee Ray (1994), Teddy Kollek (2007), Julia Grant [née George Roberts] (2019) & Daryl Dragon (2019) died on this day. Vitellius proclaimed emperor by his Roman legions on the Rhine (69), the Alemanni crossed the frozen Rhine to invade the Roman Empire (366), the last emir Boabdil surrendered Granada to Ferdinand & Isabella, completing the Reconquista of Spain (1492), British troops occupied Calcutta (1757), Austria ended the use of torture in interrogation (1776), Philadelphia’s African American community petitioned Congress to end the slave trade (1800), British rule re-established on the Falkland Islands (las Malvinas) (1833), Louis Daguerre took the first photo of the moon (1839), Richard Wagner’s opera “Der Fliegende Holländer” (The Flying Dutchman) premiered in Dresden (1843), Alice Sanger became the first woman to serve on the White House staff after being appointed by Benjamin Harrison (1890), Theodore Roosevelt shut down the post office in Indianola (MS) for refusing to accept an African American postmaster (1903), the Russian fleet surrendered to Japan after the capture of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, prompting the first Russian Revolution (1905), the DeYoung Museum opened in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park (1921), Warren Harding’s interior secretary Albert Fall resigned over the Teapot Dome scandal (1923), Bruno Hauptmann went on trial for the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby (1935), Luis Muñoz Marín became the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico (1949), Maria Callas provoked a scandal by walking out of a performance of Bellini’s “Norma” in Rome (1958), John F. Kennedy announced his presidential candidacy (1960), the first Jewish child born in Spain since the expulsion of 1492 (1966), the population of the United States reached 293,200,000, with the African American population 22,600,000 (11.1%) (1970), Richard Nixon signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act establishing a 55 mile-per-hour national speed limit (1974), Jimmy Carter responded to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by requesting that the Senate postpone action on the SALT II treaty, effectively ending détente with the USSR (1980) (1980), Major-General Muhammadu Buhari declared president of Nigeria after seizing power in a coup d’état (1984), a rare 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe was found in the garage of a British doctor (2009) & Donald Trump told Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes to ensure his re-election (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 3
 
Cicero (106 BCE), William Tucker (first African American child born in America) (1624), Pietro Metastasio (1698), Clement Attlee (1883), J.R.R. Tolkien (1892), Ngô Đình Diệm (1901), Ray Milland (1905), Anna May Wong (1905), Victor Borge [Borge Rosenbaum] (1909), Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Furness (1916), Jesse White (1919), Bill Travers [William Inge Lindon-Travers] (1922), Sergio Leone (1929), Carla Hills (1934), John Thaw (1953), John Marsden (1942), Victoria Principal (1950), Ned Lamont (1954), Mel Gibson (1956), Eli Manning (1981) & Greta Thunberg (2003) were born #OnThisDay. Philip V of France (1322), Catherine de Valois, wife of Henry V of England (1437), Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (1543), Josiah Wedgwood (1795), Pierre Larousse (1875), Alois Hitler (1903), Joseph Joffre (1931), Wilhelm Cuno (1933), Edgar Cayce (1945), William Joyce (‘Lord Ha-ha’) (1946), Jack Ruby (1967), Mary Garden (1967), Milton Cross (1975), Conrad Hilton (1979), Axel Springer, Jr. (1980), Phil Everly (2014) & Edward W. Brooke (2015) died on this day. Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) handed over to Bishop Pierre Cauchon (1431), Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tested a flying a machine (1496), Martin Luther excommunicated by Pope Leo X (1521), George Washington defeated the British in the Battle of Princeton (1777), Britain took control of the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas) (1833), Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “Don Pasquale” premiered in Paris (1843), Joseph Jenkins Roberts sworn in as the first President of the independent African Republic of Liberia (1848), the first Chinese immigrants arrived in Hawaii (1852), Solomon Northup (author of the memoir “Twelve Years a Slave”) freed after seven illegal years in slavery with the help of New York Gov. Washington Hunt (1853), the Delaware legislature rejected a proposal to join Confederacy (1861), Meiji Restoration in Japan (1868), construction on the Brooklyn Bridge began (1870), Friedrich Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown after witnessing a horse flogging (1889), the first US college-level dairy school opened at the University of Wisconsin (1890), first known use of the word ‘automobile’ in an editorial in the New York Times (1899), the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement — a short-lived agreement for the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine — signed by the king of Iraq & the president of the World Zionist Organization (1919), Turkey made peace with Armenia (1921), Howard Carter & Egyptian workmen uncovered Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus (1924), Benito Mussolini dissolved Italy’s parliament & proclaimed himself ‘il Duce’ (1925), William Paley named president of CBS (1929), martial law declared in Honduras to stop a revolt by banana workers fired by United Fruit (1932), Franklin Delano Roosevelt founded the March of Dimes to fight polio (1938), the first televised opening session of Congress (1947), William Dawson became the first African American to chair a Congressional committee (1947), Dalip Singh Saund sworn in as the first Asian American & the first Sikh elected to Congress (1957), Alaska admitted as the 49th state (1959), the US broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba (1961), Pope John XXIII excommunicated Fidel Castro (1962), Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs incorporated Apple Computer, Inc. (1977), Leontyne Price’s farewell performance in Verdi’s opera “Aida” at the Met (1985), Aretha Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1987), Margaret Thatcher became the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century (1988), Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega surrendered to US authorities (1990), the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit landed on Mars (2004), Craig Ferguson became the host of “The Late Late Show” on CBS (2005), Israel invaded the Gaza Strip (2009), the Bitcoin network created by Satoshi Nakamoto (2009), ancient Beringians from 11,500 years ago unearthed (2018), Nancy Pelosi elected Speaker of the House of Representatives (2019) & Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen Qasem Soleimani by drone strike (2020) on this day.
 
 
January 4
 
Zhezong emperor of Song China (1077), Muhammad V of Granada [al-Ghani Bi’llah] (1338), Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710), Jacob Grimm (1785), Louis Braille (1809), Josef Suk (1874), Everett McKinley Dirksen (1896), Rosalie Crutchley (1920), Amitai Etzioni (1929), Carlos Saura (1932), Grace Bumbry (1937), Helmut Jahn (1940), Maureen Reagan (1941), Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943), Julian Sands (1958), Andy Borowitz (1958) & Julia Ormond (1965) were born #OnThisDay. Moses Mendelssohn (1786), Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1821), Cornelius Vanderbilt (1877), Henri Bergson (1941), Albert Camus (1960), T.S. Eliot (1965), Christopher Isherwood (1986), Harry Helmsley (1997) & Georges Prêtre (2017) died on this day. Æthelred of Wessex defeated by a Danish Viking army at the Battle of Reading (871), the palace of Whitehall in London largely destroyed by fire (1698), Columbia University founded as King’s College in Manhattan (1754), Britain declared war on Spain & Naples in the Seven Years’ War (1762), Johannes Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture” premiered in Breslau (1881), the Fabian Society founded in London (1884), Utah admitted as the 45th state (1896), Topsy the elephant electrocuted by her owners at Luna Park on Coney Island & filmed by Edison Manufacturing movie company (1903), British Viceroy of India Lord Willingdon arrests Mohandas Gandhi & Jawaharlal Nehru (1932), Ralphe Bunche became the first African American US State Department appointee (1944), Burma declared its independence from Britain (1948), Chinese forces recaptured Seoul (1951), Patsy T. Mink sworn in as the first Asian American woman & the first woman of color elected to Congress (1964), Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ state of the union address (1965), France began an arms embargo of Israel (1969), Richard Nixon refused to hand over subpoenaed Watergate tapes (1974), Eurythmics released “Sweet Dreams” album (1983), the 104th Congress became the first with both houses of Congress under Republican control since Eisenhower (1995), the Euro went into circulation in 11 European Union member states (1999), Ariel Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke (2006), Nancy Pelosi elected the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives (2007), South Korea recorded more deaths than births for the first time (2021) on this day.
 
 
 
January 5
 
Shah Jahan (1592), Constanze Mozart (1762), Zebulon Pike (1779), Algernon Chalres Swinburne (1837), King C. Gillette (1855), Konrad Adenauer (1876), Yves Tanguy (1900), Jean Dixon (1904), Wieland Wagner (1917), Jane Wyman (1917), Aruturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920), Jean, Grand Duc de Luxembourg (1921), Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921), Walter ‘Fritz’ Mondale (1928), Zulfikar Ali Butto (1928), Qian Qichen (1928), Imtiaz Ahmed (1928), Alfred Brendel (1931), Alvin Ailey (1931), Robert Dvall (1931), Walt Davis (1931), Joan Coxedge (1931), Umberto Eco (1932), Juan Carlos I of de Borbón of Spain (1938), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938) Piet Kruiver (1938), Leo Avery (1938), Jim Otto (1938), Hayao Miyazaki (1941), Chuck McKinley (1941), Bob Cunis (1941), Grady Thomas (1941), Mansur Ali Khan (1941), Charlie Rose (1942), Maurizio Pollini (1942), Cliff Potts (1942), Diane Keaton (1946), Ted Lange (1947), Marilyn Manson (1969), Bradley Cooper (1975) & Sabrina Harman (1978) were born #OnThisDay. Edward the Confessor, king of England (1066), Charles le Téméraire, duc de Bourgogne (1477), Pope Clement VII forbade Henry VIII from remarrying (1531), Catherine de’ Medici, reine mère de France (1589), Elizabeth [Elizaveta Petrovna], empress of Russia (1762), Samuel Huntington (1796), Ernest Shackleton (1922), Nicholas Nikolaevich Romanov, grand duke of Russia (1929), Calvin Coolidge (1933), Amelia Earhart (1939), George Washington Carver (1943), Tip O’Neill (1994), Lincoln Kirstein (1996), Salvatore ‘Sonny’ Bono (1998), Roy Jenkins (2003), Momofuku Ando (2007), Pierre Boulez (2016), Jerry Van Dyke (2018) & José Molina [Quijada] (2018) died on this day. François Villon banished from Paris (1463), Charles le Téméraire, duc de Bourgogne, fell in the Battle of Nancy (1477), first divorce in the American colonies (1643), Ludovico Sforza’s troops reconquered Milan (1500), Great Frost of 1709 (1709), Britain, Hanover, Saxony-Poland & Austria concluded an alliance against Prussia & Russia (1719), Robert-François Damiens attempted but failed to assassinate Louis XV of France (1757), the Palais Garnier opened in Paris (1875), “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson published by Longmans, Green & Co. (1886), Captain Alfred Dreyfus stripped of his rank in the French army based on false treason allegations (1895), William Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays announced in “Die Presse” (1896), Charles Perrine announced the discovery of Jupiter’s moon Elara (1905), Colombia recognized Panama’s independence (1909), Austria-Hungary launched an offensive against Montenegro (1916), the first conscription bill introduced in the British House of Commons (1916), Bonnie Parker met Clyde Barrow for the first time (1930), construction on the Golden Gate Bridge began on the Marin County side of the bridge (1933), Pepe LePew debuted in Warner Bros. cartoon “Odor-able Kitty” (1945), “Show Boat” opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan (1946), Harry Truman delived his ‘Fair Deal’ state of the union address (1949), Samuel Beckett’s “En Attendant Godot” premiered in Paris (1953), Dwight Eisenhower outlined the ‘Eisenhower Doctrine’ in a proposal on the Middle East to Congress (1957), “Bozo the Clown” premiered on TV (1959), Alexander Dubček succeeds Antonín Novotný as Communist Party leader of Czechoslovakia (1968), Mali & Niger terminated diplomatic relations with Israel (1973), the Netherlands recognized the GermanDemocratic Republic (DDR) (1973), Columbia Records released Bruce Springsteen’s debut album “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” (1973), “The MacNeil-Lehrer Report” premiered on PBS (1976), Pol Pot renamed Cambodia ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ (1976), vandals decapitated the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbor (1998) & Zhang Yongzhen published the first SARS-CoV-2 genome map online, allowing health professionals worldwide to identify COVID-19 (2020) on this day.
 
 
January 6
 
Richard II of England (1367), Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) (1412), John Smith (1580), Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel, duke of Sanlúcar & count of Olivares (1587), Jakob Bernouilli (1655), James Brydges, first duke of Chandos (1673), Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier (1745), Charles Sumner (1811), Heinrich Schliemann (1822), Gustave Doré (1832), Max Bruch (1838), Alexander Scriabin (1872), Carl Sandburg (1878), Khalil Gibran (1883), Maurice Abravanel (1903), (Danny Thomas (1912), Edward Gierek (1913), Alan Watts (1915), Don Edwards (1915), John C. Lilly (1915), Lou Harris (1921), Earl Scruggs (1924), John DeLorean (1925), Victor ‘Vic’ Tayback (1930), E.L. Doctorow (1931), Sylvia Syms (1934), Pepé Le Pew — Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Chuck Jones & Michael Maltese (Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies series) — first debuted in “Odor-able Kitty” (1945), Louis Freeh (1950), Anthony Minghella (1954), Rowan Atkinson (1955), Sandra Berhanrd (1955), Chantal Langlacé (1955), Julie Chen (1970), Gilbert Arenas (1982), Brian Bass (1982), Tiffany Pollard (1982), Eddie Redmayne (1982), Sean O’Brien (1984), A.J. Hawk (1984) & Kate McKinnon (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Fanny Burney (1840), Louis Braille (1852), Gregor Mendel (1884), Peter Asbjornsen (1885), Theodore Roosevelt (1919), Emma Calvé (1942), Victor Fleming (1949), Rudolph Nureyev (1993), Virginia Kelley Clinton (1994), Francesco Scavullo (2004) & Pat Harrington, Jr. (2016) died on this day. Cnut the Great crowned king of England in London (1017), Harold Godwinson crowned king of England (1066), George Villiers made Earl of Buckingham by James I of England (1617), England’s ‘Rump Parliament’ voted to put Charles I on trial for treason (1649), Samuel Morse & Alfred Vail demonstrated their telegraph machine in New Jersey (1838), the Musikverein inaugurated in Vienna (1870), Washington National Cathedral chartered by Benjamin Harrison & Congress (1893), Maurice Ravel’s “Albarada del Gracioso” premiered in Paris (1900), Maurice Ravel’s “Miroirs” premiered in Paris (1906), Maria Montessori opened her first Montessori school in Rome (1907), New Mexico became the 47th state (1912), Francis Poulenc’s ballet “Les Biches” — choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska & danced by the Ballets Russes — premiered in Monte Carlo (1924), Franklin Roosevelt gave his ‘Four Freedoms’ state of the union address (1941), Britain recognized the People’s Republic of China (1950), Ganghwa massacre in South Korea (1951), WLIW TV Ch. 21 (PBS) began broadcasting on Long Island (1969), the US Army dropped charges of a cover-up of the My Lai Massacre (1971), Charter 77 — a document criticizing Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime’s human rights abuses — published in Prague (1977), the US returned the crown of St. Stephen to Hungary (1978), the Village People’s “YMCA” became their only UK #1 single, selling more than 150,000 copies a day (1979), Indira Gandhi led the Congress Party to victory in India’s parliamentary elections (1980), British defense secretary Michael Heseltine resigned over the Westland Affair (1986), Congress certified George W. Bush’s election (2001), Israel began a genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip (2009), Rami Malek & “Bohemian Rhapsody” won Golden Globes (2019) & Donald Trump incited his supporters to storm the US Capitol in a violent insurrection (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 7
 
Thomas of Woodstock, first duke of Gloucester (1355), Pope Gregory XIII [Ugo Boncompagni] (1502), Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre (1528), Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain & Naples (1768), Charlotte Augusta of Wales (1796), Millard Fillmore (1800), Ann Rutledge (1813), St. Bernadette of Lourdes [Marie-Bernarde Soubirous] (1844), Ludwig III, last King of Bavaria (1845), Francis Poulenc (1899), Nicanor Zabaleta (1907), Orval Faubus (1910), Charles Addams (1912), Günter Wand (1912), Bob Zurke [Boguslaw Zukowski] (1912), Elena Ceaușescu (1916), Alessandro Natta (1918), Vincent Gardenia (1920), Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922), Gerald Durrell (1925), Kim Jong-pil (1926), Douglas Kiker (1930), Mack Mattingly (1931), Prince Michael of Greece & Denmark (1939), Iona Brown (1941), Sadako Sasaki (1943), Raila Odinga (1945), Kenny Loggins (1948), Katie Couric (1957), Loretta Sanchez (1960), John Thune (1961), Rand Paul (1963), Nicolas Cage (1964), Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (1966), Nnick Clegg (1967) & Caster Semenya (1991) were born #OnThisDay. Catherine of Aragon (1536), Feodor I of Russia (1598), Mary II of England (1695), Colin McPhee (1964), Trevor Howard (1988), Emperor Hirohito of Japan (1989), Stéphane Charbonnier (2015) & Mário Soares (2017) died on this day. Calais — the last English possession in France — retaken by French troops under the duc de Guise (1558), Boris Godunov seized power on the death of Feodor I of Russia (1598), Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, launched a revolt against Elizabeth Tudor (1601), Galileo Galilei discovered the first three moons of Jupiter — Io, Europa & Ganymede (1610), Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory put on trial for killing & torturing hundreds of young women — later sentenced to house arrest for the rest of her life (1611), Sir Francis Bacon appointed lord chancellor of England (1618), Versailles (1790), Liberia colonized by the American Colonization Society (1822), Fannie Farmer’s first cookbook (“The Boston Cooking School Cook Book”) published (1896), ‘Colorado Cannibal’ Alferd Packer paroled after serving 18 years (1901), five socialists elected to the New York State Assembly denied seating (1920), Anglo-Irish Treaty ratified by the Dail Eireann by a 64-57 vote (1922), the Harlem Globetrotters played their first game (1927), Croatian nationalist Ustaša movement founded by Ante Pavelić in exile in Italy (1929), Cambodia became autonomous within the Communauté Française (1946), Harry Truman announced that the US had developed a hydrogen bomb (1953), Marian Anderson became the first African American to star in a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera (1955), the US recognized Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba (1959), Indonesia’s president Sukarno survived an assassination attempt (1962), Vietnamese troops entered Phnom Penh & overthrew Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia (1979), Lewis Powell, Jr. & William Rehnquist joined the US Supreme Court (1972), Jimmy Carter signed legislation bailing out the Chrysler Corporation with a $1.5 billion loan (1980), Ronald Reagan ended the US arms embargo against Guatemala (1983), Akihito succeeded Hirohito as the 125 emperor of Japan (1989), Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial began in the Senate (1999), 12 killed in a terrorist attack on the offices of “Charlie Hebdo” in Paris (2015), “The King’s Speech” released in the UK (2011), Elon Musk overtook Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest man with a net worth of $186 billion (2021) & Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blocked Donald Trump from using Facebook & Instagram until January 20 (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 8
 
James Longstreet (1821), William Wilkie Collins (1824), Hans von Bülow (1830), Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence & Avondale (1864), Georgy Malenkov (1902), Evelyn Wood (1909), José Ferrer (1912), Giorgio Tozzi (1923), Kim Dae-jung (1924), Soupy Sales [Milton Supman] (1926), Charles Osgood (1933), Elvis Presley (1935), Shirley Bassey (1937), Bob Eubanks (1948), Stephen Hawking (1942), Yvette Mimieux (1942), David Bowie [Jones] (1947), Robert ‘R.’ Kelly (1967) & Kim Jong-un (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Marco Polo (1324), Johan Georg, Elector of Brandenburg (1598), Galileo Galilei (1642), Arcangelo Corelli (1713), Joshua Abraham ‘Emperor’ Norton (1880), Paul Verlaine (1896), Robert Baden-Powell (1941), Dion Fortune (1946), Richard Tauber [Denemy] (1948), Joseph Schumpeter (1950, Joseph Issac Shneerson (1950), Zhou Enlai (1976), François Mitterrand (1996), Yvonne De Carlo [Middleton] (2007), Jeanne Manford (2013), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (2017) & Roy Innis (2017) died on this day. Alfred the Great & Æthelred I of Wessex defeated an invading Danish Viking army at the Battle of Ashdown (871), Monaco gained its independence (1297), French troops under the Duc de Guise occupied Calais (1558), Georg Friedrich Händel’s first opera “Almira” premiered in Hamburg (1705), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Ariodante” premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London (1734), Britain, Austria, the Netherlands & Saxony formed the Quadruple Alliance against Frederick the Great’s Prussia (1745), George Washington delivered his first presidential state of the union address (1790), Andrew Jackson led US troops to victory in the Battle of New Orleans (1815), the US national debt reached $0 for the first & only time (1835), Republican members of Congress overrode Andrew Johnson’s veto of a bill granting African American men the right to vote in Washington, D.C. (1867), Oglala Lakota Sioux Crazy House fought his last battle against the US Army (1877), Allied troops began their retreat from Gallipoli after one of the worst Allied disasters in World War I (1916), Mississippi’s legislature ratified the 18th amendment to the US Constitution (‘Prohibition’) (1918), Woodrow Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points (1918), Benito Mussolini warned Adolf Hitler about invading Britain (1940). Gen. George Marshall named Harry Truman’s secretary of state (1947), Fidel Castro entered Havana in triumph (1959), Charles de Gaulle inaugurated as the first president of France’s 5th Republic (1959), French voters approved independence for Algeria in a referendum (1961), Lyndon Baines Johnson declared war on poverty (1964), Jacques Cousteau’s first TV special aired (1968), Judge John Sirica presided over the trial of the Watergate burglars (1973), Judge John Sirica ordered the release of Watergate conspirators John Dean, Herbert Kalmbach & Jeb Stuart Magruder (1975), Harvey Milk became the first openly gay person elected to public office in California (1978), “All Creatures Great & Small” debuted on BBC TV (1978), Vietnamese troops occupied Phnom Penh & ousted the Khmer Rouger from power in Cambodia (1979), Joseph Papp’s revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta “The Pirates of Penzance” opened at the Uris Theater in Manhattan (1981), George H.W. Bush vomited on Japan’s prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa (1992), George W. Bush signed the ‘No Child Left Behind’ bill into law (2002), New Jersey became the first Northern state to apologize for slavery (2008), U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords seriously injured in a shooting rampage in Arizona (2011), Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced the recapture of drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, six months after he escaped prison (2016), Iran retaliated for the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani with missil strikes on Irbil & Al-Asad bases in Iraq (2020), the Duke & Duchess of Sussex announced their withdrawal from royal duties as ‘senior’ royals (2020), Japan’s prime minister Yoshihide Suga declared a state of emergency because of the Corona virus pandemic (2021), Twitter banned Donald Trump for life (2021) & House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded Donald Trump’s resignation (2021) on this day. 
 
 
January 9
 
Cassandra Austen (1773), Jennie Jerome (1854), Carrie Chapman Catt (1859), Sir Rudolph Bing (1902), Simone de Beauvoir (1908), Richard Nixon (1913), Fernando Lamas (1915), Ahmed Sékou Touré (1922), Bob Denver (1935), Susannah York (1939), Joan Baez (1941), Crystal Gayle (1951), Mmichiko Kakutani (1955), Imelda Staunton (1956), Mehmet Ali Ağca (1958), Rigoberta Menchú (1959) & Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Xizong emperor of Jin (1150), Napoléon III (1873), Vittorio Emmanuele II of Italy (1878), Katherine Mansfield (1923), Robin G. Collingwood (1943), Ted Shawn (1972) & Warren Allen Smith (2017) died on this day. Byzantine Emperor Zeno forced to flee Constantinople (475), Christopher Columbus mistook manatees for mermaids (1493), Tsar Ivan the Terrible ordered the sack of Novgorod in which thousands were killed (1570), Philip Astley staged the first modern circus in London (1768), Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” published (1776), Russia & Ottoman Turkey signed the Peace of Jassy (1792), William Pitt the Younger introduced the income tax to fund the British war effort against Napoleon’s France (1799), Horatio Nelson’s state funeral & burial in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (1806), Louis Daguerre’s Daguerrotype photo of a person in Paris announced at the French Academy of Science (1839), the Battle of Fort Sumter (1861), Mississippi seceded from the Union (1861), Umberto I became king of Italy (1878), US Marines invaded Honduras (1912), Ottoman Turks defeated the British at the Battle of Çanakkale (1916), the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade captured an Ottoman garrison in the Battle of Rafah in Ottoman Palestine (1917), Virginia Woolf bought a house in Bloomsbury (1924), Gen. Douglas MacArthur & the US 6th Army landed in the Philippines (1945), Harry Truman warned of the Soviet Communist threat in his state of the union address (1952), “Dear Abby” (Pauline Phillips, a.k.a., Abigail Van Buren) advice column first appeared in newspapers (1956), Margaret Thatcher visited the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas) (1983), Apple launched iTunes (2001) on this day & Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone (2007).
 
 
January 10
 
Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands (1480), Ethan Allen (1738), Charles Ingalls (1836), George Washington Carver (1864), Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia (1864), Mary Ingalls (1865), Manuel Azaña (1880), Ray Bolger (1904), Paul Henreid (1908), Roy Disney (1930), Stephen E. Ambrose (1936), Sal Mineo (1939), David Horowitz (1939), Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1944), Rod Stewart (1945), George Foreman (1949), James Lapine (1949), Pat Benatar [Andrezejewski] (1953), Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (1961) & Jared Kushner (1981) were born #OnThisDay. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1645), Nicholas Culpeper (1654), Philibert, comte de Gramont (1707), Jemeljan Pugachev (1775), Carolus Linnaeus [Carl von Linné] (1778), Vittorio Emmanuele I of Sardinia (1824), Samuel Colt (1862), William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (1917), [Harry] Sinclair Lewis (1951), Dashiell Hammett (1961), Gabriel ‘Coco’ Chanel (1971), John D. Rockefeller III (1978), Pedro Joaquín Chamorro (1978), George Meany (1980), Paul Lynde (1982), Souvanna Phouma, prince of Laos (1984), Anton Karas (1985), Donald Voorhees (1989), Spalding Gray (2004), Joséphine-Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (2005), Carlo Ponti (2007), Margaret Whiting (2011), Larry Speakes (2014) David Bowie [David Robert Jones](2016) & Clare Hollingworth (2017) died on this day. Julius Caesar defied the Roman Senate, crossing the Rubicon & declaring “alea iacta est” (the die is cast) (49 BCE), Golden Bull of Charles IV (1356), Order of the Golden Fleece created by Philippe le Bon (1430), Charles I of England fled London for Oxford (1642), Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” published (1776), Florida seceded from the Union (1861), January uprising in Poland (1863), John D. Rockefeller (1870), Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) declared a protectorate of France (1889), a gusher of crude oil in Texas launched the American oil industry (1901), Yuan Shi-kai dissolved the Republic of China’s parliament, preparing to make himself emperor (1914), ‘Silent Sentinels’ Suffragettes held their first protest outside the White House led by Alice Paul & the National Woman’s Party (1917), the League of Nations created by the ratification of the Covenant of the League of Nations by 42 member states (1920), Warren Harding ordered the last US troops home from Germany, ending the occupation following World War I (1923), Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” premiered in Berlin (1927), Joseph Stalin ordered Leon Trotsky’s exile from the Soviet Union (1928), Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed Congres on the urgent need for the lend-lease program to save Britain from Nazi Germany (1941), the United Nations General Assembly met for the first time in London (1946), the United Nations headquarters building opened in Manhattan (1951), Harold Macmillan became British prime minister following Anthony Eden’s resignation (1957), more than 4,000 killed by an avalanche in Peru (1962), Julian Bond denied his seat in the Georgia House of Representatives (184-12) because of his opposition to the Vietnam War (1966), Edward Brooke (R.-Mass.) seated as the first African American popularly elected to the US Senate (1967), Lyndon Baines Johnson asked Congress for more funding for the Vietnam War effort (1967), Sweden became the first Western country to recognize North Vietnam (1969), Steve Allen’s “Meeting Of The Minds” debuted on PBS (1977), Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” commercial with Clara Peller first aired (1984), Daniel Ortega inaugurated as president of Nicaragua (1985), the People’s Republic of China lifted martial law imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 (1990), Japan ended the routine fingerprinting of all adult ethnic Koreans (1991), Lorena Bobbitt’s trial began (1994), AOL-Time Warner founded through one of the biggest mergers in history (2000), “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Film at the 9th Critics’ Choice Movie Awards ceremony (2004), Tata Motors unveiled the Nano, the world’s cheapest car (2008), Jeff Bezos became the second man worth over $100 billion as his wealth reached $106 billion (2018) on this day.
 
 
January 11
 
 
Roman Emperor Theodosius I (347), Abd al-Raḥmān III (889), Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449), Francesco Parmigianino (1503), Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex (1591), Alexander Hamilton (1755), Ezra Cornell (1807), John A. Macdonald (1815), William James (1842), Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858), Reinhold Glière (1875), Alice Paul (1885), Aldo Leopold (1887), Eva Le Gallienne (1899), Maurice Duruflé (1902), Pierre Mendès-France (1907), Jean Chrétien (1934), Arthur Scargill (1938), Naomi Judd [Diana Ellen] (1946), Mary J. Blige (1971) & Matteo Renzi (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1494), Pietro Bembo (1547), Yemelyan Pugachev (1775), François Joseph Paul de Grasse (1788), Francis Lightfoot Lee (1797), Domenico Cimarosa (1801), Francis Scott Key (1843), Gail Borden (1874), Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussmann (1891), Ambrose Bierce (1914), Constantine I of Greece (1923), Thomas Hardy (1928), Galeazzo Conte Ciano (1944), Aureliano Pertile (1952), Oscar Petrous (1954), Alberto Giacometti (1966), Beulah Bondi (1981), Klaus Tennstedt (1998), Nixmary Brown (2006), Edmund Hillary (2008), Éric Rohmer [Maurice Schérer], Mariangela Melato (2013), Ariel Sharon (2014), Anita Ekberg (2015), Sheldon Adelson (2021) & David-Maria Sassoli (2022) died on this day. Theodora crowned Byzantine empress (1055), the first known government-sponsored lottery in the world took place at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (1569), Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II granted the Austrian nobility freedom of religion (1571), William Herschel discovered the moons of Uranus Titania & Oberon (1787), Alabama seceded from the Union (1861), Charing Cross Station opened in London (1864), Benito Juárez became president of Mexico (1867), the Anglo-Zulu War began with the British invasion of Zululand (1879), Theodore Roosevelt designated the Grand Canyon a national monument (1908), the Donghak peasant rebellion began in Korea (1894), Romania annexed Transylvania (1919), George II of Greece deposed & a republic proclaimed (1924), Frank Kellogg replaced Charles Hughs as US secretary of state (1925), Louis B. Mayer announced the creation of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (1927), Joseph Stalin banished Leon Trotsky (1928), Amelia Earhart flew from Honolulu to Oakland (1935), Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet “Romeo & Juliet” premiered in Leningrad (1940), Enver Hoxha proclaimed the People’s Republic of Albania (1946), US Surgeon General Luther Terry issued a report conclusively documenting a causal link between smoking & cancer (1964), Joran van der Sloot plead guilty to a murder in Peru (2012), Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović elected as the first female president of Croatia (2015), Tsai Ing-wen won re-election in a landslide in the presidential election in Taiwan (2020) & House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against Donald Trump for incietement to insurrection (2021) on this day.
 
January 12
 
John Winthrop (1588), José Ribera (‘Lo Spagnoletto’) (1591), Charles Perrault (1628), John Singer Sargent (1856), Swami Vivekananda (1863), Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876), Jack London (1876), Hermann Göring (1893), P.W. Botha (1916), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918), Katherine ‘Scottie’ MacGregor (1925), Tim Horton (1930), Bernardine Dohrn (1942), Joe Frazier (1944), Anthony Andrews (1948), Haruki Murakami (1949), Wayne Wang (1949), Göran Lindblad (1950), Kirstie Alley (1951), Rush Limbaugh (1951), Larry Hoppens (1951), Ann Althouse (1951), Howard Stern (1954), Jeff Bezos (1964) & Priyanka Gandhi (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Abū-Sa’īd Abul-Khayr (1049), Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1519), Friedrich von Schlegel (1829), William Grenville (1834), Lorraine Hansberry (1965), Agatha Christie (1976), Keye Luke (1991), William Hewlett (2001), Cyrus Vance (2002), Maurice Gibb (2003) & Arne Næss (2009). Gustav Vasa crowned king of Sweden (1528), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Ottone, Re di Germania” (HWV 15), premiered in London (1723), Napoléon’s French troops evacuated Vienna (1806), “Sam ‘n’ Henry” debuted on WGN in Chicago, becoming one of the most popular radio shows in history as “Amos ‘n’ Andy” (1926), Joseph Smith fled Ohio to avoid arrest & led Mormons to settle in Missouri (1838), France declared Napoléon Bonaparte’s family permanently banished (1816), the British-Zulu War began with Lt. Gen. Frederic Augustus’ invasion of Zululand (1879) Itō Hirobumi began his third term as prime minister of Japan (1898), Josef Dzhugashvili signed himself as Stalin (‘man of steel’) in a letter to the newspaper the Social Democrat (1913), the US House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women right to vote (1915), Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway became the first woman elected to the US Senate (1932), Timely Comics (later Marvel) founded by American publisher Martin Goodman in New York (1939), US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced the Eisenhower administration’s policy of ‘massive retaliation’ (1954), the US Air Force sprayed Vietnamese forests with Agent Orange in Operation Ranch Hand (1962), the Sultan of Zanzibar overthrown in a revolution one month after independence (1964), “Batman” with Adam West & Burt Ward debuted on ABC (1966), “All in the Family” premiered on CBS, the first TV show with a toilet flushing (1971), the UN Security Council voted 11-1 to seat Palestine Liberation Organization (1976), “Dynasty” premiered on ABC (1981), Romania became the first Warsaw Pact member state to ban the Communist Party (1990), the US Senate voted to authorize George H.W. Bush’s war on Iraq (1991), O.J. Simpson’s murder trial began (1995), 160,000 killed by an earthquake in Haiti, which destroyed most of Port-au-Prince (2010) & Woody Allen received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the 71st annual Golden Globe Awards (2014) on this day.
 
 
January 13
 
Henry II of Castile & León (1334), Salmon P. Chase (1808), Horatio Alger (1832), Sophie Tucker [Kalish] (1884), George Gurdjieff (1887), Zhou Youguang [Zhou Yaoping] (1906), Paul Feyerabend (1924), Gwyneth ‘Gwen’ Verdon (1925), Charles Nelson Reilly (1931), Rip Taylor (1931), Renato Bruson (1936), Edmund White (1940), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (1961), Patrick Dempsey (1966), Shonda Rimes (1970), Orlando Bloom (1977) & Liam Hemsworth (1990) were born #OnThisDay. Æthelwulf, king of Wessex (858), Charles le Gros of the Franks (888), Abbé Suger (1151), Edmund Spenser (1599), Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1625), Frederick V of Denmark (1766), Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1797), Stephen Foster (1864), Nadezhda von Meck (1894), Wyatt Earp (1929), James Joyce (1941), Hubert Humphrey (1978), André Kostelanetz (1980), Chiang Ching-huo (1988), René Pleven (1993), Johan Jørgen Holst (1994) & Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon (2017) died on this day. Nika riots in Constantinople — popular uprising put down by Byzantine Emperor Justinian (532), Pope Honorius II granted papal sanction to the Knights Templar (1128), Galileo Galilei discovered Callisto — Jupiter’s fourth moon (1610), Dr. William Bryden escaped the massacre of a British expeditionary force of 16,000 in Afghanistan’s Khyber Pass (1842), Vancouver Island granted to Hudson’s Bay Company (1849), the British Labour Party founded under Kair Hardie’s leadership (1893), Émile Zola’s “J’accuse” letter accusing the French government of framing Alfred Dreyfus (1898), the first Korean immigrants to the US arrived in Honolulu on the RMS Gaelic (1903), John Millington Synge’s “Deirdre of the Sorrows” premiered in Dublin (1910), as First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill presented his plan for a British assault on the Dardanelles (Gallipoli campaign) (1915), Mickey Mouse comic strip’s first appearance (1930), Adolf Hitler declared ‘total war’ against the Allies (1943), the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the UN Jacob Malik stormed out of a Security Council meeting & announced his intention to boycott future Security Council meetings (1950), Baudouin of Belgium proposed independence for the Congo (1959), Chubby Checker’s song “The Twist” hit #1 on the charts two years after first reaching that position (1962), Karol Wojtyla (later Pope Paul II appointed archbishop of Krakow (1964), Lt. Col. Étienne Eyadéma & Kléber Dadjo launched a coup d’état in Togo (1967), Johnny Cash performed at Folsom Prison (1968), Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu fled Nigeria, ending the war for Biafra’s independence (1970), Sarah Caldwell became the first woman to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata (1976), Douglas Wilder became the first African American governor of Virginia & the first in the US (1990), Jeffrey Dahmer pleaded insanity to serial murder (1992), Japan issued a limited apology for the sexual enslavement of the Korean ‘comfort women’ (1992), Queen Elizabeth II’s statement on Prince Harry & Meghan Markle (2020), Donald Trump impeached by the House of Representatives (232-197) for ‘incitement of insurrection’ (2021) & a 45,000-year-old cave painting of a pig discovered in Leang Tedongnge cave on the island of Sulawesi — the world oldest known cave painting of an animal (2021) on this day.
 
 
 
January 14
 
Mark Antony [Marcus Antonius] (83 BC), Benedict Arnold (1741), Henri Fanti-Latour (1836), Berthe Morisot (1841), Jean de Reszke (1850), Albert Schweitzer (1875), Martin Niemöller (1892), John dos Passos (1896), Cecil Beaton (1904), Takeo Fukuda (1905), Joseph Losey (1909), Andy Rooney (1919), Giulio Andreotti (1919), Yukio Mishima (1925), Louis Quilico (1925), Jean-Claude Beton (1925), Gerald Arpino (1928), Harriet Andersson (1932), Julian Bond (1942), Faye Dunaway (1941), Carol Bellamy (1942), Holland Taylor (1943), Mariss Jansons (1943), Nina Totenberg (1944), Maureen Dowd (1952), Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu (1952), Ben Heppner (1956), Colin Ferguson (1958) & Jason Bateman (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Pier Francesco Cavalli (1676), Edmond Halley (1742), François Joseph Paul, marquis de Grasetilly, comte de Grasse (1788), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1867), Greyfriars Bobby the Skye Terrier (1872), Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence (1892), Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1898), Joaquín Turina (1849), Humphrey Bogart (1957), Jeanette MacDonald (1965), Anthony Eden (1977), Peter Finch (1977), Anaïs Nin (1977), Ray Kroc (1984), Donna Reed (1986), Douglas Sirk (1987), Georgy Malenkov (1988), Uta Hagen (2004), Shelley Winters [Schrift] (2006), Ricardo Montalbán (2009), Conrad Bain (2013) & Alan Rickman (2016) died on this day. Martin Luther entered the University of Erfurt at the age of 17 (1501), Pope Leo X issued a papl bull against slavery (1514), François I of France & Holy Roman Emperor Charles V signed the Treaty of Madrid in which François gave up his claims to Flanders, Burgundy & Italy (1526), Philip V abdicated as king of Spain (1724), Third Battle of Panipat (1761), US Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War (1784), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his ‘Dissonanzenquartett’ (Dissonance Quartet) (Op. 10) (1785), Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden in the Treaty of Kiel (1814), Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Tosca” premiered in Rome (1900), Raymond Poincaré became prime minister of France (1912), Gen. J.C. Smuts & Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi reached an agreement on indians in South Africa (1914), Alban Berg’s opera “Wozzeck” premiered in Berlin (1925), Norway claimed Queen Maud Land in Antarctica (1939), Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered all ‘enemy aliens’ to register (1942), Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first US president to use a plane for official business, flying to Casablanca to meet with Winston Churchill & Charles de Gaulle (1943), “The Today Show” premiered on NBC (1952), Sandy Wilson’s musical “The Boy Friend” opened at Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End (1954), Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe (1954), George Wallace sworn in as governor of Alabama (1963), “The Bell Jar” published a month before Sylvia Plath’s suicide (1963), “Sanford & Son” starring Redd Foxx & Demond Wilson premiered on NBC (1972), Margrethe II became the first queen regnant of Denmark since 1412 (1972), “The Bionic Woman” with Lindsay Wagner debuted on ABC (1976), “Fantasy Island” starring Ricardo Montalbán & Hervé Villechaize premiered on ABC (1977), Tyne Daly arrested for drunk driving in Van Nuys (1991), Bill Clinton approved a $20 billion aid package for Mexico (1995), Georgia made its five cross national flag official again after 500 years (2004), Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia (2011), U.S. Rep. Steve King stripped of his House committee assignments after making racist comments (2019), Yoweri Museveni won re-election in Uganda in elections challenged by Bobi Wine as rigged (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 15
 
Molière [Jean-Baptiste Poquelin] (1622), Franz Grillparzer (1791), Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809), Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812), Pierre S. Du Pont (1870), Max Adler (1873), Abdulaziz Ibn Saud (1875), Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia (1902), Aristotle Onassis (1906), Edward Teller (1908), Gene Krupa (1909), Jean Bugatti (1909), Michel Debré (1912), Lloyd Bridges (1913), Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914), Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918), John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York (1920), Frank Thornton (1921), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929), Michel Chapuis (1930), Margaret O’Brien (1937), Vince Foster (1945), Princess Michael of Kent (1945), Charo [Maria Baeza] (1951), Iñaki Urdangarín (1968) & Prince Philip & Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Servius Sulpicius Galba, Roman emperor (69), Juan de Herrera (1597), Banastre Tarleton (1833), Matthew Brady (1896), Fannie Farmer (1915), Karl Liebknecht (1919), Rosa Luxemburg (1919), Elizabeth Short (1947), Ray Bolger (1987), Gordon Jackson (1990), Victoria de los Ángeles (2005), Mathilde Krim (2018) & Carol Channing (2019) died on this day. Nebuchadnezzar II of Bablyon laid siege to Jerusalem (558 BCE), Otho seized power in Rome & declared himself emperor (69), Henry VIII declared himself head of the Church of England (1535), François I of France commissioned Jean-François Roberval to settle New France (1541), Elizabeth Tudor crowned queen of England in Westminster Abbey (1559), Vermont declared independence from New York (1777), Tobias Smollett published a pamphlet accusing Henry Fielding of plagiarism (1752), the British Museum opened in London (1759), Voltaire’s “Candide” published (1759), Fraunces Tavern opened in MAnhattan (1762), John Etherington wore the first top hat in London (1797), Skandinavia published in New York, the first Swedish magazine in the US (1847), José Joaquín de Herrera replaced as president of Mexico by Gen. Mariano Arista (1851), Elisha Otis patented the steam elevator (1861), the first use of the donkey as a symbol of the Democratic Party drawn by Thomas Nast appeared in Harper’s Weekly (1870), Abdulaziz Ibn Saud’s capture of Riyadh initiated the creation of the third Saudi state (1902), Jan Ignace Paderewski became the first prime minister of the newly independent Poland (1919), Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht tortured & murdered by the Freikorps (1919), the Great Boston Molasses Flood killed 21 (1919), Arthur Griffith elected president of the Irish Free State after Eamon de Valera resigned in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1922), the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the conviction of John T. Scopes on a technicality but the ban on the teaching of evolution remained in force (1927), Elizabeth Short (‘the Black Dahlia’) found murdered in LA’s Leimert Park (1947), John Juston’s film “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” premiered (1948), Ilse Koch (a.k.a., ‘the Witch of Buchenwald’) sentenced to life in prison by a German court (1951), the First Nigerian Republic overthrown in a coup d’état (1966), the Aswan Dam opened in Egypt (1971), “American Pie” reached #1 on the pop charts (1972), four Watergate burglars pleaded guilty in federal court (1973), Gene Shalit joined “The Today Show” (1973), Richard Nixon suspended all US offensive action in North Vietnam (1973), “Happy Days” began an 11-year run on ABC (1974), Portugal signed an accord granting Angola’s independence (1975), Phyllis Diller got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1975), Sara Jane Moore sentenced to life for her attempted assassination of Gerald Ford (1976), the Coneheads debuted on “Saturday Night Live” (1977), serial killer Ted Bundy murdered Lisa Levy & Margaret Bowman (1978), Diana, Princess of Wales called for an international ban on landmines (1997), Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger’s ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ (2009) & LGBTQ activists accused Chechnya of persecution (2019) on this day.
 
 
January 16
 
René of Anjou, king of Naples (1409), Johannes Schöner (1477), François de Vendôme, duc de Beaufort (1616), Franz Brentano (1838), André Michelin (1853), Fulgencio Batista (1901), Paul Nitze (1907), Ethel Merman (1908), Francesco Scavullo (1921), Pilar Lorengar [Lorenza Pilar García] (1928), Norman Podhoretz (1930), Dian Fossey (1932), Jim Berry (1932), Susan Sontag (1933), Marilyn Horne (1934), Katia Ricciarelli (1946), Georgette Mosbacher (1947), Ruth Reichl (1948), Fuad II of Egypt (1952), Saadeddine Othmani (1956), Sade [Helen Folasade Adu] (1959), Kate Moss (1974) & Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Johannes Schöner (1547), Edward Gibbon (1794), Amilcare Ponchielli (1886), Léo Delibes (1891), Marshall Field (1906), Carole Lombard [Jane Alice Peters] (1942), Arturo Toscanini (1957), Bob Jones (1968), Ted Cassidy (1979), Laurent-Désiré Kabila (2001), Auberon Waugh (2001), Michael Bilandic (2002), Andrew Wyeth (2009), Gustav Leonhardt (2012), Abigail Van Buren [Pauline Phillips] (2013), Russell Johnson (2014), Christopher Tolkien (2020) & [Harvey] Phil Spector (2021) died on this day. The Roman Senate conferred the title ‘Augustus’ on Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian (27 BCE), Totila’s Ostrogoths entered Rome after a long siege (550), Córdoba’s emir Abd al-Raḥmān III declared himself caliph (929), the Council of Nablus was held in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1120), the Medici were appointed official bankers to the popes (1412), Ivan the Terrible crowned himself the first tsar of Russia (1547), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V named his son Philip II king of Spain (1556), Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk tried for treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England (1572), the first edition of “El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha” (book one of “Don Quixote”) by Miguel de Cervantes published in Madrid (1605), the Scottish parliament ratified the Act of Union (1707), Britain & Prussia signed the Treaty of Westminster (1756), the British captured Pondicherry from the French (1761), Vermont declared independence from New York (1777), Louis XVI sentenced to death by the Convention National (1793), British troops defeated the French at the Battle of Corunna during the Peninsular War (1809), John C. Frémont appointed governor of the new California Territory (1847), the Senate rejected the Crittenden Compromise (1861), Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman issued Field Order #15 granting land to African Americans (1865), Virginia readmitted to the Union (1870), the Pendelton Act created the basis for the US civil service system (1883), the School Journal published John Dewey’s essay “My Pedagogic Creed” (1897), the British House of Commons voted on home rule for Ireland (1913), Montenegro surrendered to Austria-Hungary’s forces (1916), the Zimmermann Telegram from Germany to Mexico intercepted by British intelligence (1917), strikes across Germany & Austria (1918), ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution (Prohibition) (1919), first assembly of the Legaue of nations held in Paris (1920), Carnegie Hall hosted its first jazz concert with Benny Goodman & his band (1938), Carole Lombard killed in a plane crash (1942), Adolf Hitler moved into his Führerbunker in Berlin (1945), Belgium, Luxembourg & Netherlands recognized Israel (1950), Egypt’s president Abdel Gamal Nasser pledged to reconquer Palestine (1956), Lynden Pindling’s Progressive Liberal Party formed the first black government in the Bahamas (1967), Muammar Gaddafi took over in Libya four months after instigating a coup d’état (1970), Peter Benchley’s “Jaws” published by Doubleday (1974), Donny & Marie Osmond’s TV show premiered on ABC (1976), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled to Egypt after the Iranian Revolution toppled the Shah (1979), David Attenborough’s “Life on Earth” premiered on BBC One (1979), the Persian Gulf War began (1991), Bill Cosby’s son Ennis murdered on California’s Interstate 405 in Los Angeles (1997), the Congo’s president Laurent-Désiré Kabila assassinated by one of his own bodyguards (2001), Bill Clinton awarded Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish–American War (2001), the UN Security Council unanimously established an arms embargo & froze the assets of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaida & members of the Taliban (2002), Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf sworn in as Liberia’s president, becoming Africa’s first female elected head of state (2006), Donald Trump’s impeachment trial began in the Senate (2020) & Armin Laschet was elected leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), succeeding Angela Merkel (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 17
 
Philippe le Hardi (Philip the Bold), duc de Bourgogne (duke of Burgundy) (1342), Friedrich der Weise, Kurfürst von Sachsen (Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony) (1463), Pope Pius V [Antonio Ghislieri] (1504), Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600), Benjamin Franklin (1706), Stanislas August Poniatowski, last king of Poland (1732), Anne Brontë (1820), Catherine Booth (1829), Alexander Sergeyevich Taneyev (1850), David Lloyd George (1863), David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty (1871), Al Capone (1899), Betty White (1922), Earth Kitt (1927), Vidal Sassoon (1928), James Earl Jones (1931), Douglas Wilder (1931), Frederick A. Fox (1931), Don Zimmer (1931), Muhammad Ali [Cassius Clay] (1942), René Préval (1943), Andy Kaufman (1949), Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (1954), Steve Harvey (1957), Jim Carrey (1961), Michelle Obama (1964) & Zooey Deschanel (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Roman emperor Theodosius the Great (395), Fyodor I, tsar of Russia (1598), Thomas Lincoln (1851), Lola Montez (1861), Chang & Eng Bunker (1874), Rutherford B. Hayes (1893), Juliette Gordon Low (1927), Louis Comfort Tiffany (1933), Gary Gilmore (1977), Charles Hernu (1990), Olav V of Norway (1991), Richard Crenna (2003), Zhao Ziyang (2005), Art Buchwald (2007), Bobby Fischer (2008) & Derek Fowlds (2020) died on this day. Giovanni da Verrazzano set sailing searching for a passage to China (1524), François Rabelais absolved of apostasy by Pope Paul III (1536), Catherine de Medici issued the Edict of St. Germain recognizing the rights of Huguenots in France (1562), Henry IV of France declared war on Spain (1595), Brandenburg & Sweden signed the Treaty of Königsberg (1656), Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play “The Rivals” premiered in London (1775), armed Democrats took control of Texas state government & ended Reconstruction in the state (1874), Sanford Dole & American planters instigated a coup d’état overthrowing Queen Liluokalani, the last sovereign of an independent Hawaii (1893), Félix Faure became president of France (1895), Anton Chekov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” premiered at the Moscow Art Theater (1904), Captain Robert Scott reached the South Pole one month after Roald Amundsen (1912), Popeye debuted in the comic strip “Thimble Theater” (1929), FDR appointed Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. the 44th US ambassador to the United Kingdom (1938), Nazis began evacuation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz (1945), Soviet troops liberated Warsaw from Nazi German occupation (1945), Soviet secret police arrested Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary (1945), the first meeting of the United Nations Security Council (1946), Dwight Eisenhower ordered the assassination of the Congo’s president Patrice Lumumba (1961), Dwight Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn of the military/industrial complex (1961), Martin Luther King, Jr. launched his campaign in Chicago (1966), serial killer Gary Gilmore executed by firing squad in Utah (1977), Ferdinand Marcos ended martial law in the Philippines (1981), George Wallace won an unprecedented fourth term as governor of Alabama (1983), Hu Yaobang resigned as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party amid demonstrations for democracy in China (1987), Harald V succeeded Olav V as king of Norway (1991), George Bush launched Operation Desert Storm (1991), Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment (1994), the Republic of Ireland granted the first divorce in its history (1997), Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton on health care in the fourth Democratic presidential debate (2016), Barack Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence from 35 to 7 years (2017) & Vladimir Putin ordered the arrest of Alexey Navalney upon his return to Russia (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 18
 
François Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641), Charles de Montesquieu (1689), Peter Mark Roget (1779), Daniel Webster (1782), César Cui (1835), Emmanuel Chabrier (1841), Daniel Williams (1858), Gaston Gallimard (1881), A.A. Milne (1882), Oliver Hardy (1892), Cary Grant [Archibald Alexander Leach] (1904), Sibylla von Saxe-Coburg und Gotha (1908), Jacob Bronowski (1908), Danny Kaye [David Daniel Kaminski] (1911), Gilles Deleuze (1925), Ray Dolby (1933), Paul Keating (1944), Alexander van der Bellen (1944), Elijah Cummings (1951), Kevin Costner (1955), Mark Rylance [David Mark Rylance Waters] (1960), Martin O’Malley (1963), Jane Horrocks (1964), Leo Varadkar (1979) & Seung-Hui Cho (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Pedro I of Portugal (1367), Edmund de Mortimer, 5th Earl of March (1425), Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands (1586), John Tyler (1862), Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1873), Antoine César Becquerel (1878), Prince John of England (1919), Rudyard Kipling (1936), Charles [Carlo] Ponzi (1949), Sydney Greenstreet (1954), Hugh Gaitskell (1963), Yvonne Printemps (1977), Cecil Beaton (1980), Bruce Chatwin (1989), Myfanwy Piper (1997), Paul Tsongas (1997), Sargent Shriver (2011), Glenn Frey (2016) & Roberta Peters [Peterman] (2017) died on this day. Gen. Magnentius proclaimed himself emperor after deposing Constans (350), 30,000 killed by troops loyal to Justinian in the Nika uprising against the Byzantine emperor (532), Francisco Pizarro founded Lim in Peru (1535), Louis Prince de Condé arrested & imprisoned at Vincennes (1650), Friedrich I & Sophie Charlotte von Hannover crowned king & queen of Prussia (1701), Captain James Cook became the first European to reach the Hawaiian Islands (1778), Thomas Jefferson requested funding from Congress for the Lewis & Clark expedition (1803), José de San Martín led a revolutionary army over the Andes to attack Spanish royalists in Chile (1817), Otto von Bismarck proclaimed the establishment of the Second German Reich & Wilhelm of Prussia as its first emperor (1871), Gen. Charles Gordon left London for Khartoum (1884), Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole a month after Roald Amundsen (1912), opening of the World War I peace conference (1919), Ignacy Jan Paderewski became prime minister of Poland (1919), the Metropolitan Opera’s first jazz concert included Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday& Benny Goodman (1944), “The Jeffersons” premiered on CBS (1975), Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry arrested on drug charges (1990), former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin indicted on corruption charges (2013) and NASA & NOAA announced that 2016 was the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2015 which itself topped a record set in 2014 (2017) on this day.
 
 
January 19
 
Dōgen (Japanese Buddhist priest & founder of the Sōtō school of Zen) (1200), François II of France (1544), James Watt (1736), Auguste Comte (1798), Robert E. Lee (1807), Edgar Allan Poe (1809), Paul Cézanne (1839), Ólafur Thors (1892), Hans Hotter (1909), Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1920), Patricia Highsmith [Plangman] (1921), Jean Stapleton (1923), Nathalie ‘Tippi’ Hedren (1930), Phil Everly (1939), Janis Joplin (1943), Dolly Parton (1946), Julian Barnes (1946), Alexandr Vladimirovich Shchukin (1946), Paula Deen (1947), Desi Arnaz, Jr. (1953), Katey Sagal (1954), Simon Rattle (1955), Martin Bashir (1963), John Bercow (1963), Michael Adams (1963), J.B. Pritzker (1965), Edwidge Danticat (1969), Predrag Mijatović (1969), Orlando Palmeiro (1969), Luc Longley (1969), Junior Seau (1969), Steve Staunton (1969), Jodie Sweetin (1982), Pete Buttigieg (1982) & Jack Schlossberg (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Dagobert I, king of Austrasia, Soissons, Burgundy & Neustrië (639), Hans Sachs (1576), William Congreve (1729), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1865), Charlotte of Belgium (Carlotta of Mexico) (1927), Michael Rabin (1972), Thomas Hart Benton (1975), William O. Douglas (1980), Bettino Craxi (2000), Hedy Lamarr (2000), Françoise Giroud (2003), Harry E. Claiborne (2004), Wilson Pickett (2006), Suzanne Pleshette (2008) & Ettore Scola (2016) died on this day. Theodosius installed as co-emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire (379), Rouen surrendered to Henry V of England (1419), France ceded Roussillon & Cerdagne to Spain through the Treaty of Barcelona (1493), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, executed for treason (1547), Louis XIV of France & Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I signed a treaty dividing the Spanish empire (1668), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore” premiered in Rome (1853), Georgia seceded from the Union (1861), Jules Massenet’s opera “Manon” premiered in Paris (1884), Henrik Ibsen’s play The Master Builder premiered in Berlin (1893), four people in Norfolk killed in the 1st German Zeppelin air raid attack on the United Kingdom (1915), Red Guards & White Guards clashed in the civil war in Finland (1918), Japan invaded Burma (1942), the first Warsaw Ghetto uprising (1943), Cuba recognized Israel (1949), Indira Gandhi elected India’s fourth prime minister & first female head of government (1966), Gerald Ford pardoned ‘Tokyo Rose’ Iva Toguri (1977), Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia (1983), Spain recognized Israel (1986), “48 Hours” premiered on CBS (1988), Fleetwood Mac reunited to play “Don’t Stop” at Bill Clinton’s first inaugural ball 91993), Jean-Claude Juncker sworn in as prime minister of Luxembourg at the age of 28 (1995), Yasser Arafat returned to Hebron (1997), Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán escaped from Puente Grande maximum-security prison near Guadalajara (2001), Howard Dean’s Iowa scream (2004), the first McDonald’s drive-through in Beijing opened (2007), Lance Armstrong admitted to doping in all seven of his Tour de France races (2013), Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump in Iowa (2016), Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán extradited to the US for trial (2017) & the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 400,000 in the US (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 20
 
Johann Hermann Schein (1586), Carlos II of Spain (1716), Ernest Chausson (1855), Lead Belly [Huddie William Ledbetter] (1888), Joy Adamson [Friederike Viktoria Gessner] (1910), DeForest Kelley (1920), Federico Fellini (1920), Patricia Neal (1926), Arte Johnson (1929), Natan Sharansky (1948), Bill Maher (1956), Rainn Wilson (1966), Questlove [Ahmir Thompson] (1971), Nikki Haley (1972), Mathilde, queen of Belgium (1973) & Philippe Cousteau, Jr. (1980) were born #OnThisDay. St. Sebastian (288), Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1612), Anne of Austria, queen of France (1666), Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII (1745), David Garrick (1779), Bettina von Arnim (1859), David Kalākaua, king of Hawaii (1891), George V of England (1936), Amilcar Cabral (1973), Johnny Weismuller (1984), Barbara Stanwyck [Ruby Stevens] (1990), Audrey Hepburn (1993), Edith Haisman (1997), Al Hirschfeld (2003), Etta James [Jamesetta Hawkins] (2012) & Claudio Abbado (2014) died on this day. Castile established the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) in the port of Seville to deal with American affairs (1503), Christian II forced to abdicate as king of Denmark & Norway (1523), León founded by order of Mexico’s viceroy Don Martín Enríquez de Almansa (1576), the Peace of Knarod ended War of Kalmar between Denmark & Sweden (1613), the Treaty of Andrussovo ended the 13-year-war between Poland & Russia (1667), Napoléon convened the great Sanhedrin in Paris (1807), China ceded Hong Kong to the British during the 1st Opium War (1841), Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the first woman to testify before Congress (1869), the American Civil Liberties Union founded (1920), the Republic of Turked declared (1921), Japan established Henry Pu Yi as the puppet emperor of Manchukuo (1934), Edward VIII succeeded George V as king of England (1936), Japan invaded Burma (1942), Adolf Hitler held the Wannsee Konferenz to organize the Holocaust (the ‘Final Solution’) (1942), Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration (1945), Surinam became autonomous within the Kingdom of the Netherlands (1950), Patrice Lumumba sentenced to 6 months in prison in the Belgian Congo (1960), John F. Kennedy’s inauguration (1961), Arthur Penn’s film “Bonnie and Clyde” premiered in Paris with stars Warren Beatty & Faye Dunaway in attendance (1968), Richard Nixon’s inauguration (1969), Jimmy Carter announced the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics (1980), Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration (1981), American hostages in Tehran released after 444 days (1981), Ozzy Osbourne bit the head of a bat on stage in Des Moines (1982), George H.W. Bush’s inauguration (1989), Bill Clinton’s first inauguration (1993), “Four Weddings & a Funeral premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (1994), Joseph Estrada ousted in the EDSA II Revolution and succeeded by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president of the Philippines (2001), George W. Bush’s first inauguration (2001), Barack Obama’s first inauguration (2009), Donald Trump’s inauguration (2017), Joe Biden’s inauguration (2021) & Joe Biden signed 15 executive orders on his first day as president (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 21
 
Charles V of France (1338), Ethan Allen (1738), Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson (1824), Oscar II Frederik, king of Sweden & Norway (1829), Grigori Rasputin (1869), Alexander Tcherepnin (1899), Christian Dior (1905), Karl Wallenda (1905), Paul Scofield (1922), Aristotelis ‘Telly’ Savalas (1922), Jean Vroom (1922), Sam Mele (1922), Benny Hill [Alfred Hawthorn Hill] (1924), Prince Max, duke of Bavaria (1937), Wolfman Jack [Robert Weston Smith] (1938), Jack Licklaus (1940), Plácido Domingo (1941), Richie Havens (1941), Ivan Putski (1941), [Charles] Edwin Starr [Hatcher] (1942), Mac Davis (1942), Martin Sharp (1942), Martin Shaw (1945), Jill Eikenberry (1947), Eric Holder (1951), Paul Allen (1953), Jeff Koons (1955), Geena Davis (1956) &. Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway (2004) were born #OnThisDay. Michael I Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople (1059), Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1519), John Dowland (1626), Louis XVI of France (1793), Albert Lortzing (1851), Franz Grillparzer (1872), Gojong, king & emperor of Korea (1919), Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin (1924), George Washington Goethals (1928), Lytton Strachey (1932), George Méliès (1938), George Orwell (1950), Cecil B. DeMille (1959), Ann Sheridan (1967), Richard Russell (1971), James Beard (1985), [Dorothy] Billy Tipton (1989), Jack Lord (1998), Byron de la Beckwith (2001), Peggy Lee [Norma Delores Egstrom] (2002), Waldemar Kmentt (2015), Russell Baker (2019), Kaye Ballard (2019) & Meat Loaf [Marvin Lee Aday] (2022) died on this day. Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz & George Blaurock launched the Swiss Anabaptist movement in Zürich (1525), England’s parliament passed a bill of attainder against Catherine Howard (1542), the Act of Uniformity enacted by England’s parliament (1549), Prussia & Russia signed a treaty re the third partition of Poland (1793), Louis XVI of France was guilltoined for treason (1793), Leoš Janáček’s opera “Jenůfa” premiered in Brno (1904), Angel Island immigration station opened in San Francisco Bay (1910), the Italian Communist Party was founded at Livorno by Amadeo Bordiga & Antonio Gramsci (1921), Agatha Christie’s first novel “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” introducing the character Hercule Poirot published (1921), Parisian baker & ‘student of medieval life’ Henri Littière was charged with forcing his adulterous wife Juliette to wear a chastity belt & sentenced to three months in prison & fined 50 francs for cruelty to his wife (1934), the Wilderness Society founded (1935), Alger Hiss convicted on perjury charges (1950), the Battle of Khe Sanh began (1968), the first Concorde flights from Heathrow & Orly (1976), Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft dodgers (1977), first supertitles for a live opera performance for the Canadian Opera Company’s production of “Elektra” (English titles by Sonya Friedman) (1983), Jessye Norman sang “Simple Gifts” at Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration (1985), Lorena Bobbitt was found temporarily insane (1994), more than two million people worldwide participated in Women’s Marches protesting Donald Trump’s election (2017), Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh finally conceded defeat & left Gambia 2 months after losing the presidential election (2018), the first case of COVID-19 in the US was confirmed (2020) & Meat Loaf [Marvin Lee Aday] died (2022) on this day.
 
 
January 22
 
Ibn Taymiya (1263), Ivan III (‘the Great’), Grand Prince of Moscow & Russia (1440), Francis Bacon (1561), Pierre Gassendi (1592), Captain William Kidd (1645), Nicola Lancret (1690), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729), George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788), Bishop Ernest Roland Wilberforce (1840), August Strindberg (1849), Beatrice Potter Webb (1858), D.W. Griffith (1875), Constance Collier (1878), Francis Picabia (1879), Marcel Dassault [Bloch] (1892), Conrad Veidt (1893), Rosa Ponselle [Ponzillo] (1897), Sergei Eisenstein (1898), George Balanchine (1904), U Thant (1909), Bruno Kreisky (1911), Suzanne Danco (1911), Henri Dutilleux (1916), William Warfield (1920), Birch Bayh (1928), Sam Cooke (1931), Berthold Grünfeld (1932), Bill Bixby (1934), Graham Kerr (the Galloping Gourmet) (1934), Pierre S. Du Pont IV (1935), John Hurt (1940), Myung-Whun Chung (1953), Shaun Cody (1983), Robert Steinhäuser (1983) & Netta Barzilai (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Muhammad I of Granada [Ibn al-Aḥmar] — first ruler of the Emirate of Granada (1238-1273), founder of the Nasrid dynasty & builder of the Alhambra (1273), Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset (1552), Shah Jahan (1666), Queen Victoria (1901), Lyndon Baines Johnson (1973), Jean-Louis Barrault (1994) Aristotelis ‘Telly’ Savalas (1994), rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1995), Israel Eidad (1996), Ann Miller [Johnnie Lucille Collier] (2004), Rose Mary Woods (2005), Heath Ledger (2008), Jean Simmons (2010), Cecil Parkinson 92016), Ursula K. Le Guin (2018), Hank Aaron (2021) & Thích Nhất Hạnh [Nguyen Xuan Bao] (2022) died on this day. Danish Vikings defeated Æthelred’s Saxons at the Battle of Basing (871), Robert II crowned king of Scotland (1371), Jews expelled from Colmar in Alsace (1510), Ottoman troops took Cairo, capital of the Maeluk Sultanate (1517), Henry VIII’s England & François I’s France declared war on Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1528), Elizabeth Tudor granted Thomas Tallis & William Byrd music press monopoly (1575), Spain ceded the Falkland Islands (las Malvinas) to Britain (1771), coup d’état in Batavian Republic (1798), Ashanti defeated the British in the Gold Coast (Ghana) (1824), the first British colonists reached New Zealand (1840), Johannes Brahms’ 1st piano concerto (in D minor) premieres in Hanover (1859), 150 British soldiers faced 3-4,000 Zulus at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift (1879), Cheyenne chief Dull Knife defeated by US & British forces (1879), Nicholas II’s palace guard massacred workers marching to the Winter Palace led by Father Gapon in ‘Bloody Sunday’ (1905), Vassily Kandinsky formed the Kunstlerverein in Munich (1909), Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” premiered in Manhattan (1953), Charles de Gaulle & Konrad Adenauer signed the Elysée treaty of cooperation between France & Germany (1963), Kenneth Kaunda became the first president of Zambia (1964), the world’s largest cheese (15,723 kg) manufactured in Wisconsin for New York’s World Fair (1964), “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” premiered on NBC (1968), the US Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationally (1973), Russian dissidents Andrei Sakharov & Yelena Bonner arrested in Moscow and banished to Gorky (1980), Apple’s “1984” commercial aired during Super Bowl XVIII (1984), Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces destroyed Kuwait’s oil facilities (1991), ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty to federal bombing charges (1998), the US Census Bureau released statistics showing Hispanics to be the largest minority in the US (2003), Evo Morales inaugurated as Bolivia’s first indigenous president (2006), Heath Ledger died of an accidental prescription drug overdose (2008) & Netflix became the largest digital media & entertainment company in the world, worth $100 billion (2018) on this day.
 
 
 
January 23
 
Vincent Ferrer (1350), John Hancock (1737), Muzio Clementi (1752), Marie Henri Beyle Stendhal (1783), Édouard Manet (1832), Antonio Gramsci (1891), Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (1896), Django Reinhardt (1910), Napoléon L. Bonaparte (1914), Potter Stewart (1915), Airey Neave (1916), Frank Lautenberg (1924), Jeanne Moreau (1928), Chita Rivera (1933), Marty Russo (1944), Arnoldo Aleman (1946), Tom Carper (1947), Megawati Sukarnoputri (1947), Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger III (1951), Antonio Villaraigosa (1953), Pavlo Lazarenko (1953) & Mariska Hargitay (1964) were born #OnThisDay. Holy Roman Emperor Otto III (1002), Ferdinand II of Aragon (1516), the Jiajing emperor of Ming China (1567), William Pitt the Younger (1806), Prince Edward, Duke of Kent & Strathearn (1820), Michele Puccini (1864), Gustave Doré (1883), Anna Pavlova (1931), Edvard Munch (1944), Helmuth Moltke (1945), Pierre Bonnard (1947), Alexander Onassis (1973), Paul Robeson (1976), Samuel Barber (1981), Salvador Dali (1989), Northrop Frye (1991), Frederick ‘Freddie’ Bartholomew (1992), Thomas Dorsey (1993), Robert Nozick (2002), Igor Kipnis (2002), Nell Carter (2003), Bob Keeshan (2004), Johnny Carson (2005), E. Howard Hunt (2007), Jack LaLanne (2011), Abdullah, king of Saudi Arabia (2015), Stansfield Turner (2018), Larry King [Zeiger] (2021) & Hal Holbrook (2021) died on this day. Zhu Yuanzhang crowned as the Hongwu emperor, first Ming emperor of China (1368), the second Book of Common Prayer became mandatory in England (1552), assassination of the Earl of Moray (regent of Scotland) provoked civil war (1570), Elizabeth Tudor opened the Royal Exchange in London (1571), France & Sweden formed an anti-Habsburg alliance through the Treaty of Barwald (1631), the first of Blaise Pascal’s “Lettres Provinciales” published (1656), Britain, the Netherlands & Sweden formed the Triple Alliance against Louis XIV’s France (1668), Liechtenstein became a sovereign principality within the Holy Roman Empire (1719), Prussia, Austria & Russia agreed on the second partition of Poland (1793), Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree (1849), Col. Eugene Baker ordered the massacre of sleeping Blackfeet in Montana (1870), a massive fire in Ålesund killed one & left 10,000 Norwegians homeless & Kaiser Wilhelm II funded the rebuilding of the town in Jugendstil style (1904), Charles Curtis of Kansas became the first Native American US senator (1907), the US & the UK demanded an end to abuses in Léopold II’s État Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State) (1908), the ‘Young Turks’ led a coup d’état against the Ottoman régime, assassinating Turkish minister of war Nazim Pasha (1913), the Netherlands refused to turn Kaiser Wilhelm II over to the Allies (1920), Ramsay MacDonald formed the first British Labour government following Stanley Baldwin’s resignation (1924), Joseph Stalin put Karl Radek & 16 others on trial in Moscow as part of the Great Purge (1937), Igaz Paderewski became prime minister of the Polish government in exile (1940), Charles Lindbergh urged the US to negotiate with Hitler (1941), Duke Ellington played Carnegie Hall for the first time (1943), Karl Dönitz launched Operation Hannibal (1945), the Knesset declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel (1950), Wham-O produced the first Frisbees (1957), Kim Philby defected to the USSR (1962), François Truffaut’s film “Jules et Jim” premiered (1962), ratification of the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution banning poll taxes in federal elections (1964), the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korean patrol boats (1968), “Roots” premiered on ABC (1977), Sweden became the first country to ban aerosol sprays (1978), the Richard Nixon presidential museum opened in San Clemente (1981), Madelein Albright became the first female secretary of state (1997), Pope John Paul II condemned the US embargo of Cuba (1998), reporter Daniel Pearl kidnapped in Karachi & subsequently beheaded (2002), Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud crowned king of Saudi Arabia (2015), Juan Guaido declared himself acting president of Venezuela (2019) & Annabella Sciorra testified that Harvey Weinstein raped her 25 years before (2020) on this day.
 
 
January 24
 
Publius Aelius Hadrianus (Hadrian) (76), Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1444), John Vanbrugh (1664), William Congreve (1670), Farinelli [Carlo Broschi] (1705), Friedrich der Große (Frederick the Great) of Prussia (1712), Georg F. Schmidt (1712), Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732), Gustav III of Sweden (1746), Edith Wharton (1862), Marguerite Durand (1864), Arthur Schomburg (1874), Maurice Couve de Murville (1907), Norman Dello Joio [Nicodemo De Gioo] (1913), Robert Motherwell (1915), Ernest Borgnine (1917), Oral Roberts (1918), Charles Socarides (1922), John, Earl Spencer (1924), Robert Kastenmeier (1924), Maria Tallchief (1925), Michel Serrault (1928), Neil Diamond (1941), Sharon Tate (1943), Elliott Abrams (1948), John Belushi (1949), Moon Jae-in (1953), Nastassja Kinski (1961) & Ed Helms (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Caligula [Gaius Caesar] (41), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1547), Ferdinand II von Vorderösterreich (1595), Lord .Randolph Churchill (1895), Winston Churchill (1965), George Cukor (1983), Gordon MacRae (1986), L. Ron Hubbard (1986), Ted Bundy (1989), Thurgood Marshall (1993) & Gianni Agnelli (2003) died on this day. Claudius succeeded Caligula as Roman emperor after his assassination (41), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II declared Albrecht von Wallenstein a traitor (1634), Charles VII Albert elected Holy Roman Emperor (1742), Louis XVI issued an edict calling for the convocation of France’s Estates-General (1789), a millwright discovered gold in Sutter’s Creek, setting off the California Gold Rush (1848), Modest Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov” premiered in St. Petersburg (1874), Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre” premiered (1875), publication of Robert Baden-Powell’s “Scouting for Boys” launched the Boy Scouts movement (1908), St. Petersburg renamed Leningrad (until 1991) (1924), Alfred Hitchcock’s first film “The Pleasure Garden” released in England (1927), Noël Coward’s play “Design for Living” premiered in Manhattan (1933), Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” premiered in Moscow but was banned until 1961 (1934), Krueger’s Cream Ale became the first canned beer sold by an American company (1935), John Ford’s film “The Grapes of Wrath” released (1940), Adolf Hitler refused Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ request to surrender, ordering German troops at Stalingrad to fight to the death (1943), Look magazine published the confession of Emmett Till’s murderers J.W. Milam & Roy Bryant (1956), Japanese sergeant Shoichi Yokoi found hiding on Guam (1972), Atocha Massacre by fascists in Madrid (1977), Apple unveiled its Macintosh personal computer (1984), Turkish journalist and writer Uğur Mumcu assassinated by a car bomb in Ankara (1993), Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) (2017), Larry Nassar sentenced to 40-175 years for sexual assault (2018) & the US recognized Juan Guiado as Venezuela’s president (2019) on this day.
 
 
January 25
 
Messalina (17), Anne, Duchess of Brittany (1477), Edmund Campion (1540), William Cavendish, first Duke of Devonishire (1640), Pompeo Batoni (1708), Robert Burns (1759), W. Somerset Maugham (1874), Virginia Woolf (1882), Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886), Eduard Zhevardnadze (1928), Corazon Aquino (1933), Etta James [Jamesetta Hawkins] (1938), Angela Thorne (1939), Peter Tatchell (1952), Marcello Giordani (1963), Charlene Wittstock, Princess of Monaco (1978), Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) & Alicia Keys [Cook] (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Geiseric, king of the vandals & Alans (477), Zhao Shu, the Yingzong Song emperor of China (1067), Henry Suso (1366), Christian II of Denmark, Norway & Sweden (1559), Lucas Cranach the Younger (1586), Caroline Lamb (1828), Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (1852), Dorothy Wordsworth (1855), Frederic Leighton (1896), Amadeo Modigliani (1920), Al Capone (1947), Ava Gardner (1990), Jean Dixon (1997), Robert Shaw (1999), Philip Johnson (2005), Mary Tyler Moore (2017) & John Hurt (2017) died on this day. Claudius accepted by the Roman Senate as the new emperor (41), Edward III became king of England after his mother Isabella & her lover Roger Mortimer deposed his father Edward II (1327), Sir Thomas Wyatt launched a rebellion against Mary Tudor (1554), Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella opera “La Cenerentola” premiered in Rome (1817), the University of Virginia chartered by the state (1819), Vincenzo Bellini’s opera “I Puritani” premiered in Paris (1835), an American expedition under Charles Wilkes became the first to identify Antarctica as a new continent (1840), Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” first played at the wedding of Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Victoria to the crown prince of Prussia (1858), the soda fountain patented by Gustavus Dows (1870), Congress created an Electoral Commission to resolve the 1876 election (1877), the Russian Zionist organization Bilu founded (1882), the National Afro-American League founded in Chicago by Timothy Thomas Fortune, one of earliest civil rights organizations (1890), Nellie Bly circumnavigated the globe in 72 days, 8 days fewer than Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in 80 Days” (1890), the United Mine Workers of America founded (1890), John Millington Synge’s play “Riders to the Sea” premieres in Dublin (1904), the Cullinan Diamond — the world’s largest — found in South Africa (1905), Julia Ward Howe became the first woman elected to National Institute of Arts & Letters (1907), Richard Strauss’ opera “Elektra” premiered in Dresden (1909), Montenegro surrendered to Austria Hungary (1916), Russia declared a republic of Soviets (1918), delegates at the Paris peace conference approved the establishment of a commission that would create the League of Nations (1919), the Hotel Pennsylvania opened in Manhattan, the largest hotel in the world at that time (1919), the first Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix (1924), Thailand’s Japanese puppet government declared war on the US & the UK (1942), Grand Rapids (MI), became the first US city to fluoridate its water (1945), Richard Strauss’ “Metamorphosis” premiered in Zürich (1946), David Ben-Guirion led his Mapai party to victory in Israel’s first parliamentary elections (1949), the first Emmy Awards ceremony held at the Hollywood Athletic Club (1949), Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council (1959), Walt Disney’s animated film “101 Dalmatians” released in the US (1961), John F. Kennedy held the first televised presidential press conference (1961), coup d’état in El Salvador (1961), Robert Altman’s film “M*A*S*H” released (1970), Charles Manson & three followers convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders (1971), Idi Amin’s coup d’état in Uganda (1971), Paul McCartney released from a Tokyo jail & deported from Japan (1980), 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived back in the US (1981), Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing sentenced to death (1981), Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing’s death sentence commuted to life in prison by China’s supreme court (1981), Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia (1983), Dan Rather questioned George H.W. Bush on the CBS evening news on his role in the Iran-Contra Affair (1988), Sears announced the closure of its catalog sales department after 97 years (1993), “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” won a Golden Globe for best film at the 61st award ceremony (2004), revolution broke out in Egypt (2011), Donald Trump’s lobbyist Roger Stone arrested for making false statements (2019) & Janet Yellen was confirmed as the first female treasurey secretary by the US Senate (2021).
 
 
January 26
 
Karl XIV Johan [Jean Bernadotte], king of Sweden (1763), Ludwig Joachim von Arnim (1781), Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (1852), Trinley Gyatso (12th Dalai Lama) (1857), Kees van Dongen (1877), Douglas MacArthur (1880), Seán MacBride (1904), Maria Augusta von Trapp (1905), Stéphane Grappelli (1908), William Hopper (1915), Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918), Akio Morita (1921), Paul Newman (1925), Roger Vadim (1928), Jules Feiffer (1929), Angela Davis (1944), Jacqueline du Pré (1945), Christopher Hampton (1946), Gene Siskel (1946), Timothy Clifford (1946), David Strathairn (1949), Jorg Haider (1950), Anders Fogh Rasmussen (1953), Eddie Van Halen (1955), Ellen DeGeneres (1958), Wayne Gretzky (1961), Kevin McCarthy (1965), Gustavo Dudamel (19981) & Nadya Suleman’s octuplets (2009) were born #OnThisDay. Edward Jenner (1823), Théodore Géricault (1824), John Wedgwood (1844), Victor de Broglie, 3rd duke of Broglie (1870), Charles George Gordon (1885), Grace Moore (1947), Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten (1947), Edward G. Robinson [Goldenberg] (1967), Nelson Rockefeller (1979), Lewis Mumford (1990), José Ferrer (1992), Jeane Dion (1997), Shinichi Suzuki (1998), Hugh Trevor-Roper (2003), , Barbara Hale (2017), Michel Legrand (2019) & Kobe Bryant (2020) died on this day. Edward III of England proclaimed king of France (1340), Vicente Yáñez Pinzón became the first European to set foot in Brazil (1500), the Council of Trent issued its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing a distinction between Roman Catholicism & Protestantism (1564), Stanislaw I abdicated as king of Poland (1736), Captain Arthur Phillip hoisted the Union Jack at Sydne Cove (‘Australia Day,’ a.k.a., ‘Invasion Day’) (1788), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Così Fan Tutte” premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna (1790), Michigan admitted as the 26th US state (1837), Myall Creek Massacre of 50 Wirrayaraay indigenous people by New South Wales Mounted Police (1838), Tennessee enacted the first prohibition law in the United States banning the sale of alcohol (1838), Hong Kong proclaimed a British territory (1841), the first German language daily newspaper in the US published in New York (1850), Louisiana seceded from the Union (1861), the world’s largest diamond —the 3,106-carat Cullinan — found in South Africa (1905), John Millington Synge’s “Playboy of Western World” opened in Dublin, provoking riots (1907), universal male suffrage in Austria (1907), Richard Strauß’ opera “Die Rosenkavalier” premiered at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden (1911), US Food Administrator Herbert Hoover called for ‘wheatless’ & ‘meatless’ days for the war effort (1918), Ukraine declared its independence from Russia (1918), Amedeo Modigliani’s fiancé Jeanne Hébuterne jumped out of a window a day after the artist’s funeral killing herself & her unborn child (1920), John Logie Baird demonstrated the first television in London (1926), the Indian National Congress proclaimed the goal of India’s independence (1929), Nazi Germany & Poland signed a 10-year non-aggression treaty (1934), Barcelona fell to Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces (1939), Francis Poulenc’s opera “Dialogue des Carmelites” premiered at the Teatro alla Scala di Milan, India annexed part of Kashmir (1957), Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth & final studio album “Bridge over Troubled Water” released (1970), Bill Clinton declared, “I want to say one thing to the American people; I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” (1998), Condoleezza Rice sworn in as US secretary of state, the first African American woman to be appointed to the position (2005), Oprah Winfrey confronted James Frey over his fabrications in his memoir, “A Million Little Pieces” (2006), & Antony Blinken confirmed as secretary of state by the Senate (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 27
 
Joachim III Friedrich, Kurfürst (elector) of Brandenburg (1546), Abbas I (‘the Great’), shah of Persia (1556), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775), Samuel Palmer (1805), Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814), Édouard Lalo (1823), Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832), Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836), Tōgō Heihachirō (1848), Samuel Gompers (1850), Edward Smith (captain of the RMS Titanic) (1850), John Collier (1850), Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1859), Learned Hand (1872), Jerome Kern (1885), Hyman Rickover (1900), William Randolph Hearst, Jr. (1908), Arne Næss (1912), Donna Reed (1921), Edith Cresson (1934), Troy Donahue (1936), Samuel C.C. Ting (1936), Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948), Ethan Mordden (1949), Göran Hägglund (1959), Keith Olbermann (1959), Chris Collinsworth (1959), Patti Cohoon (1959), Bridget Fonda (1964), Alan Cumming (1965) & Patton Oswalt (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Roman emperor Nerva (98), Külüg Khan, third Yuan emperor of China (1311), Bartolomeo Cristofori (1731), John James Audubon (1851), James G. Blaine (1893), Giuseppe Verdi (1901), Nellie Bly [Elizabeth Cochran Seaman] (1922), Erich Kleiber (1956), Jacobo Árbenz (1971), Mahalia Jackson (1972), Jack Paar (2004), Suharto (2008), John Updike (2009), J.D. Salinger (2010), Howard Zinn (2010), Pete Seeger (2014), Ingvar Kamprad (2018) & Cloris Leachman (2021) died on this day. Dante Alighieri banished from Florence (1302), James VI of Scotland ordered Dr. John Fian burned at the stake for witchcraft in Edinburgh in the course of the Berwick witch trials (1591), the Catholic Church began a seven-year trial of Giordano Bruno (1593), Charles Perrault’s poem “The Age of Louis the Great” read out at the French Academy, part of the literary quarrel of the Ancients & the Moderns (1687), Peter the Great created the first Russian state budget (1710), Congress approved the establishment of Indian Territory in Oklahoma, clearing the way for the ethnic cleansing of Cherokees & other eastern tribes with the ‘Trail of Tears’ (1825), the National Geographic Society founded in Washington D.C. (1888), diplomats in Beijing’s foreign legations sent formal protests to the Chinese government demanding that it stop Boxers from attacking Christians & Europeans in China (1900), Jupiter’s moon Pasiphaë discovered by Melotte (1908), “Tarzan of the Apes” premiered at the Broadway Theater in Manhattan (1918), Erwin Schrödinger published an article on his theory of wave mechanics (1926), Ronald Reagan was assinted to the US Army Air Corps first Motion Picture Unit & would later claim falsely that he served in combat (1943), the Nazi German siege of Leningrad was relieved by Soviet forces after more than 2 million Russians died over the course of 880 days (1944), Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz & Birkenau concentration camps in Poland (1945), Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli made their debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in “Il Trovatore” (1961), world premiere of Scott Joplin’s rediscovered opera “Treemonisha” at Morehouse College in Atlanta (1972), the Paris Peace Accords signed bringing the Vietnam War to an end (1973), “Laverne & Shirley” (spinoff from “Happy Days” starring Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams) premiered on ABC (1976), the Senate judiciary committee unanimously approved the nomination of Anthony Kennedy to the US Supreme Court (1988), Bill Clinton & Genifer Flowers accused each other of lying about his affair with her (1992), Donald Trump issued his Muslim travel ban executive order (2017), Albert II of Belgium admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock (2020) & Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement from the US Supreme Court at the end of the 2022-2023 session (2022) on this day.
 
 
January 28
 
Henry VII of England (1457), Gottfried Vopelius (1645), Anna Ivanovna, tsarina of Russia (1693), Frederick VI of Denmark (1768), Giovanni Battista Velluti (1780), George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1784), Robert McClure (1807), Alexander Mackenzie (1822), Charles George Gordon (1833), Henry Morton Stanley (1841), Jose Martí y Perez (1853), Lala Lajpat Rai (1865), Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg (1865), Colette [Sidonie-Gabrielle] (1873), Artur Rubinstein (1887), Robert Stroud (the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’) (1890), Jackson Pollock (1912), Slade Gorton (1928), Claes Oldenburg (1929), Manuel dos Santos Lima (1935), Alan Alda (1936), Carlos Slim (1940), John Taverner (1944), Anicee Alvina (1954), Shawn Murray (1954), Rick Warren (1954), Nicolas Sarkozy (1955), Dan Higgins (1955), [Pierre] Peter Schilling (1956), Mo Rocca (1969), Linda Sanchez (1969), Kathryn Morris (1969), Giorgio Lamberti (1969), John Veenhof (1969), Amy Coney Barrett (1972), Tunde Jegede (1972), Frank Garcia (1972), Nicky Southall (1972), Elijah Wood (1981) & Rick Razzano (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Charlemagne (814), Henry VIII of England (1547), Sir Francis Drake (1596), Ludvig Holberg (1754), W.B. Yeats (1939), Reynaoldo Hahn (1947), Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1951), John Banner (1973), Christa McAuliffe (1986), Astrid Lindgren (2002), Kim Bok-dong (2019) & Cicely Tyson (2021) died on this day. Trajan succeeded Nerva as Roman emperor (98), Pope Gregory VII absolved Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV after his penitent walk to Canossa in the snow (1077), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V opened the Diet of Worms to examine Martin Luther (1521), Edward VI succeeded Henry VIII as king of England (1547), the Edict of Orléans suspended the persecution of Huguenots in France (1561), the Articles of the Warsaw Confederation guaranteed freedom of religion in Poland (1573), the Russian Academy of Sciences founded by Peter the Great (1724), Horace Walpole coined the word ‘serendipity in a letter to Horace Mann (1754), Frederick North succeeded Augustus FitzRoy as British prime minister (1770), Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice” published by Thomas Egerton (1813), Paris surrendered to Prussian troops in the Franco-Prussian War (1871), the first issue of the Yale Daily News — the first college daily newspaper in the US — published (1878), Eiffel Tower construction began in Paris (1887), Beverly Hills incorporated in California (1914), Louis Brandeis appointed to the US Supreme Court (1916), the German colony of Cameroon surrendered to Britain & France (1916), Enrique Granados’ opera “Goyescas” premiered in Manhattan (1916), San Francisco began operating streetcars (1917), Berlin ammunition factory strike (1918), Wisconsin enacted a law creating the first state unemployment insurance (1932), Japanese forces attacked Shanghai (1932), Choudhry Rahmat Ali coined the term ‘Pakistan’ (1933), Iceland became the first European country to legalize abortion (1936), Pravda criticized Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” (1936), the republic of Rwanda proclaimed (1961), a cease fire went into effect in Vietnam (1973), “We Are the World” recorded by supergroup USA for Africa (1985), the USS Challenger exploded, killing seven crew members, including Christa McAuliffe (1986), four South African police officers admitted to the Truth & Reconciliation Commission to murdering anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko (1997), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassins hanged for murdering the president of Bangladesh (2010), Egyptians took to the streets in the ‘Friday of Anger’ to protest Hosni Mubarak’s brutal dictatorship (2011), Donald Trump released his Middle East peace plan with Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House (2020) & Bernie Sanders’ mittens worn to Joe Biden’s inauguration raised $1.8 million for Vermont charities (2021) on this day.
 
 
January 29
 
Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688), Daniel Bernoulli (1700), Thomas Paine (1737), Christian VII of Denmark (1749), Henry ‘Light Horse Harry’ Lee III (1756), Daniel François Esprit Auber (1782), William McKinley (1843), Anton Chekov (1860), Frederick Delius (1862), John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874), W.C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (1880), Ernst Lubitsch (1892), Peter von Siemens (1911), [Sidney] ‘Paddy’ Chayevsky (1923), Germaine Greer (1939), Katharine Ross (1940), Yoweri Museveni (1944), Tom Selleck (1945), Oprah Winfrey (1954), Cho-Liang Lin (1960), Greg Louganis (1960), Matthew Ashford (1960), Gia Carangi (1960), Paul Ryan (1970), Sara Gilbert (1975) & Adam Lambert (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Ali ibn Abu Talib (4th Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate) (661), André Hercule (Cardinal) Fleury (1743), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1814), George III of England (1820), Christian IX of Denmark (1906), Douglas Haig (1928), H.L. Mencken (1956), Friedrich-Max ‘Fritz’ Kreisler (1962), Robert Frost (1963), Alan Ladd (1964), Freddie Prinze (1977), Jimmy Durante (1980), Nam June Paik (2006) & Margaret Truman (2008) died on this day. Ali ibn Abu Talib’s assassination (661), Mongols defeated by Dai Viet at the Battle of Dong Bo Dau (1258), premiere (?) of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” (1595), John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera” premiered in London (1728), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo” premiered in Munich (1781), Napoléon’s French troops defeated Russia & Prussia at the Battle of Brienne (1814), Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” first published in the New York Evening Mirror (1845), Sen. Henry Clay drafted the Compromise of 1850 (1850), Kansas became the 34th state to enter the Union (1861), Liliuokalani proclaimed queen of Hawaii (1891), Coca-Cola incorporated in Atlanta (1892), Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand & Switzerland recognized Israel (1949), Walt Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” released (1959), Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey & Mary Travers signed their first recording contract with Warner Bros. as Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) “Roots” premiered on ABC (1977), Jimmy Carter & Deng Xiaoping signed accords on behalf of the US & the PRC (1979), Oxford University refused to award Margaret Thatcher an honorary degree (1985), Yoweri Musaveni sworn in as president of Uganda (1986), Barbara Harris appointed the first female bishop of the US Episcopal Church (1989), the Teatro la Fenice burned down in Venice (1996), Jacques Chirac announced the suspension of France’s nuclear tests in the Pacific (1996), massive demonstrations in Indonesia demanding the resignation of Abdurrahman Wahid as president (2001), George W. Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ state of the union address (2002), Rod Blagojevich removed as governor of Illinois after being convicted on corruption charges (2009), Marvel film “Black Panther” directed by Ryan Coogler & starring Chadwick Boseman premiered in Los Angeles (2018), “Empire” star Jussie Smollett alleged he was the victim of a racist & homophobic attack in Chicago (2019), a polar vortex swept the Midwest & the South (2019) on this day.
 
 
January 30
 
Livia Drusilla [Julia Augusta] (58 BCE), Thomas Tallis (1505), George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628) (1628), [Johann] Balthasar Neumann (baptized 1687), Johann Joachim Quantz (1697), Adelbert von Chamisso (1781), Félix Faure (1841), Walter Damrosch (1862), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882), Martita Hunt (1900), Saul David Alinsky (1909), Barbara Tuchman (1912), John Profumo (1915), Dick Martin [Thomas Richard] (1922), Olof Palme (1927), Harold Prince (1928), Gene Hackman (1930), Louis Rukeyser (1933), Boris Spassky (1937), Vanessa Redgrave (1937), Ed Hansen (1937), Dick Cheney (1941), Gregory Benford (1941), Tineke Lagerberg (1941), Lynn Harrell (1944), Phil Collins (1951), Jeremy Gittins (1956), Abdullah II of Jordan (1962), Mary Kay Letourneau (1962), María Granillo (1962), Felipe VI [Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso de Todos los Santos de Borbón y de Grecia], of Spain (1968), Christian Bale (1974), Olivia Colman (1974) & Wilmer Valderrama (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Charles I of England (1649), Peter II of Russia (1730), Betsy Ross [Elizabeth Griscom] (1836), Rudolf Franz Karl Joseph von Habsburg (1889), Marie Freiin von Vetsera (1889), Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1948), Orville Wright (1948), Francis Poulenc (1963), Allen Dulles (1969), Gerald Durrell (1995), Coretta Scott King (2006), Wendy Wasserstein (2006) & Geraldine McEwan (2015) died on this day. Scottish Presbyterians sold captured Charles I to English Parliament for around £100,000 (1647), Spain & the United Netherlands signed the Peace of Münster ending the Thirty Years’ War & the Eighty Years’ War & formalizing Spain’s recognition of the Dutch Republic (1648), Charles I of England executed in London (1649), the Comte de Mirabeau elected president of the Assemblée Nationale in France (1791), Prussia took possession of Hanover (1806), John Keats wrote his poem “When I Have Fears” (1818), Richard Lawrence attempted to kill Andrew Jackson in Washington, D.C. in the first attempted assassination of a sitting US president (1835), Yerba Buena renamed San Francisco (1847), Charles Hallé founded Halle Orchestra in Manchester (1858), “Around the World in 80 Days” by Jules Verne published in France by Pierre-Jules Hetzel (1873), Rudolf Franz Karl Joseph von Habsburg & Marie Freiin von Vetsera found dead after their suicide pact (1889), Charlie Chaplin’s film “City Lights” premiered in Los Angeles (1931), Germany’s president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Reichskanzler, prompting Gen. Erich Ludendorff to write to Hindenburg warning him that “this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss & bring our nation to inconceivable misery” (1933), Ezra Pound met Benito Mussolini & read from a draft of “Cantos” (1935), assassination of the Mahatma Gandhi (1948), Martin Luther King Jr.’s house bombed (1956), John F. Kennedy proposed the creation of the Peace Corps (1961), laughter epidemic in Tanganyika (1962), the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (1968), Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral (1965), British troops shot 13 unarmed civil rights demonstrators dead on ‘Bloody Sunday’ (1972), George H.W. Bush succeeded William E. Colby as director of the CIA (1976), 100 million viewers made the final segment of “Roots” the most-watched US entertainment show in history (1977), Belgium recognized same-sex marriage (2003), Boko Haram attacked Dalori village in Nigeria, killing at least 65 (2016) & the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern (2020) on this day.
 
 
January 31
 
Antonia Minor (36 BCE), Taejo of Goryeo (877), Henry of Portugal (1512), Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543), Henri, duc de Guise (1550), Franz Schubert (1797), James G. Blaine (1830), Zane Grey (1872), Tallulah Bankhead (1902), Thomas Merton (1915), Jackie Robinson (1919), Stewart Udall (1920), Carol Channing (1921), Mario Lanza [Alfredo Arnold Cocozza] (1921), John Agar (1921), E. Fay Jones (1921), Norman Mailer (1923), Benjamin Hooks (1925), Jean Simmons (1929), Philip Glass (1937), Suzanne Pleshette (1937), Andrée Boucher (1937), Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard, queen of the Netherlands (1938), James Watt (1938), Jessica Walter (1941), Richard Gephardt (1941), Eugène Terre’Blanche (1941), Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond (1945), Fatou Bensouda (1961), Amelia ‘Minnie’ Driver (1970), Justin Timberlake (1981), Sergio Acosta (1981), Julio Arca (1981) & Ahed Tamimi (2001) were born #OnThisDay. Xuande (Ming emperor of China) (1435), Guy Fawkes (1606), Joost Bürgi (1632), Caffarelli [Gaetano Majorano] (1783), Bonnie Prince Charlie [Charles Edward Stuart] (1788), José Félix Ribas (1815), A.A. Milne (1956), Meher Baba (1969), Samuel Goldwyn (1974), Molly Ivins (2007), Lizabeth Scott [Emma Matzo] (2015) & Richard von Weizsäcker (2015) died on this day. Louis XII of France ceded Naples to Ferdinand II of Aragon in the Treaty of Lyon after defeat in the Italian War of (1499-1504) (1504), Guy Fawkes hanged for his participation in the Gunpowder Plot (1606), the Catholic League disbanded (1596), Spain’s government bankrupt (1627), London Lock Hospital opened the first venereal disease clinic (1747), Juneautown & Kiilbourntown unified as the City of Milwaukee after the Milwaukee Bridge War (1846), the British parliament abolished the Corn Laws (1849), Lord Aberdeen’s government fell over the British conduct of the Crimean War (1855), the House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery (121-24) (1865), Gen. Robert E. Lee named commander-in-chief of all Confederate armies (1865), Anthon Chekhov’s play “The Three Sisters” (opened at the Moscow Art Theater (1901), Austria’s Reichsrath reopened after the defeat of extremists in elections (1901), Erich Maria Remarque’s “Im Westen nichts Neues” published in Berlin (1929), Leon Trotsky expelled from the Soviet Union (1929), Édouard Daladier’s government formed in France (1933), Feldmarschal Friedrich Paulus surrended to Soviet troops at Stalingrad (1943), Harry Truman announced US development of the hydrogen bomb (1950), Guy Mollet’s government formed in France (1956), Juscelino Kubitschek became president of Brazil (1956), David Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister of Israel (1961), “The Misfits” — the last film for both Clark Gable & Marilyn Monroe — premiered in Manhattan (1961), Nauru declared its independence from Australia (1968), Viet Cong seized the US embassy in Saigon in the Tet Offensive (1968), Apollo 14 launched from Cape Canaveral (1971), Aretha Franklin sang at Mahalia Jackson’s funeral (1972), Los Angeles prosecutors announced the retrial of Raymond Buckey in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case (1990), the first McDonald’s opened in the Soviet Union (1990), Bill Clinton authorized a $20 billion loan to Mexico (1995), Seth MacFarlane’s “Family Guy” first aired on Fox TV (1999), Sandra Day O’Connor retired from the US Supreme Court, replaced by Samuel Alito (2006), Romanians protested in enormous demonstrations in Bucharest against a government emergency decree decriminalizing corruption (2017), Donald Trump fired attorney general Sally Yates after she instructed US DOJ officials not to defend his travel ban in court (2017), Donald Trump announced his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court (2017), Donald Trump formally suspended the Clean Water Act (2018), the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union (‘Brexit’) & 5,000 Russians were arrested in protests against the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 1
 
John Napier (1550), Edward Coke (1552), Gabriel Schütz (1633), Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (1707), Charles-Joseph Sax (1791), Victor Herbert (1859), Clara Butt (1873), Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874), Louis St. Laurent (1882), Anastasio Somoza García [Tacho] (1896), Clark Gable (1901), Langston Hughes (1902), S.J. Perelman (1904), Muriel Spark (1918), Renata Tebaldi (1922), Boris Yeltsin (1931), [Isaac] Don Everly (1937), Carol Neblett (1946), Brandon Lee (1965), Princesse Stéphanie de Monaco (1965), Lisa Marie Presley Keough Jackson (1968), Pauly Shore (1968), Andrew Breitbart (1969), Michael C. Hall (1971), Ronda Rousey (1987) & Harry Styles (1994) were born #OnThisDay. Augustus II (‘the Strong’) (1733), Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix (1761), Mary Shelley (1851), Piet Mondrian (1944), Johan Huizinga (1945), Friedrich Paulus (1957), Hedda Hopper [Elda Furry] (1966), Buster Keaton (1966), Werner Heisenberg (1976), Alva Myrdal (1986), Herb Caen (1997), Paul Mellon (1999), Gian Carlo Menotti (2007), Lukas Foss [Fuchs] (2009), Ed Koch (2013), Maximilian Schell (2014) & Peter Serkin (2020) died on this day. Edward III crowned king of England at the age of 14 (1327), Elizabeth Tudor signed the death warrant for Mary, Queen of Scots (1587), Skirmish at Bender (1713), the US Supreme Court convened for the first time in Manhattan (1790), Texas seceded from the Union (1861), Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” published (1862), Ralph Waldo Emerson & Charles Sumner met with Abraham Lincoln at the White House (1862), Prussian & Austrian forces launched the Second Schleswig War (1864), Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman began his march through South Carolina (1865), Mrs. William Astor (Caroline Webster Schemerhorn) invited 400 guests to a brand ball at her mansion (1892), Giacomo Puccini’s Opera “Manon Lescaut” premiered in Turin (1893), Giacomo Puccini’s Opera “La Bohème” premiered in Turin (1896), Shinhan Bank (the oldest bank in South Korea) opened in Seoul (1897), Dowager Empress Cixi banned foot binding in China (1902), Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare (1917), Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar (1918), Ramsay MacDonald’s incoming Labour government formally recognized the Soviet Union (1924), the first national conference of the KPD’s Rotfrontkämpferbund in Berlin (1925), Paul von Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag at the request of the new Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler (1933), Austria’s Reichskanzler Engelbert Dollfuß banned all political parties but his own Christlichsoziale Parei (Christian Social Party) (1934), Vidkun Quisling formed his second Nazi puppet government in Norway (1942), Norwegian Trygve Lie became the first Secretary General of the United Nations (1946), Alcide de Gasperi formed a coalition government in Italy with Christian Democrats & Communists (1947), the Palestine Post building in Jerusalem bombed (1948), the UN condemned the People’s Republic of China as an aggressor in Korea (1951), Tunisians launched a general strike to protest French colonial rule in Tunisia (1952), “Volare” (“Nel blu dipinto di blu”) single released by Domenico Modugno (1958), African American students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University began a sit-in in Greensboro (1960), Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & 700 demonstrators arrested in Selma (1965), Peter Jennnings became anchor of ABC’s evening news at 26 (1965), Richard Nixon announced his candidacy for president (1968), Saigon police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executed Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém with a pistol shot to head, captured by photographer Eddie Adams, whose photo became an iconic anti-war image (1968), British prime minister Edward Heath announced an inquiry into the ‘Bloody Sunday’ murders (1.30.72) (1972), Harriet Tubman became the first African American woman to be honored with a USPS postage stamp (1978), Roman Polanski skipped bail & fled to France to avoid charges of statutory rape in the US (1978), Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran after 15 years in exile (1979), Patricia Hearst released from prison (1979), “Late Night With David Letterman” debuted on NBC (1982), Senegal & Gambia formed the confederation of Senegambia (1982), Diana, Princess of Wales visited New York (1989), F.W. de Klerk announced the repeal of all apartheid laws in South Africa (1991), Daniel Pearl beheaded by a terrorist group in Pakistan (2002), NASA’s Columbia space shuttle imploded after launching, killing all seven crew members aboard (2003), Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl XXXVIII ‘wardrobe malfunction’ (a.k.a., ‘Nipplegate’) (2004), coup d’état by King Gyanendra to undermine democracy in Nepal (2005), Canada’s Civil Marriage Act made it the fourth country to recognize same-sex marriage (2005), Ben Bernanke succeeded Alan Greenspan as chair of the US Federal Reserve Bank (2006), Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir elected Iceland’s first female prime minister, becoming the first openly gay head of government in the modern world (2009), “House of Cards” began streaming on Netflix (2013), Janet Yellen succeeded Ben Bernanke as chair of the US Federal Reserve Bank (2014), Burma/Myanmar’s first freely elected parliament in 50 years opened in Nay Pyi Taw (2016), Ted Cruz defeated Donald Trump in the Republican Iowa caucuses & Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Iowa caucuses with a coin toss (2016), Rex Tillerson confirmed by the Senate as the 69th US secretary of state (2017), the House of Commons voted in favor of the European Union bill, enabling Boris Johnson’s government to pursue Brexit (2017), a coup d’état by the Burmese military ended a brief experiment in limited democracy in Myanmar & ushered in a one-year state of emergency (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 2
 
Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwynne (1650), Louis Marchand (1669), Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz (1711), Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754), Havelock Ellis (1859), Mehmed VI (last Ottoman sultan (1861), Solomon R. Guggenheim (1861), Friedrich-Max ‘Fritz’ Kreisler (1875), James Joyce (1882), Frank Lloyd (1886), Antonio Segni (1891), Howard Johnson (1897), Jascha Heifetz (1901), Ayn Rand [Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum] (1905), Jean-Pierre Guerlain (1905), (Johan) Jussi Björling (1911), Xuân Diệu (1916), Lisa Della Casa (1919), Elaine Stritch (1925), Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1926), Stan Getz [Stanley Gayetski] (1927), Luigi Ciriaco de Mita (1928), Waldemar Kmentt (1929), Martina Arroyo (1937), Tommy Smothers (1937), Don Buford (1937), Remak Ramsay (1937), Barry Diller (1942), Andrew Davis (1944), Ursula Oppens (1944), Geoffrey Hughes 91944), Karen Foss (1944), (Geoffrey Hughes (1944), Farah Fawcett (1947), Jessica Savitch (1948), Ina Garten (1948), Park Geun-hye (1952), Christie Brinkley (1954) & Dana International (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Owen Tudor (1461), Baldassare Castiglione (1529), Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina (1594), Dmitri Mendeleev (1907), Boris Karloff [William H. Pratt] (1969), Giovanni Martinelli (1969), Bertrand Russell (1970), Sid Vicious [John Simon Ritchie] (1979), Bert Parks [Jacobson] (1992), Gene Kelly (1996), Earl Butz (2008), Philip Seymour Hoffman (2014) & Tom Moore (2021) died on this day. Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Poro” premiered in London (1731), Russians established Fort Ross in California (1812), the first shipload of Chinese immigrants to the US arrived in San Francisco (1848), the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican–American War (1848), the first British public men’s restroom opened in London’s Fleet Street (1848), Alexandre Dumas fils’ “La Dame aux Camélias” premiered in Paris (1852), Greece declared war on Ottoman Turkey (1878), first Groundhog Day observed at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney (PA) (1887), Gustave Charpentier’s opera “Louise” premiered in Paris (1900), Queen Victoria’s funeral in Windsor (1901), Grand Central Terminal opened in Manhattan (1913), James Joyce’s “Ulysses” published by Sylvia Beach in Paris (1922), Adolf Hitler dissoved the Reichstag two days after becoming Germany’s Reichskanzler (1933), Hermann Göring banned Communist meetings & demonstrations in Germany (1933), the German 6th Army surrendered at the Battle of Stalingrad (1943), Hubert de Givenchy presented his first collection in Paris (1952), Dwight Eisenhower announced the detonation of the world’s first hydrogen bomb (1954), “The Nutcracker” choreographed by George Balanchine premiered in New York, establishing the popularity of the ballet in the US (1954), the United Nations adopted a resolution calling on Israel to withdraw troops from Egypt (1957), Buddy Holly’s last performance (1959), eight of nine planets aligned for the first time in 400 years (1962), Joe Orton’s “Loot” premiered in Brighton (1965), Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams photographed Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executed Viet Cong Nguyễn Văn Lém — a photo (‘Saigon Execution’) that caused a sensation & won the Pulitzer Prize the following year (1968), Idi Amin ousted Milton Obote as president of Uganda (1971), Dorothy Hamill won the US female figure skating championship (1975), the FBI’s ABSCAM operation revealed (1980), Chicago’s archbishop Joseph Bernardin among 18 new cardinals named by Pope John Paul II (1983), Pope John Paul II met the Dalai Lama in India (1986), Oscar Arias Sánchez elected president of Costa Rica (1986), F.W. de Klerk replaced P.W. Botha as leader of the National Party of South Africa (1990), Václav Havel became the first president of an independent Czech Republic following the ‘Velvet Divorce’ with Slovakia (1993), “RuPaul’s Drag Race” hosted by RuPaul premiered on Logo TV (2009), Japan’s prime minister Shinzō Abe vowed to defend the Senkaku Islands ‘at all costs’ (2013), Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam admitted to wearing blackface in 1984 (2019), R. Kelly arrested on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse (2019), Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay person to be confirmed to a US cabinet post (2021), Jeff Bezos announced his retirement as CEO of Amazon after 30 years, becoming executive chairman (2021), Vladimir Putin ordered the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexey Navalny in Russia (2021) & Joe Biden signed an executive order intended to reunite immigrant families (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 3
 
Ferdinand Magellan (1480), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525), Antonio José de Sucre (1795), Otto Theodor von Manteuffel (1805), Joseph E. Johnston (1807), Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809), Horace Greeley (1811), Elizabeth Blackwell (1821), Walter Bagehot (1826), Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830), Gertrude Stein (1874), Juan Negrín (1887), Norman Rockwell (1894), Alvar Aalto (1898), Mabel Mercer (1900), Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd (1904), Luigi Dallapiccola (1904), James Michener (1907), Simone Weil (1909), Paul Sarbanes (1933), Randolfe ‘Randy’ Wicker [Charles Gervin Hayden, Jr.] (1938), Michael Cimino (1939), Fran Tarkento (1940), Blythe Danner (1943), Henning Mankell (1948), Nathan Lane (1956), Ayanna Pressley (1974), Amal Clooney (1978) & Elizabeth Holmes (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Sveyn Forkbeard, king of Denmark, Norway & England (1014), Johannes Gutenberg (1468), Woodrow Wilson (1924), (Charles) ‘Buddy’ Holly [Holley] Ritchie Valens (1959), the Big Bopper [Jiles Perry Richardson] (1959), Anna May Wong (1961), Umm Kulthum (1975), Ben Gazzara (2012) & Joan Adams Mondale (2014) died on this day. Mehmet the Conqueror became Ottoman sultan (1451), Barnett Davenport’s mass murder in Connecticut helped change American perceptions of crime (1780) Spain recognized the United States (1783), Illinois Territory organized (1809), the world’s first commercial cheese factory established in Switzerland (1815), Greece’s sovereignty confirmed in the London Protocol (1830), the Whig Party held its first national convention in Albany (NY) (1836), Hector Berlioz’s “Carnaval Romain” premiered in Paris (1844), the Wisconsin State Supreme Court ruled the federal Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional (1855), Samuel Langhorne Clemens first used the pen name Mark Twain (1863), Prince Mutsuhito became Emperor Meiji of Japan (1867), Iowa ratified the 15th Amendment allowing for universal male suffrage (1870), P.T. Barnum bought Jumbo the elephant (1882), Congress enacted the Electoral Count Act (1887), ‘Bandit Queen’ Belle Starr murdered in Oklahoma (1889), Davidson Black reported on fossils — which he called ‘Sinanthropus pekinensis’ & which is now known as ‘Homo erectus’ — which he found in China (1928), Josef von Sternberg’s film “Shanghai Express” premiered in Los Angeles (1932), US troops captured the Marshall Islands (1944), Jacques Cousteau’s memoir “The Silent World” published (1953), ‘The Day the Music Died’ plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, J. P. Richardson & pilot near Clear Lake, Iowa (1959), British prime minister Harold Macmillan gave his ‘winds of change’ speech criticizing South Africa’s apartheid regime (1960), Federico Fellini’s film “La Dole Via” premiered in Italy (1960), John F. Kennedy banned all US trade with Cuba except for food & drugs (1962), Frank Serpico shot during a drug bust while fellow NYPD officers refused to call for help (1971), Gro Harlem Brundtland became Norway’s first female prime minister (1981), Paraguay’s dictator Alfredo Stroessner overthrown in a military coup d’état (1989), the federal trial of four LAPD officers charged with violating Rodney King’s civil rights began (1993), Bill Clinton lifted the US trade embargo against Vietnam (1994), Alberto Gonzalez became the first Latino US attorney general (2005), Eric Holder became the first African American US attorney general (2009), Rand Paul dropped out of the Republican presidential race (2016) & Bernie Sanders won the Iowa caucuses (2020) on this day.
 
 
February 4
 
François Rabelais (1494), Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688), Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746), Joshua Abraham ‘Emperor’ Norton (1819), Friedrich Ebert (1871), Fernand Léger (1881), Nigel Bruce (1895), Charles Lindbergh (1902), Clyde William Tombaugh (1906), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906), Erich Leinsdorf (1912), Rosa Parks (1913), Ida Lupino (1918), Betty Friedan (1921), Conrad Bain (1923), Isabel Martínez de Perón [Maria Martinez] (1931), Martti Talvela (1935), James Danforth ‘Dan’ Quayle (1947), Kitarō [Masanori Takahashi] (1953) & Evan Wolfson (1957) were born #OnThisDay. Lucius Septimius Severus (211), Elizabeth of York, queen of England (1503), Louis, duc de Berry (1714), Gilbert Grosvenor (1966), Karen Carpenter (1983), {Wladziu) Liberace (1987), Carl Albert (2000), Raiford ‘Ossie’ Davis (2005), Betty Friedan (2006) & Daniel Arap Moi (2020) died on this day. Septimius Severus left control of the Roman Empire in the hands of his sons Caracalla & Geta (211), Zhao Kuangyin crowned Taizu emperor of Song China (960), Richard I of England ransomed (1194), Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester appointed governor-general of the Estates General of the United Provinces (1586), Peter the Great ordered the execution of 350 rebellious Streltsi in Moscow (1699), George Washington & John Adams elected president & vice-president (1789), James Fenimore Cooper’s novel “The Last of the Mohicans” published (1826), the Convention Nationale proclaimed the abolition of slavery in France (1794), Mormons left Nauvoo to settle in Utah (1846), the University of Wisconsin began with 20 students in one room (1849), Alvan Bovay proposed the name ‘Republican Party’ in Ripon (1854), Jefferson Davis elected president of the Confederate States of America at the meeting of delegates establishing the Confederacy (1861), Robert E. Lee named commander-in-chief of all Confederate forces (1865), Franz Josef denounced nationalism & calls for reform (1901), John Millington Synge’s play “Well of Saints” premiered in Dublin (1904), Bremen’s Soviet Republic overthrown (1919), Japan agreed to return Shandong to China following boycotts & international pressure (1922), the first part of Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Garden Party” appeared in the Saturday Westminster Gazette (1922), Japanese troops occupied the Manchurian city of Harbin (1932), Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” opened on Broadway (1938), Disney released its animated film “Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs” (1938), Bertolt Brecht’s play “The Good Person of Szechwan” premiered in Zürich (1943), Jean Anouilh’s play “Antigone” premiered in Paris (1944), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill & Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta (1945), Angolans launched a war of independence from Portugal (1961), the first US helicopter shot down in Vietnam (1962), Yasser Arafat appointed chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (1969), Franklin Schaffner’s film “Patton” premiered in Manhattan (1970), US Sen. Strom Thurmond suggested John Lennon be deported (1972), Dik Browne’s comic strip “Hagar The Horrible” debuted (1973), Hearst heiress Patty Hearst kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (1974), Hua Guofeng named premier of the People’s Republic of China (1976), Karen Carpenter died from anorexia (1983), Studio 54 held its closing party (1980), Congress overrode Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Clean Water Act (1987), Manuel Noriega indicted for drug trafficking & racketeering (1988), Alex Trebek became the first person to host three American game shows at the same time (Jeopardy!, Classic Concentration, To Tell the Truth) (1991), Bill Gates got a pie in the face in Brussels (1998), African immigrant Amadou Diallo shot dead by NYPD officers (1999), Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room (2004), Paris annulled a 213-year-old law banning women from wearing trousers (2013), same-sex marriage recognized in Scotland (2014), the fifth Democratic presidential debate broadcast by MSNBC from New Hampshire (2016), Rush Limbaugh presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump during the State Of The Union Address (2020), Joe Biden announced an end to US support for the Saudi war in Yemen (2021) Denmark approves plans for world’s first energy island in the North Sea to provide power to 3 million Europeans (2021), the International Criminal Court convicted Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen of war crimes & crimes against humanity including forced pregnancy (2021), the first successful face & double hand transplant performed on 22-year-old Joe DiMeo in New York (2021) & the XXIV Olympic Winter Games opened in Beijing (2022) on this day.
 
 
 
February 5
 
Robert Peel (1788), Ole Bull (1810), André Citroën (1878), Adlai Stevenson II (1900), Norton Simon (1907), William S. Burroughs (1914), Robert Hofstadter (1915), Andreas Papandreou (1919), Red Buttons [Aaron Chwatt] (1919), Bernard Kalb (1922), Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (1926), Andrew Greeley (1928), Hank Aaron (1934), Jane Bryant Quinn (1939), Ivan Alexandrovich Tcherepnin (1943), Charlotte Rampling (1946), Tom Wilkinson (1948), Barbara Hershey [Herzstein] (1948), Christopher Guest (1948), David Denny (1948), Errol Morris (1948), Sven-Göran Eriksson (1948), Jennifer Granholm (1959), Laura Linney (1964), Omarosa Manigault Newman (1974) & Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck of Bhutan (2016) were born #OnThisDay. Aisin Gioro Fulin, the Shunzhi emperor of Qing China (1661), Thomas Carlyle (1881), Thelma Ritter (1969), Ella Grasso (1981), Joseph L. Makiewicz (1993), Gianandrea Gavazzeni (1996), Pamela Harriman (1997), Gnassingbé Eyadéma (2005), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (2008), Kirk Douglas [Issur Danielovitch] (2020) & Christopher Plummer (2021) died on this day. Carthage capitulated to the Roman Republic (146 BCE), 26 Japanese Christians were martyred (1597), Roger Williams arrived in Boston (1631) Scotland’s ‘Covenanter’ parliament declared Charles II king (1649), Sweden recognized the independence of the United States (1783), the future George IV appointed regent in the wake of George III’s insanity (1811), Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte became king of Sweden & Norway as Karl XIV Johan (1818), the Danish army began its disastrous withdrawal from Danevirke to Dybbøl through driving snow (1864), Léopold II of Belgium established the État Indépendant du Congo as a personal possession (1885), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Otello” premiered at the Teatro alla Scala di Milano (1887), Enrico Caruso recorded “O Solo Mio” for the Victor Talking Machine Co. (1916), Congress overrode Woodrow Wilson’s veto of a bill further curtailing Asian immigration (1917), Benito Mussolini ordered the mass arrest of socialists & communists in Italy (1923), Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced his ‘court packing’ plan (1937), US troops under Gen. Douglas MacArthur entered Manila after three years of Japanese occupation of the Philippines (1945), France’s president Charles de Gaulle called for Algeria’s independence (1962), the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn all fell within a range of 16 degrees (1962), Anastasio Somoza Debayle elected president of Nicaragua (1967), the US population reached 200 million (1969), Republican Gov Evan Meecham impeached by the Arizona House of Representatives (1988), Dr. Jack Kevorkian barred from assisting in suicides by a Michigan court (1991), Byron De LA Beckwith convicted of the murder of Medgar Evans (1994), US secretary of state Colin Powell lied to the UN Security Council to justify the invasion of Iraq (2003), the British House of Commons voted in favor of same-sex mairrage (2013), archaeologists decrypt the 13th C Viking jötunvillur runic code (2014), Romania’s government scrpped a pro-corruption decree after six days of mass demonstrations (2017) & new research proved that human noise is killing ocean life (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 6
 
Zhu Youjian (the Chongzhen emperor, 16th & last Ming emperor of China) (1611), Anne Stuart, queen of England & Scotland (1665), Nicolaus Bernoulli (1695), Aaron Burr (1756), James Ewell Brown ‘Jeb’ Stuart (1833), Babe Ruth (1895), Claudio Arrau (1903), Amintore Fanfani (1908), Ronald Reagan (1911), Dolley Briscoe (1911), Eva Braun (1912), Mary Leakey (1913), Zsa Zsa Gabor [Sári Gábor] (1917), Elmore Rual ‘Rip’ Torn, Jr. (1931), François Truffaut (1932), Tom Brokaw (1940), Sarah Brady (1942), Bob Marley (1945), Natalie Cole (1950) & Awkwafina [Nora Lum] (1988) were born #OnThisDay. Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Malik, 10th Umayyad caliph of Córdoba (743), Charles II of England & Scotland (1685), Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1783), Carlo Goldoni (1793), Joseph Priestley (1804), Gustav Klimt (1918), George VI of England (1952), Emilio Aguinaldo (1964), Barbara Tuchman (1989), Danny Thomas (1991), Arthur Ashe (1993), Joseph Cotten (1994), Norman Del Mar (1994), Gwendoline ‘Gwen’ Watford (1994), Lazar Berman (2005), Karl Haas (2005), Nello Santi (2020) & George P. Shultz (2021) died on this day. Maximilian von Habsburg proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor (1508), Henri de Bourbon became leader of France’s Huguenots (1577), Cardinal Mazarin fled Paris (1651), Huguenots concluded the Peace of La Rochelle with the French government (1626), James II of England & James VII of Scotland succeeded Charles II on his death (1685), Britain declared war on France (1778), France recognized the United States in the Treaty of Alliance (1778), Stamford Raffles founded Singapore as a British trading port (1819), 86 formerly enslaved African Americans sponsored by the American Colonization Society departed the United States to establish a settlement in Africa (1820), the US Census revealed a population of 9,638,453 with 1,771,656 African Americans (18.4%), Māori chiefs in New Zealand signed the Treaty of Waitangi with representatives of the British crown (1840), Robert Schumann’s 3rd Symphony (‘Rhenisch’) premiered in Düsseldorf (1851), Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston formed a new British government (1855), first meeting of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America (1861), the US Senate ratified a treaty ending the Spanish-American War (1899), the Weimar Republic’s first day (1919), Anna Anderson arrived in New York claiming to be Nicholas II’s daughter Grand Duchess Anastasia (1928), Paul von Hindenburg & Franz von Papen terminated the Prussian parliament (1933), John Steinbeck’s novella “Of Mice & Men” published (1937), Spain’s Republican government fled to France (1939), Benito Mussolini removed his son-in-law Conte Galeazzo Ciano as foreign minister & assumed the role himself (1943), Magnum Photos founded in Paris by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger & David Seymour (1947), Elizabeth II succeeded George VI as queen of England (1952), French prime minister Guy Mollet pelted with tomatoes in Algiers (1956), Fidel Castro interviewed by Edward R. Murrow (1959), Britain & France signed an accord to create a tunnel under the English Channel (1964), Cultural Revolution in Albania (1967), Muriel Humphrey succeeded Hubert Humphrey as US Senator from Minnesota (1978), John Wayne Gacy went on trial in Cook County for the murder of 33 young men in Illinois (1980) John Lennon’s Beatles colleagues recorded a tribute to him (1981), Klaus Barie put on trial for war crimes in France (1983), Ronald Reagan outlined the ‘Reagan Doctrine’ in his state of the union address (1985), tennis champion Arthur Ashe died of AIDS at 49 (1993), Corsica’s French prefect Claude Erignac assassinated in Ajaccio (1998), Washington National Airport renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport (1998), Poland’s president Andrzej Duda signed a controversial Holocaust law outlawing accusations of Polish complicity during the Nazi occupation (2018), the first COVID-19 death in the United States (2020) on this day. 
 
 
February 7
 
Empress Matilda (1102), Sir Thomas More (1478), Jacob de Witt (1589), Maria Louise van Hessen-Kassel [Marijke Meu] (1688), Anna Ivanova Romanova, empress of Russia (1693), John Deere (1804), Charles Dickens (1812), Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867), [Harry] Sinclair Lewis (1885), James Hubert ‘Eubie’ Blake (1887), Henry Puyi (1906), Clarence ‘Buster’ Crabbe (1908), George Lascelles, Earl of Harewood (1923), Herb Kohl (1935), Garth Brooks (1962), Eddie Izzard (1962), Chris Rock (1966), & Ashton Kutcher (1978) were born #OnThisDay. Qianlong emperor of Qing China (1799), Elihu Root (1937), Harvey Firestone (1938), Daniel François Malan (1959), Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (1967), Joseph Mengele (1979), Witold Lutosławski (1994), George Trevelyan (1996), Hussein ibn Talal, king of Jordan (1999), Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2001), Blossom Dearie (2009), Albert Finney (2019), John Dingell (2019), Orson Bean (2020) & Li Wenliang (2020) died on this day. Edward of Caernarfon (the future Edward II) became the first English Prince of Wales (1301), the Treaty of Brussels dividing the Habsburg empire between Spanish & Austrian branches (1522), Philip II established the Spanish Inquisition in Latin America (1569), Mikhail Romanov became tsar of Russia (1613), the Academie Française began compiling a dictionary of the French language (1639), Nicolas Fouquet appointed Frances’ surintendant des finances (1653), the Great Siege of Gibraltar lifted by France & Spain after three years & seven months (1783), Domenico Cimarosa’s opera “Il Matrimonio Segreto” premiered in Vienna (1792), ratification of the 11th Amendment to the US Constitution (1795), the 6th Baron Byron made his maiden speech in the House of Lords (1812), Belgium’s constitution adopted (1831), the Portland Vase shattered into more than 80 pieces by a drunker visitor to the British Museum (1845), Gustave Flaubert acquitted on a charge of obscenity for his novel “Madame Bovary” (1857), the Great Baltimore Fire began (1904), “Felix the Cat” animated film released (1936), Walt Disney’s “Pinocchio” premiered in Manhattan (1940), the British government announced its intention to end British rule in Palestine (1947), the US recognized Bảo Đại as emperor of Vietnam (1950), the Beatles arrived in New York (1964), Yasser Arafat became president of the PLO (1969), Elizabeth Hanford Dole sworn in as the first female US secretary of transportation (1983), “New York, New York” became the official anthem of New York City (1985), Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier fled Haiti for France (1986), Corazon Aquino defeated Ferdinand Marcos but the dictator stole the election (1986), massive demonstrations against police brutality in South Korea (1987), tennis superstar Björn Borg apparently attempted suicide in Milan (1989), Jean-Bertrand Aristide sworn in as Haiti’s first elected president (1991), Maastricht Treaty signed by 12 member states of the European Community (EC) created the European Union (EU) (1992), Crown Prince Abdullah became king of Jordan on the death of his father Hussein (1999), George W. Bush announced a plan for ‘faith-based initiatives’ (2002), Eugène Delacroix’s painting “Liberty Leading the People” vandalized at the Louvre-Lens museum (2013), Donald Trump’s aide Rob Porter resigned in the wake of physical abuse allegations by ex-wives (2018), a study published in “Nature” contended that all citrus fruit can be traced to the southeast foothills of the Himalayas (2018), new research showed that kangaroos learned to hop 20 million years ago — far earlier than previously thought (2019), Sierra Leone’s president Julius Maada Bio declared a national emergency over rape & sexual assault (2019) & France expelled Italy’s ambassador after Italy’s deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio met with Gilets Jaunes protesters (2019) on this day.
 
 
February 8
 
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820), Jules Verne (1828), Dmitri Mendeleev (1834), Theodor Lessing (1872), Martin Buber (1878), Franz Marc (1880), Joseph Schumpeter (1883), Edith Evans (1888), King Vidor (1894), Tuku Abdul Rahman (1903), Georges Guétary (1915), Lana Turner (1921), Nexhmije Hoxha (1921), Audrey Meadows [Cotter] (1922), Jack Lemmon (1925), James Dean (1931), John Williams (1932), Elly Ameling (1933), Ted Koppel (1940), Nick Nolte (1941), Mary Steenburgen (1953), John Grisham (1955), Mauricio Macri (1959), Benigno Aquino III (1960) & Cecily Strong (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Mary, Queen of Scots (1587), Alexis I [Aleksey Mikhailovich], first Romanov tsar of Russia (1676), Peter the Great [Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov], tsar of Russia (1725), Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1921), Fritz Todt (1942), J. William Fulbright (1995), Halldór Laxness (1998), Enoch Powell (1998), Iris Murdoch (1999), Anna Nicole Smith (2007), Eva Dahlbeck (2008), Violetta Verdy (2016), Nicolai Gedda (2017) & Mary Wilson (2021) died on this day. Flavius Constantine became co-emperor as Emperor Constantius III of the Western Roman Empire with Honorius (421); the University of Leiden founded (1575), Marcy, Queen of Scots beheaded at Fotheringay Castle (1587), Giordano Bruno convicted of heresy by the Vatican & sentenced to be burnt at the stake (1600), Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex led a rebellion against Elizabeth Tudor in London (1601), William & Mary College became the second college in North America (1693), “Flora” performed in Charleston — the first opera performance in the British colonies of North America (1693), the Battle of Eylau — the first which Napoléon didn’t win (1807), Franz I of Austria declared war on France (1809), the Ausgleich established the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary (1867), Japanese torpedo boats attacked Russian ships near Port Arthur, launching the Russo-Japanese War (1906), France & Germany signed a treaty concerning Morocco (1909), the Boy Scouts of America incorporated by William D. Boyce (1910), a US-sponsored coup d’état overthrew Miguel Devila as president of Honduras (1911), D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” opened in Los Angeles (1915), Swiss men voted against women’s suffrage (1920), Bolshevik troops captured Odessa, bringing an end to foreign involvement in the resistance to Bolshevik rule (1920), first execution by lethal gas in the US carried out in Nevada (1924), Sean O’Casey’s “Plough & Stars” opened at the Abbey Theater in Dublin (1926), Congress encouraged Franklin Delano Roosevelt to imprison Japanese Americans for the duration of World War II (1942), Guadalcanal secured by US troops (1943), Portugal’s dictator António de Oliveira Salazar banned opposition parties (1946), Elizabeth II issued a decree that the British royal family would continue to be known as the House of Windsor & that her descendants would take the name ‘Mountbatten-Windsor’ (1960), “Stop in the Name of Love” released by the Supremes (1965), Lyndon Baines Johnson deployed the first US combat troops to Vietnam (1965), Orangeburg Massacre — three African Americans shot dead by police in South Carolina (1968), “Planet of the Apes” premiered in Manhattan (1968), “Good Times” premiered on CBS (1974), 1800 couples wed in Korea by the Unification Church (1975), Martin Scorsese’s film “Taxi Driver” released (1976), “Hustler” publisher Larry Flynt sentenced on obscenity charges (1977), Ariel Sharon resigned as Israel’s defense minister after a Knesset inquiry found him indirectly responsible for the 1982 Sabra & Chatila Massacre (1983), “60 Minutes” commentator Andy Rooney suspended by CBS for racial remarks attributed to him by a gay magazine (1990), Jack Nicholson’s road rage incident (1994), Jefferson Beauregard Sessions confirmed by the Senate as US attorney general (2017), Jeff Bezos accused the National Enquirer of blackmail (2019), Thailand’s king Vajiralongkorn issued a royal decree calling Princess Ubolratana’s candidacy for prime minister ‘improper & highly inappropriate’ (2019), Myanmar’s military junta declared martial law to stop protests over its coup d’état (2021).
 
 
February 9
 
Constantine XI Dragases, last Byzantine Emperor (1404), William Henry Harrison (1773), Alban Berg (1885), Ronald Colman (1891), Carmen Miranda (1909), Dean Rusk (1909), Harald Genzmer (1909), Heather Angel (1909), John Eustace Theodore Brancker (1909), Kathryn Grayson [Zelma Hedrick] (1922), Brendan Behan (1923), Garret FitzGerald (1926), Roger Mudd (1928), Janet Suzman (1939), J.M. Coetzee (1940), Sheila James Kuehl (1941), Carole King (1942), Joe Pesci (1943), Ryland Davies (1943), Joseph Stiglitz (1943), Alice Walker (1944), Mia [Maria] Farrow (1945), Jim Webb (1946), Carla Del Ponte (1947), Judith Light (1949), Jay Inslee (1951), Ciarán Hinds (1953), Amanda Roocroft (1966), Zhang Ziyi (1979), John Walker Lindh (1981), Tom Hiddleston (1981) & Michael B. Jordan (1987) were born #OnThisDay. Minamoto no Yoritomo (1199), Agnès Sorel (1450), Henry Stuart, Lorde Darnley, king of Scotland (1567), Henri François d’Aguesseau (1751), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1881), Paul Laurence Dunbar (1906), Ernst von Dohnányi [Dohnányi Ernő] (1960), Sophie Tucker [Kalish] (1966), Bill Haley (1981), Yuri Andropov (1984), Jarmila Novotná (1994), Margaret Rose, Countess of Snowdon (2002), Ian Richardson (2007), Mirella Freni (2020) & Armando ‘Chick’ Corea (2021) died on this day. Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion against Mary Tudor defeated in the Battle of London (1554), Sir Robert Walpole created 1st Earl of Orford (1742), John Quincy Adams elected sixth president by the US House of Representatives (1825), the Roman Republic declared following the flight of Pope Pius IX (1849), Jefferson Davis & Alexander Stephens elected president & vice-president of the Confederate States of America (1861), the first Japanese immigrants arrived in Hawaii (1885), Grover Cleveland declared a state of emergency in Seattle because of anti-Chinese violence (1886), the US Department of Agriculture established as a cabinet-level federal agency (1889), Giuseppe Verdi’s last opera “Falstaff” premiered at the Teatro alla Scala di Milano (1893), British troops looted & burned Benin City, destroying the kingdom of Benin (1897), Japanese troops landed at Incheon, launching an invasion of Korea (1904), Ukraine signed a peace traty with the Central Powers (1918), Norway’s sovereignty over Svalbard recognized by an international treaty (1920), daylight savings time instituted (1942), Sen. Joe McCarthy alleged Communist infiltration of the US State Department (1950), Joanne Woodward became the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1960), the Beatles’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” drew 73.7 million viewers (1964), an “All in the Family” episode may have been the first with a gay theme in the history of TV (1971), Satchel Paige became the first Negro League veteran to be nomminated to the Baseball Hall of Fame (1971), “The Simpsons” became the longest running animated series in cartoon history with its 167th episode on Fox TV (1997), Bernie Sanders won 60% of the vote in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton’s 38% (2016), Bong Joon-ho’s film “Parasite” became the first non-English-language film to win an Academy Award for best picture (2020) & the US Senate began the impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 10
 
William Congreve (1670), Charles Lamb (1775), Boris Pasternak (1890), Jimmy Durante (1893), Bill Tilden (1893), Harold Macmillan (1894), Bertolt Brecht (1898), Stella Adler (1901), William ‘Chick’ Webb (1905), Erik Rhodes [Ernest Sharpe] (1906), Lon Chaney, Jr. (1906), Cesare Siepi (1923), Leontyne Price (1927), Robert Wagner (1930), Roberta Flack (1939), Mark Spitz (1950), Lee Hsien Loong (1952), George Stephanopoulos (1961), Glenn Beck (1964), Laura Dern (1967) & Keeley Hawes (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Henry Lord Darnley, king consort of Scotland (1567), Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1755), Alexander Pushkin (1837), Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II (1918), Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (1918), Wilhelm Röntgen (1923), Pope Pius XI [Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti] (1939), Laura Ingalls Wilder (1957), Alex Haley (1992), Paul Monette (1995), Abraham Beame (2001), Ron Ziegler (2003), Arthur Miller (2005), Shirley Temple (2014) & Larry Flynt (2021) died on this day. 62 scholars & 30 or more locals killed in the St. Scholastica’s Day riot in Oxford (1355), Albert of Prussia invested with the duchy (1525), 12 Anabaptists ran through the streets of Amsterdam naked (1535), the Académie Française founded by Cardinal Richelieu (1635), the Treaty of Paris ended the French & Indian War (a.k.a., the Seven Years’ War) (1763), Voltaire returned to Paris to great acclaim after 28 years (1778), Simón Bolívar named dictator by the Congress of Peru (1824), Alexander Pushkin is fatally injured in a duel with French officer Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d’Anthès (1837), Mormons began their westward migration from Nauvoo to the Great Salt Lake in Utah (1846), the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) formed in New York City (1870), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony in F premiered (1878), Henry Morton Stanley departed for the Congo (1879), Jacques Offenbach’s opera “Les Contes d’Hoffman” premiered in Paris (1881), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Snegurochka” (The Snow Maiden) premiered in St. Petersburg (1882), the New York Times began using slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print” (1897), Russia & Japan declared war on each other, officially launching the Russo-Japanese War (1904), Gen. Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim organized a ‘White Guard’ in Finland to challenge the Bolshevik ‘Red Guard’ (1918), New Delhi became the capital of India (1931), Adolf Hitler proclaimed the end of Marxism (1933), the first ship full of Jewish immigrants broke through British lines to reach Palestine (1934), Carol II of Romania drove out the dictator Goga (1938), Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” hit #1 on the charts (1940), William Hanna & Joseph Barbera’s cartoon “Tom & Jerry” debuted (1940), Glenn Miller was awarded the first ever gold record for selling a million copies of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” (1942), a ‘Manifesto of the Algerian People’ issued (1943), Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” premiered at the Morosco Theater in Manhattan (1949), Jawaharlal Nehru led the Congress party to victory in India’s first general election (1952), Dwight Eisenhower warned against US intervention in Vietnam (1954), Ralph Nader testified before Congress about unsafe practices in the auto industry (1966), the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution ratified (1967), Carole King’s “Tapestry” album released (1971), BBC banned “Give Ireland Back to the Irish” by Wings (1972), South Africa’s president F. W. de Klerk announced Nelson Mandela would be freed on February 11 (1990), Lithuania voted in favor of independence from the Soviet Union (1991), Mike Tyson convicted of rape (1992), Garry Kasparov lost a chess game against IBM’s computer Deep Blue (1996), Maine voters voted to repeal a 1997 gay rights law, making it the first US state to do so (1998), Charles, Prince of Wales announced his engagement to Camilla Parker-Bowles (2005), Luciano Pavarotti gave his last performance, singing “Nessun dorma” at the 20th Winter Olympic Games in Torino (2006), 400 members of Southern Baptist churches implicated in the sexual abuse of over 700 victims, as reported by the Houston Chronicle & the San Antonio Express-News (2019), 40% decline of insect populations globally with 30% endangered, as found in a global review (2019), Amy Klobuchar announced her presidential candidacy (2019), Childish Gambino became the first rapper to win Grammy Awards for best song & best record for “This Is America” at the 61st Grammy Awards ceremony (2019) & nine women accused Costa Rica’s president Óscar Arias Sánchez of sexual assault (2019) on this day.
 
 
February 11
 
Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII & queen of England (1466), Alexander H. Stephens (1812), Thomas Alva Edison (1847), Feodor Chaliapine (1873), Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909), Eva Gabor (1919), Lloyd Bentsen (1921), Leslie Nielsen (1926), Michel Sénéchal (1927), Tina Louise (1934), Mary Quant (1934), Manuel Noriega (1934), Mel Carnahan (1934), Francesco Pennisi (1934), John Surtees (1934), Patrick Holmes Sellors (1934), Burt Reynolds (1936), John Ellis ‘Jeb’ Bush (1953), Tammy Baldwin (1962), Sheryl Crow (1962), Scott Kolden (1962), Eric Vanderaerden (1962), Sarah Palin (1964), Jennifer Aniston (1969), Damian Lewis (1971), Alex Jones [Emeric] (1974), Brian Newman (1974), Wally Richardson (1974), Zain Verjee (1974) & Jaroslav Špaček (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus (55), Theodora (Byzantine empress) (867), Minamoto no Yoshitomo (1160), Elizabeth of York, queen of England (1403), René Descartes (1650), Vicente Martín y Soler, (1806), Sergei Eisenstein (1948), Patrice Lumumba (1961), Sylvia Plath (1963), Eleanor Powell (1982), Sorrell Booke (1994), Roger Vadim (2000), Tom Lantos (2008), [Lee] Alexander McQueen (2010), Whitney Houston (2012) & Bob Simon (2015) died on this day. Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus died under mysterious circumstances (probably murdered by Nero) (55), Henry VIII of England signed a treaty of alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V against François I of France (1543), voltaire returned to Paris from exile (1778), Sacagawea gave birth to her first child, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau (1805), Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting bill in the first act of ‘gerrymandering’ (1812), Norway’s independence from Denmark proclaimed (1814), University College London (1826), Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “La Fille du Regiment” premiered in Paris (1840), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “I Lombardi” premiered in Milan (1843), the first women’s public restroom opened in London’s Bedford Street (1852), Abraham Lincoln took the train from Springfield to Washington, D.C. for the last time (1861), Japan adopted the Meiji constitution (1889), Oscar Wilde’s “Salomé” premiered in Paris (1896), Congress enacted the anti-trust Expedition Act (1903), Emma Goldman arrested for lecturing on birth control (1916), Friedrich Ebert elected president of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919), Semana de Arte Moderna (Modern Art Week) opened in São Paulo — the beginning of modernism in Brazil (1922), the “Archie” comic book debuted (1942), Gen. Dwight Eisenhower named supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe (1943), Declaration of Liberated Europe signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill & Joseph Stalin after the Yalta Conference (1945), Marie-Bernarde Soubirous claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary at Lourdes (1858), Ruth Carol Taylor became the first woman hired as a flight attendant (1958), Robert Weaver became the first AFrican American appointed to a cabinet-level position in the US federal government (1961), Julia Child’s show “The French Chef” premiered (1963), Japan launched its first space satellite (1970), Margaret Thatcher defeated Edward Heath in a challenge for the leadership of the British Conservative Party (1975), China lifted a ban on works of Aristotle, William Shakespeare & Charles Dickens (1978), “Total Eclipse of the Heart” sung by Bonnie Tyler and composed by Jim Steinman released as a single (1983), Anthony Kennedy appointed to the US Supreme Court (1988), Nelson Mandela released after 27 years in prison in South Africa (1990), Janet Reno became the first woman appointed US attorney general (1993), Pluto moved beyond Neptune, becoming once again the solar system’s outermost planet (for 228 more years) (1999), abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy legalized by referendum in Portugal (2007), Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt & transferred power to the Supreme Military Council after 18 days of protests (2011), Israel renewed its pursuit of genocide in Gaza with four air strikes on the Gaza Strip (2012), Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation (effective Feb. 28), the first pope to resign since 1415 (2013), CNN & PBS broadcast the sixth Democratic presidential debate from Milwaukee (2016), Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary (2020), the World Health Organization named the novel corona virus ‘COVID-19’ (2020), & Joe Biden rescinded Donald Trump’s executive order used to fund the border wall (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 12
 
Lorenzo Campeggio (1474), Thomas Campion (1567), Cotton Mather (1663), Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760), Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (1768), Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1777), Peter Cooper (1791), Abraham Lincoln (1809), Charles Darwin (1809), George Meredith (1828), Anna Pavlova (1881), Omar Bradley (1893), Roy Harris (1898), Lee Byung-chul (founder of Samsung) (1910), Joseph L. Alioto (1916), Forrest Tucker (1919), Franco Zeffirelli (1923), Joe Garagiola (1926), Arlen Specter (1930), Annette Crosbie (1934), Fang Lizhi (1936), Ehud Barak (1942), Simon MacCorkindale (1952), Arsenio Hall (1956), Brett Kavanaugh (1965), Christina Ricci (1980) & Sarah Lancaster (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Lady Jane Grey (1554), Lord Guildford Dudley (1554), Nicholas Throckmorton (1571), Marie-Louise d’Orléans, consort of Carlos II & queen of Spain (1689), Marie-Adélaïde of Savoie, mother of Louis XV of France (1712), Pierre de Marivaux (1763), Ethan Allen (1789), Immanuel Kant (1804), Hans von Bülow (1894), Lillie Langtry [Emilie Charlotte Le Breton] (1929), Auguste Escoffier (1935), Grant Wood (1942), James Cash Penney (1971), Sal Mineo (1976), Jean Renoir (1979), Jean Dixon (1981), Anna Anderson [Franziska Schanzkowska] (1984), Robert F. Wagner, Jr. (1991), Charles M. Schulz (2000), Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Garrett (2011), Kenneth Mars (2011), David Carr (2015), Al Jarreau (2017) & Lyndon LaRouche (2019) died on this day. Battle of the Herrings (1429), Muslims of Granada subjected to forced conversion (1502), Lady Jane Grey & Lord Guildford Dudley executed for treason by Mary Tudor (1554), the Great Northern War began (1700), Georgia founded by James Oglethorpe (1733), Gustav III succeeded Adolf Frederik as king of Sweden (1771), Congress enacted the first fugitive slave law (1793), Joseph Haydn’s song “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” (God Save Emperor Francis) premiered in Vienna (1797), Argentine revolutionary José de San Martín routed Spanish forces in Chile (1817), Chile gained independence from Spain (1818), Ecuador annexed the Galapagos Islands (1832), the Marquess of Salisbury formed a second government in coalition with the Liberal Unionist Party (1886), Henrik Ibsen’s “Fruen fra havet” (The Lady from the Sea) premiered in Oslo (1889), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded (1909), China adopted the Gregorian calendar (1912), Puyi abdicated as Qing emperor of China (1912), George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue” premiered at the influential concert “Experiment in Modern Music” held by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra at the Aeolian Hall in Manhattan (1924), Gen. Erwin Rommel arrived in Libya with the Afrika Korps to reinforce Italian troops (1941), Christian Dior presented his ‘New Look’ collection (1947), the Lincoln Memorial penny replaced the sheaves of wheat design (1959), Argentina requests the extradition of ex-president Juan Domingo Perón (1963), North Vietnam began the release of US POWs following the signing of the Paris peace accords (1973), Sal Mineo stabbed to death in Hollywood (1976), Barbara Harris became the first female bishop of a US Episcopal Church diocese (1989), “The Scream” by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1893 pastel version) stolen in Oslo (1994), Bill Clinton acquitted by the US Senate at the end of his impeachment trial (1999), Slobodan Milošević war crimes trial began at the International Criminal Court in the Hague (2002), Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the City of San Francisco to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples (2004), Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s public art work “The Gates” opened in Manhattan’s Central Park (2005), the Writers’ Guild of America’s strike endeded after 100 days (2008), former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin found guilty on corruption charges & sentenced to 10 years in prison (2014), Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán found guilty of all 10 federal crimes he was charged with (2019) & Tokyo Olympics head Yoshiro Mori resigned after comments about talkative women making meetings “drag on too long” (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 13
 
Japan’s first emperor Jimmu Tennō (711 BCE), Marie de Bourgogne (1457), Pope Alexander VII (Fabio Chigi) (1599), Jean de la Badie (1610), Lord Randolph Churchill (1849), Feodor Chaliapin (1873), Bess Truman (1885), Georgios Papandreou (1888), Grant Wood (1891), Georges Simenon (1903), William Shockley (1910), Aung San (1915), ‘Tennessee’ Ernie Ford (1919), Eileen Farrell (1920), Michael Anthony Bilandic (1923), Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (1924), Omar Torrijos Herrera (1929), Caroline Blakiston (1933), Emanuel Ungaro (1933), Kim Novak [Marilyn] (1933), George Segal (1934), Oliver Reed (1938), Jerry Springer (1944), Stockard Channing (1944), Peter Gabriel (1950), Joyce DiDonato (née Flaherty) (1969), Anders Behring Breivik (1979), Rafael Márquez (1979) & Mena Suvari (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Kenneth I of Scotland [Kenneth MacAlpin] (858), Isabella d’Esta of Mantua (1539), Catherine Howard, queen of England (1542), Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford (1542), Karl X Gustav (1660), Elizabeth Stuart, Electress of the Palatinate & ‘Winter Queen’ of Bohemia (1662), Cotton Mather (1728), Richard Wagner (1883), Alfred Einstein (1952), Dame Christabel Pankhurst (1958), Georges Rouault (1958), Alice ‘Lily’ Pons (1976), Walt Rostow (2003) & Stacy Keach, Sr. (2003) died on this day. Henri III was crowned king of France at Rheims (1575), Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome to face heresy charges (1633), England’s parliament adopted the Bill of Rights limiting the power of the monarch & proclaimed William & Mary proclaimed the only joint sovereigns in British history (1689), Glencoe Massacre of MacDonalds by the Campbell clan (1692), the College of William & Mary opened in Williamsburg (1693), Sweden defeated Russia & Saxony at the Battle of Fraustadt (1706), arrest of the Marquis de Sade (1777), Abraham Lincoln declared president of the United States (1861), the moving picture projector patented (1895), Theodore Roosevelt spoke to the New York City Republican Club on race relations (1905), British suffragists stormed the Houses of Parliament, 60 women arrested (1907), the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) founded at Hotel Claridge in Manhattan (1914), Mata Hari arrested in Paris on espionage charges (1917), Switzerland’s perpetual neutrality recognized by the League of Nations (1920), the New York Renaissance became the first professional African American basketball team (1923), Bruno Hauptmann found guilty of the kidnapping & murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby son (1935), the “Prince Valiant” comic strip first published (1937), Adolf Hitler cancelled his planned invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion) (1942), 22,000 or more killed in the firestorm created by the Allied bombing of Dresden (1945), Soviet troops captured Budapest after a 49-day battle with Nazi German forces that killed 159,000 (1945), Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized in New Orleans with Martin Luther King, Jr. as president (1957), Lyndon Baines Johnson approved Operation Rolling Thunder (1965), Bob Fosse’s film “Cabaret” released (1972), Major Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo seized power in Nigeria (1976), Konstantin Chernenko succeeded Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (1984), the US, UK & France approved German plans for reunification (1990), Joseph Stiglitz became chief economist of the World Bank (1997), the last original “Peanuts” comic strip appeared in newspapers one day after the death of Charles M. Schulz (2000), Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigned as chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted by Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of embezzlement when mayor of Taipei & announced his candidacy for 2008 presidential election (2007), Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd made a historic apology to indigenous aboriginal Australians, including the Stolen Generations (2008), Michael Flynn resigned as Donald Trump’s national security adviser over dealings with Russia (2017), Harrison Ford involved in a near miss while flying a plane in Orange County (2017), the ANC demanded that Jacob Zuma step down as president of South Africa (2018), an Israeli police report recommended prosecution of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2018), NASA’s Spirit Rover mission ended after 15 years due to a sandstorm on Mars (2019), 57 members of the Senate voted to convict Donald Trump while 43 voted for acquittal, falling short of the two thirds needed to convict & remove him following impeachment in the House of Representatives (2021), Mario Draghi sworn in as prime minister of Italy (2021) & archaeologists announced the discovery of the oldest known beer factory in Abydos dating from Egypt’s early dinastic period (3150-2613 BCE) (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 14
 
Pandolfo Petrucci (1452), Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur (1483), Pier Francesco Cavalli (1602), Sybilla Schwarz (1621), Fernando Sor (1778), Otis Tufts (1804), Frederick Douglass (1818), Jack Benny [Benjamin Kubelski] (1894), Max Horkheimer (1895), Thelma Ritter (1902), Jimmy Hoffa (1913), Hugh Downs (1921), Fanne Foxe [Annabella Battistella] (1936), Paul Tsongas (1941), Donna Shalala (1941), ‘Big Jim’ Sullivan [Tomkins] (1941), Michael Bloomberg (1942), Carl Bernstein (1944), Gregory Hines (1945), Hans Adam, prince of Liechtenstein (1945), Raymond Joseph Teller (1948), Renée Fleming (1959) & Mark Rutte (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Richard II of England (1400), Benvenuto Cellini (1571), Maria Luisa of Savoy, queen consort to Philip V of Spain (1714), James Cook (1779), William Blackstone (1780), Vicente Guerrerro (1831), Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt (1884), William Tecumseh Sherman (1891), P.G. Wodehouse (1975), Frederick Loewe [Friedrich Löwe] (1988), U Nu (1995), Dolly the Sheep (2003), Louis Jourdan [Louis Robert Gendre] (2015), Alan Howard (2015) & Ruud Lubbers (2018) died on this day. St. Valentine may have been beheaded (270), 900 Jews burned alive in Strasbourg after being blamed for causing the Black Death (1349), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V entered Ghent & executed rebels (1540), Mary Tudor had Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared a heretic (1556), Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I drove Jews out of Vienna (1670), Captain James Cook killed in Hawaii (1779), Chief Justice John Marshall declared that any act of Congress that conflicts with the Constitution is null & void (1803), James Knox Polk became first serving US president to have his photograph taken (by Matthew Brady in New York City) (1849), Oregon admitted as the 33rd state (1859), Morehouse College founded in Georgia (1867), Seraph Young voted in Utah two days after the legislature gave women the vote — becoming the first woman to vote in the US (1870), Theodore Roosevelt’s wife & mother died on the same day just hours apart from each other (1884), the first trainload of California oranges left Los Angeles via the transcontinental railroad (1886), Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Earnest” premiered in London (1895), Austrian Zionist Theodor Herzl published “Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State), encouraging Jews to purchase land in Palestine (1896), Arizona admitted as the 48th state (1912), seven gangsters killed on Al Capone’s orders in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago (1929), the first “Dracula” film (starring Bela Lugosi) released (1931), Gen. Erwin Rommel led his Afrika Korps to victory over US & British troops at the Battle of the KAsserine Pass (1943), Federico Fellini’s film “8½” starring Marcello Mastroianni & Claudia Cardinalle released (1963), Richard Nixon installed a secret taping system in the White House (1971), Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for “Satanic Verses” (1989), Voyager 1 took the ‘Pale Blue Dot’ photo of earth (1990), Jonathan Demme’s film “The Silence of the Lambs” released (1991), Rafik Hariri assassinated in Lebanon (2005), six killed & 18 injured in a mass shooting at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb (2008), Oscar Pistorius charged with the murder of Reeva Steenkamp (2013), Ellen (now Elliott) Page came out as gay (2014), Jacob Zuma resigned as president of South Africa (2018), 17 killed in the Parkland High School mass shooting in Florida (2018), Amazon cancelled plans to move into Long Island City (2019) & William Barr was confirmed as US attorney general by the US Senate (2019) on this day.
 
 
February 15
 
Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (1368), Piero di Lorenzo de Medici (1471), Philipp Melanchthon (1497), Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519), Charles de Guise (1524), Galileo Galilei (1564), Anne Jules, Duc de Noailles (1650), Charles-André Van Loo (1705), Louis XV (1710), Jeremy Bentham (1748), Henry Steinway [Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg] (1797), Cyrus McCormick (1809), Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812), Susan B. Anthony (1820), Elihu Root (1845), Robert Fuchs (1847), William Pickering (1858), Alfred North Whitehead (1861), Ernest Shackleton (1874), John Barrymore (1882), Gale Sondergaard (1899), Georges Auric (1899), Christmas Humphreys (1901), Harold Arlen [Hyman Arluck] (1905), Jean Langlais (1907), Cesar Romero (1907), Hale Boggs (1914), Kevin McCarthy (1914), Arthur Sydney Martin (1914), R.W. Woods (1914), John B. Anderson (1922), Yelena Bonner (1923), Harvey Korman (1927), James Schlesinger (1929), [Patricia] Claire Bloom (1931), Susan Brownmiller (1935), John Adams (1947), Marisa Berenson (1947), Russell ‘Rusty’ Hamer (1947), Art Spiegelman (1948), Donna Hanover Giuliani (1950), Jane Seymour [Joyce Frankenberg] (1951), Melissa Manchester (1951), Matt Groening (1954) & Chris Farley (1964) were born #OnThisDay. Gisela von Schwaben, Holy Roman Empress & wife of Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II (1043), Michael Praetorius [Schultze] (1621), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (1637), Karl XIII of Sweden (1818), Henry Addington, first Viscount Sidmouth (1844), Mikhail Glinka (1857), Leopold Damrosch (1885), H.H. Asquith (1928), Nat King Cole (1965), Edgar Snow (1972), Karl Richter (1981), Ethel Merman [Zimmermann] (1984), Boris Goldovsky (2001) & Howard K. Smith (2002) died on this day. Socrates sentenced to death by the city of Athens (399 BCE), Ferdinand III succeeded Ferdinand II as Holy Roman Emperor (1637), Jean-Baptiste Lully’s opera “Armide” premiered in Paris (1686), Austria, Prussia & Saxony signed the Treaty of Hubertusburg bringing the Seven Years’ War (the French & Indian War) to an end (1763), St. Louis founded as a French trading post in Missouri by Pierre Laclède (1764), premiere in Vienna of “An der Schönen Blauen Danau” waltz of Johann Strauß (1867), the USS maine exploded in Havana harbor, prompting William Randolph Hearst to start a propaganda campaign to prod the US to declare war on Spain (1898), Morris & Rose Michtom put the first teddy bear on sale in the US (1903), British Labour Party founded (1906), Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak mortally wounded in an assassination attempt on Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Miami (1933), Adolf Hitler announced construction of the Volkswagen Käfer (Beetle) (1037), Norway’s Sonja Henie won a third consecutive gold medal at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Winter Games (1936), Lillian Hellman’s play “The Little Foxes” premiered in New York City (1939), Maria Callas made her professional debut as Beatrice in Franz von Suppé’s opera “Boccaccio” at the Olympia Theatre in Athens (1941), Singapore surrendered to the Japanese (1942), “We Can Do It!” wartime propaganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller (1943), Walt Disney’s animated film “Cinderella” premiered in Boston (1950), Joseph Stalin’s USSR & Mao Zedong’s PRC signed a mutual defense treaty (1950), George VI of England buried in Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel (1952), Canada replaced the Union Jack with the maple leaf flag (1965), the United Kingdom decimalized its currency, abondoning the pence & shilling system after 1,200 years (1971), escaped mass murderer Ted Bundy recaptured (1978), Lillian Hellman sued Mary McCarthy for libel (1980), Ferdinand Marcos won a rigged presidential election in the Philippines (1986), end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1989), Jeffrey Dahmer found sane and guilty of killing 15 boys (1992), “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” won a BAFTA for best film at the 57th British Film & Television Awards (2004), demonstrations against Muammar al-Gaddafi’s dictatorship broke out in Libya (2011), Barack Obama awarded Maya Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2011), the first known case of a transgendered woman breastfeeding reported in “Transgender Health Journal” in US (2018), Hailemariam Desalegn surprised Ethiopia by resigning as prime minister (2018), & Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala became the first woman & the first African to lead the World Trade Organization (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 16
 
Zhao Shu, Yingzong emperor of Song China (1032), Nichiren (1222), Gaspard de Coligny (1519), Friedrich Wilhelm, der Große Kurfürst von Preußen (1620), Narai the Great of the Ayutthaya kingdom of Siam (1643), Giambattista Bodoni (1740), Johann Heinse (1746), Charles Pichegru (1761), Johann Strauß III (1866), George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876), George F. Kennan (1904), Hugh Beaumont (1909), Vera-Ellen [Westmeier Rohe] (1921), Hua Guofeng (1921), Geraint Evans (1922), Salvatore ‘Sonny’ Bono (1935), Carl Icahn (1936), John Corigliano (1938), Kim Jong-il (1942), Gabriel Brnčić (1942), Bob Hammond (1942), Anthony Dowell (1943), Eckhart Tolle (1948), Séamus Brennan (1948), Margaux Hemingway (1954), LeVar Burton (1957), Ice-T [Tracy Marrow] (1958), Mahershala Ali [Mahershalalhashbaz George] (1974) & Jon Ossoff (1987) were born #OnThisDay. Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1823), Félix Faure (1899), Giosuè Carducci (1907), Keith Haring (1990), Edmund Gerald ‘Pat’ Brown (1996), Eleanor ‘Sis’ Daley (22003) & Boutros Boutros-Ghali (2016) died on this day. Pope Gregory the Great decreed that “God bless You” is the correct response to a sneeze (600), Andrew of Longjumeau dispatched by Louis IX of France as his ambassador to meet with the Khan of the Mongols (1249), Maximilian von Habsburg elected King of the Romans at Frankfurt (1486), the Battle of Great Torrington in Devon — the last major battle of the English Civil War (1646), the first known cheque written (£400) — now on display in Westminster Abbey (1659), publication of Sir Thomas Gray’s poem “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” (1751), Lt. Stephen Decatur led a daring US mission in the First Barbary War (1804), Gallaudet College founded in Washington, D.C. (1857), Fort Donelson captured by Union troops under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (1862), Jules Massenet’s opera “Werther” premiered in Vienna (1892), Chung Sai Yat Po published in San Francisco — the first Chinese-language daily newspaper in the US (1900), Serbia mobilized against Austria-Hungary 91909), Howard Carter & Egyptian workers opened the tomb of Tutankhamun (1923), fascist Pehr Evind Svinhufvud became president of Finland (1931), the Catholic newspaper Germania warned agains tNazis & Communists (1933), Austrian Civil War ended with the defeat of the Social Democrats and the Republican Schutzbund (1934), the Frente Popular (People’s Front) won elections in Spain (1936), “Bringing Up Baby” — directed by Howard Hawks & starring Katharine Hepburn & Cary Grant — released (1938), Japanese soldiers machine gunned Australian & British soldiers & nurses in the Bangka Island massacre (1942), Joseph Stalin denounced the United Nations as “a weapon of aggressive war” (1951), Ingmar Bergman’s film “Det Sjunde Inseglet” (The Seventh Seal) released (1957), Fidel Castro sworn in as prime minister of Cuba after overthrowing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1959), Hannah Arendt’s controversial account of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann first published in “The New Yorker” (1963), the Beatles’ second appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” (1964), the first 911 call placed in the US (1968), Mário Soares became the first democratically elected civilian president of Portugal (1986), the remains of former Emperor Haile Selassie found on the grounds of tthe imperial palace in Ethiopia (1992), O.J. Simpson’s 1968 Heisman Trophy sold for $230,000 to help settle a $33.5 million civil judgement against him (1999) & Pope Francis defrocked ex-cardinal & archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick for sexually abusing minors and adults. First Cardinal to be removed for sexual abuse — the first cardinal to be removed for sexual abuse (2019) on this day.
 
 
February 17
 
François, Duc de Guise (1519), Arcangelo Corelli (1653), Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff (1699), René Laënnec (1781), Henri Vieuxtemps (1820), Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Gräfin von Landsfeld (a.k.a., Lola Montez) (1821), Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844), Friedrich Krupp (1854), Edward German (Jones), William Cadbury (1867), André Maginot (1877), Hans Morgenthau (1904), Red Barber (1908), Margaret Truman (1924), Chaim Potok (1929), Hal Holbrook (1925), Nicholas Ridley (1929), Dame Patricia Routledge (1929), Alan Bates (1934), Barry Humphries (1934), Mary Frances Berry (1938), Huey P. Newton (1942), Mo Yan (1955), Aryeh Deri (1959), Lou Diamond Phillips (1962), Michael Jordan (1963), Harisu (1975), Paris Hilton (1981), Bonnie Wright (1991) & Ed Sheeran (1991) were born #OnThisDay. Giordano Bruno (1600), Gregorio Allegri (1652), Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1673), Heinrich Heine (1856), Christopher Latham Sholes (1890), Geronimo (1909), Wilfrid Laurier (1918), Albert I of Belgium (1934), Bruno Walter (1962), Lee Strasberg (1982), Thelonious Monk (1982), Erik Rhodes [Ernest Sharpe] (1990), Randy Shilts (1994), José López Portillo (2004), Kathryn Grayson [Zelman Hedrick] (2010) & Rush Limbaugh (2021) died on this day. Lancastrians defeated Yorkists at the Second Battle of St. Albans in the Wars of the Roses, recapturing Henry VI (1461), a German peasant army defeated the ducal army of Schleswig-Holstein at the Battle of Hemmingstedt (1500), the Portuguese admiral Afonso de Albuquerque entered Goa (1510), Boris Godunov chosen tsar of Russia (1598), Giordano Bruno burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome (1600), Myles Standish elected first commander of the Plymouth Colony (1621), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Siroe, Re di Persia” premiered in London (1728), the first partition of Poland treaty signed by Austria, Prussia & Russia (1772), the US House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson as president, breaking a tie in the electoral college (1801), the US Senate ratified the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812 (1815), the US Senate passed the Missouri Compromise (1820), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Un Ballo in Maschera” premiered in Naples (1859), South Carolina’s capital city Columbia sacked by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union army (1865), Gyula Andressy named prime minister of Hungary (1867), Alexander II of Russia survived an assassination attempt (1880), Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” premiered in Milan (1904), Irving Berlin’s musical “Face the Music” premiered in Manhattan (1932), Chaim Weitzman elected the first president of Israel (1949), the comic strip “BC” first published (1958), the British House of Commons voted to join the European Community (1972), Richard Nixon flew to China (1972), Luciano Pavarotti received a record 17 curtain calls after his performance in “La Fille du Régiment” at New York’s Metropolitan Opera (1972), Henry Kissinger met with Mao Zedong in Beijing (1973), China invaded Vietnam, initiating the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979), Chrysler reported the largest corporate losses in US history (1981), the first francophone summit convened at Versailles (1986), Germany’s president Christian Wulff resigned in a corruption scandal (2012), Rafael Correa won re-election in Ecuador in a landslide (2013), “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” premiered on NBC (2014), the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig revealed the oldest case of human-Neanderthal mating (100,000 years ago) (2016) & Sen. Ted Cruz flew to Cancun for a vacation in the midst of a winter disaster in Texas, provoking condemnation & ridicule (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 18
 
Qin Shi Huang Di (259 BCE), St. Jadwiga, queen of Poland (1374), Mary Tudor (1516), Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609), Johan Göransson Gyllenstierna (1635), Jacques Cassini (1677), Alessandro Volta (1745), Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848), Níkos Kazantzákis (1883), Wendell Wilkie (1892), André Breton (1896), Hans Asperger (1906), Jack Palance [Vladimir Palahniuk] (1920), Helen Gurley Brown (1922), George Kennedy (1925), John Warner (1927), Johnny Hart (1931), Toni Morrison [Chloe Anthony Wofford] (1931), Miloš Forman (1932), Yoko Ono Lennon (1933), Aldo Ceccato (1934), Paco Rabaane [Francisco Cuervo] (1934), Audre Lorde (1934), István Szabó (1938), Eliot Engel (1947), Princess Maria Christina [Marijke] of the Netherlands (1947), Carolyn Maloney (1948), Sinead Cusack 1948), Cybill Shepherd (1950), John Hughes (1950), John Travolta (1954), Bruce Rauner (1957), Greta Scacchi (1960), Matt Dillon (1964), Dr. Dre [Andre Romelle Young] (1965) & Molly Ringwald (1968) were born #OnThisDay. Kublai Khan (1294), Fra Angelico (1455), George, Duke of Clarence (1478), Martin Luther (1546), Michelangelo Buonarroti (1564), Louis, Duc de Bourgogne (1712), August Gottlieb Meißner (1807), Giacomo Quarenghi (1817), Gyula Andrássy Sr. (1890), Charles Lewis Tiffany (1902), George Dayton (1938), Niceto Alcalá-Zamora (1949), Gustave Charpentier (1956), Hugh Gaitskell (1963), Robert Oppenheimer (1967), Maria Franziska von Trapp (2014) & Norma McCorvey (2017) died on this day. Jerusalem re-taken by the Christian Crusader kingdom in a peace treaty between Holy Roman Emperor Frederik II & Egyptian ruler Al-Kamil (1219), George, Duke of Clarence executed by his brother Edward IV of England (1478), Henry Tudor created Prince of Wales (1503), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II ordered the execution of Albrecht von Wallenstein (1634), John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” published in London by Nathaniel Ponder (1678), Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II banned child labor for children under 8 within his Habsburg domains (1787), Ohio University chartered as the first land grant college in the US (1804), Napoléon Bonaparte led French troops to victory over Austria & Württemberg at the Battle of Montereau (1814), the American Party (‘Know Nothings’) nominated former president Millard Fillmore as its first presidential candidate (1856), Chinese residents in the fledging state of Sarawak rebel against the ‘White Rajah’ James Brooke (1857), Jefferson Davis inaugurated as president of the Confederacy in Montgomery (1861), Vittorio Emmanuele II of Sardinia became the first king of a united Italy (1861), direct telegraph link between Britain & New Zealand established (1876), Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi awarded a patent for his design for the Statue of Liberty (1879), Gen. Charles Gordon arrived in Khartoum (1884), Russian police seized all copies of Leo Tolstoy’s “What I Believe In” (1884), Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” published in the US (1885), Winston Churchill made his maiden speech in the British House of Commons (1901), Jules Massenet’s opera “Le jongleur de Notre-Dame” premiered in Monte Carlo (1902), “Nude Descending a Staircase” by Marcel Duchamp causes an uproar when shown in New York (1913), Germany began a blockade of Britain (1915), British troops occupy Dublin (1921), US Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby resigned over the Teapot Dome scandal (1924), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced the winners of the first Academy Awards (1929), Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto (1930), Japan established the puppet empire of Manchukuo (1932), Japanese troops landed on Bali (1942), Weiße Rose (White Rose) anti-Nazi Resistance leaders Hans & Sophie Scholl arrested in Munich (1943), Nepal became a constitutional monarchy (1951), the first Church of Scientology established in Los Angeles (1954), church deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson beaten & shot during a peaceful march in Alabama (1965), Gambia independent from Britain (1965), thousands in West Berlin demonstrated against US involvement in the Vietnam War (1968), the Chicago Seven found innocent of incitement to riot (1970), Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine (1970), California’s Supreme Court abolished the death penalty (1972), -52°F (-47°C) in Old Forge set a state record low in New York (1979), Pierre Elliott Trudeau led the Liberal Party to victory in Canada’s parliamentary elections (1980), the first anti-smoking ad appeared on TV in the US (1986), Anthony Kennedy sworn in as a US Supreme Court justice (1988), Andrea Bocelli made his operatic debut as Rodolfo in “La Bohème” at the Teatro Comunale in Cagliari (1998), FBI agent Robert Hanssen arrested for spying for the Soviet Union (2001), nearly 200 died in a Daegu subway fire in South Korea (2003), the Bibliothèque Nationale de France purchased the memoirs of Giacomo Casanova for €7 million (2010), WikiLeaks published documents leaded by Chelsea Manning (2010), demonstrations against Viktor Yanukovych on the Maidan launched the Ukrainian Revolution (2014), 16 states sued Donald Trump over his use of emergency powers to build a border wall (2019), the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy (2020), Donald Trump commuted the 14-year sentence of former Gov. of Illinois Rod Blagojevich’s corruption conviction (2020) & Facebook blocked users in Australia from accessing news sites (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 19
 
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473), David Garrick (1717), Luigi Boccherini (1743), William III of the Netherlands (1817), Adelina Patti (1843), Constantin Brancuşi (1876), Gabriele Münter (1877), Álvaro Obregón (1880), Cedric Hardwicke (1893), Merle Oberon (1911), Lee Marvin (1924), Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1932), William ‘Smokey’ Robinson (1940), Amy Tan (1952), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (1953), Jeff Daniels (1955), Roger Goodell (1959), Prince Andrew, Duke of York (1960), Seal [Henry Olusegun Adeola Samuel] (1963), Gil Shahan (1971), Haylie Duff (1985) & Millie Bobby Brown (2004) were born #OnThisDay. Amir Timur, a.k.a., Tamerlane (1405), André Gide (1951), Knut Hamsun (1952), Deng Xiaoping (1997), Charles Trenet (2001), Silvia Rivera (2002), Umberto Eco (2016), [Nelle] Harper Lee (2016) & Karl Lagerfeld (2019) died on this day. Lucius Septimius Severus defeated Clodius Albinus at the Battle of Lugdunum (Lyon) (197), Emperor Constantius II closed all pagan temples in the Roman Empire (356), Henry VII’s Lady Chapel consecrated in Westminster Abbey (1516), François, Duc d’Alençon & Anjou, made Duke of Brabant & hereditary sovereign of the Netherlands (1582), Sigismund III of Vasa crowned king of Sweden (1594), Georg Friedrich Händel’s “Alexander’s Feast” premiered at the Covent Garden Theatre in London (1736), Pope Pius VI ceded Papal territories of Avignon, Venaissin, Ferrara, Bologna & the Romagna to France in the Peace of Tolentino (1797), Aaron Burr arrested on treason charges 91807), the first rescue team reached the Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California (1847), Thomas Alva Edison granted a patent for his gramophone (phonograph) (1878), British premiere of Richard Strauss’ opera “Elektra” (1910), Riccardo Zandonai’s opera “Francesco da Rimini” premiered in Turin (1914), four-year old Charlotte May Pierstorff mailed by train from Idaho to her grandparents’ house 73 miles away in most famous ‘child in the post’ instance (1914), Manuel Azaña became Prime Minister of Spain for the second time (1936), Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on the interment of Japanese Americans (1942), Japanese troops landed on Timor (1942), the US 5th Fleet launched the invasion of Iwo Jima (1945), Albania disavowed what Enver Hoxha denounced as Chinese ‘revisionism’ (1961), Nikita Khrushchev informed John F. Kennedy that Russia was withdrawing troops from Cuba (1963), Betty Friedan’s manifesto “The Feminine Mystique” published (1963), “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” debuted on NET (now PBS) (1968), the. Chicago Seven acquitted of riot conspiracy but found guilty of inciting riot but their sentences were overturned on appeal (1970), the single “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” released by Tony Orlando & Dawn (1973), exiled Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reunited with his family (1974), the Frente Polisario formed the Democratic Republic of Sahara in Western Sahara (former Spanish Sahara) (1976), Cherry Coke introduced by Coca-Cola (1985), Mickey Mouse welcomed in China (1985), the soap opera “Eastenders” premiered on the BBC (1985), Tiger Woods publicly apologized for his extramarital affairs (2010), Bashar al-Assad ordered the bombing of Gouta which killed more than 300 Syrian civilians in the midst of the genocidal civil war (2018), Bernie Sanders announced his second presidential candidacy (2019), New York City banned race-based hair discrimination (2019), the Vatican confirmed secret Catholic Church guidelines for the children of priests (2019) & a German gunman opened fire in a bar in Hanau, killing nine in a racially motivated attack (2020) on this day.
 
 
February 20
 
Carl Czerny (1791), Angelina Grimké (1805), Mary Garden (1874), Ansel Adams (1902), Millicent Fenwick (1910), Gloria Vanderbilt (1924), Robert Altman (1925), Roy Cohn (1927), Sidney Poitier (1927), Larry Hovis (1936), Christoph Eschenbach (1940), Buffy Saint-Marie (1941), Mitch McConnell (1942), Brenda Blethyn (1946), Sandy Duncan (1946), Ivana Trump (1949), Gordon Brown (1951), Riccardo Chailly (1953), Patty Hearst Shaw (1954), Charles Barkley (1963), Cindy Crawford (1966), Kurt Cobain (1967), Vaginal Davis (1969), Trevor Noah (1984), Rihanna [Robyn Rihanna Fenty] (1988) & Sally Rooney (1991) were born #OnThisDay. Al-Musta’sim, last Abbasid caliph of Baghdad (1258), Philip William, Prince of Orange (1618), John Dowland (1626), Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1790), Frederick Douglass (1895), Boutros Ghali (1910), Robert Peary (1920), Percy Grainger (1961), Ferenc Fricsay (19663), Chester Nimitz (1966), Anthony Asquith (1968), Ernest Ansermet (1969), Walter Winchell (1972), Joseph Szigeti (1973), Alice Longworth Roosevelt (1980), Dick York (1992), Roberto D’Aubuisson (91992), Ferruccio Lamborghini (1993), Derek Jarman (1994), Tōru Takemitsu (1996), Gene Siskel (1999), Maurice Blanchot (2003), Sandra Dee [Alexandra Zuck] (2005), Hunter S. Thompson (2005), Alexander Haig, Jr. (2010), Peter Mondavi (2016) & Dominick Argento (2019) died on this day. Al-Musta’sim — the last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad — died in the Mongol sack of Baghdad by being rolled up in a carpet & trampled to death (1258), Edward VI crowned king of England (1547), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” premiered at the King’s Theatre Haymarket in London (1724), Andreas Hofer executed for leading the Tyrolean resistance to Napoléon’s occupation (1810), Gioachino Rossini’s opera “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome (1816), the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in Manhattan (1872), France’s prime minister Georges Clémenceau injured during an assassination attempt (1919), American Samoa organized as a US territory (1929), Virgil Thomson & Gertrude Stein’s opera “Four Saints in Three Acts” opened on Broadway (1934), Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary to protest Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany (1938), Adolf Hitler announced his support for Japan in its war with China (1938), 20,000 attended a rally in Madison Square Garden held by the American pro-Nazi German American Bund (1939), Larry Clinton & his Orchestra recorded “Limehouse Blues” (1940), Lt. Edward O’Hare became the first US flying ace of World War II with a raid against the Japanese in Rabaul (1942), the Batman & Robin comic strip first published in newspapers (1944), US victory in the Battle of Eniwetok (1944), Earl Mountbatten of Burma appointed last viceroy of India to oversee independence (1947), abolition of the kingdom of Prussia (1947), John Huston’s film “The African Queen” released in the US (1952), John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth aboard Friendship 7 (1962), Atlanta Constitution editor Reg Murphy kidnapped (1974), the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) disbanded (1976), the Irish government defied the Roman Catholic Church, approving the sale of contraceptives (1985), Brian Boitano won a gold medal in figure skating at the Olympics (1988), a gigantic statue of Albania’s dictator Enver Hoxha brought down by a mob of angry protesters in Tirana (1991), Ross perot announced his presidential candidacy on “Larry King Live” (1992), Pope John Paul II demanded enforcement of discrimination based on sexual orientation (1994), 100 killed in a fire in a nightclub in the Rhode Island town of West Warwick (2003), Donald Trump won the South Carolina Republican presidential primary with 32.5% of the vote (2016), Jeb Bush suspended his presidential campaign (2016), Hillary Clinton won the Nevada Democratic caucuses with 52.6% of the vote (2016) & the Burmese military killed two & wounded 40 protestors in demonstrations against the coup d’état in Myanmar (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 21
 
Peter III of Russia (1728), Antonio López de Santa Anna (1794), John Henry Newman (1801), Léo Delibes (1836), Charles-Marie Widor (1844), Andrés Segovia (1893), Anaïs Nin (1903), Ann Sheridan (1915), Lucille Bremer (1917), Robert Mugabe (1924), Sam Peckinpah (1925), Erma Bombeck (1927), Hubert de Givenchy (1927), Nina Simone [Eunice Waymon] (1933), Rue McClanahan (1934), Barbara Jordan (1936), Harald V of Norway (1937), John Lewis (1940), Margarethe Von Trotta (1942), David Geffen (1943), Alan Rickman (1946), Tricia Nixon Cox (1946), Tyne Daly (1946), Olympia Snowe (1947), Christine Ebersole (1953), Kelsey Grammer (1955), Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter (a.k.a., Clark Rockefeller) (1961), Mark Kelly (1964), Scott Kelly (1964), Charlotte Church (1986) & Elliot (née Ellen) Page (1987) were born #OnThisDay. James I of Scotland (1437), Pope Julius II (1513), Baruch Spinoza (1677), Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore (1715), Eugène de Beauharnais (1824), Gustave Caillebotte (1894), Anne Frank (1945), Malcolm X [Little] (1965), Bronislava Nijinska (1972), Tim Horton (1974), Margot Fonteyn (1991), Billy Graham (2018) & Stanley Donen (2019) died on this day. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket canonized by Pope Alexander III (1173), Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) faced her first day of interrogation during her heresy trial (1431), Boris Godunov crowned tsar of Russia (1598), Mikhail Romanov elected tsar of Russia, beginning the Romanov dynasty (1613), Congress enacted the Presidential Succession Act (1792), France’s new constitution established freedom of religion for the first time (1795), the Greek war of independence from Ottoman Turkey began (1821), Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels’ “Communist Manifesto” published in London (1848), Confederate troops defeated Union forces at the Battle of Valverde in the first major Civil War engagement west of the Mississippi (1862), Benjamin Disraeli succeeded William Gladstone as British prime minister (1874), the Washington Monument dedicated (1885), the Battle of Verdun began (1916), British & Australian troops captured Jericho (1918), Franz Lehár’s operetta “Der Zarewitsch” premiered (1927), Alka Seltzer introduced (1931), Japans prime minister Hideki Tojo made himself army chief of staff (1944), Malcolm X assassinated by agents of the Nation of Islam (1965), Henry Kissinger began secret negotiations with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho (1970), Richard Nixon met Mao Zedong in Beijing (1972), Watergate conspirators John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman & John Ehrlichman sentenced (1975), Bill Maher’s political talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher” debuted on HBO (2003), Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama (2014), Ukrainian police in Kiev killed 27 protestors on the Maidan & injured at least 570 (2017), Niger’s first democratic transfer of power with Mohamed Bazoum’s election as president (2021), Narendra Modi declared victory over COVID-19 just two months before India was overwhelmed by a massive second wave (2021), Vladimir Putin recognized Russia-backed separatists in the. Donbas & Luhansk areas of Ukraine (2022) & Colombia’s constitutional court decriminalized abortion (2022) on this day.
 
 
February 22
 
Charles VII of France (1403), George Washington (1732), Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788) Robert Baden-Powell (1857), Olave Baden-Powell (1889), Robin G. Collingwood (1880), Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892), Luis Buñuel (1900), Jean-Bédel Bokassa (1921), Marni Nixon (1929), Ted Kennedy (1932), Christine Keeler (1942), Jonathan Demme (1944), Julie Walters (1950), Miou-Miou (Sylvette Herry) (1950), Steve Irwin (1962) & Drew Barrymore (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Amerigo Vespucci (1512), Catherine Monvoisin (1680), Charles Le Brun (1690), Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen (1797), Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1875), John Jacob Astor III (1890), Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (1913), Hans Scholl & Sophie Scholl (1943), Kasturba Gandhi (1944), Winthrop Rockefeller (1973), Angela Baddeley (1976), Florence Ballard (1976), Oskar Kokoschka (1980), Andy Warhol (1987), David Susskind (1987), Jonas Savimbi (2002), Daniel Pearl (2002), Simone Simon (2005), Wolfgang Sawallisch (2013) & Nanette Fabray (2018) died on this day. Pope Urban VIII consecrated Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s baldacchino in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome (1633), French troops entered Brussels (1746), the Battle of Buena Vista between the US & Mexico began (1847), Oscar Wilde’s play “Lady Windermere’s Fan” premiered in London (1892), Gen. Douglas MacArthur to pull US troops out of the Philippines (1942), Weiße Rose members Hans Scholl & Sophie Scholl executed in Berlin (1943), US chargé d’affaire George Kennan wired an 8,000-word telegram from Moscow to the State Department outlining the doctrine of ‘containment’ that would become US policy toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War (1946), Sukarno surrendered all executive authority to Gen. Haji Mohammad Suharto in a coup d’état establishing his ‘New Order’ dictatorship in Indonesia (1967), end of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (1967), the US hockey team defeated the Soviet team at the XIIIth Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid in the ‘Miracle on the Ice’ (1980), Sinaloa cartel baron Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera captured in Mazatlán (2014) & Donald Trump issued an executive order rescinding Barack Obama’s executive order on transgender identity & public restroom usage (2017) on this day.
 
 
February 23
 
Nicolas Fouquet (1615), Samuel Pepys (1633), Georg Friederich Händel (1685), John Sutter (1803), George Watts (1817), César Ritz (1850), W.E.B. Du Bois (1868), Liang Qichao (1873), Karl Jaspers (1883), Victor Fleming (1889), Erich Kästner (1899), William Shirer (1904), Louis Stokes (1925), Régine Crespin (1926), Sylvia Chase (1938), Peter Fonda (1940), Naruhito, emperor of Japan (1960), Kristin Davis (1965), Michael Dell (1965), Niecy Nash [Carol Denise Ensley] (1970), Aziz Ansari (1983), Emily Blunt (1983) & Dakota Fanning (1994) were born #OnThisDay. Zhezong emperor of China (1100), Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1447), Zhu Qizhen, Yingzong emperor of Ming China (1464), Gentile Bellini (1507), Diego Colón (son of Christopher Columbus) (1526), Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk (1554), Georg Muffat (1704), Stanislaw Leszcynski of Poland (1766), Joshua Reynolds (1792), John Keats (1821), John Quincy Adams (1848), Carl Friedrich Gauss (1855), Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson (1927), Nellie Melba [Helen Mitchell] (1931), Edward Elgar (1934), Stefan Zweig (1942), Tomoyuki Yamashita [Yamashita Tomobumi] (1946), Stan Laurel (1965), José Napoleon Duarte (1990), James Herriot (1995) & Katherine Helmond (2019) died on this day. Diocletian began the Roman persecution of Christians, razing the church at Nicomedia (303), Johannes Gutenberg printed his first Bible (1455), Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s expedition set off from Mexico in search of the 7 cities of Cibola (1540), France initiated its fifth ‘holy war’ against Huguenots (1574), Charles XI became king of Sweden (1660), Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I rescued from a fire in the Hofburg in Vienna (1668), William III proclaimed king of England (1689), Baron von Steuben joined the Continental Army at Valley Forge (1778), Cato Street conspiracy unconvered revealing an attempt to murder the British prime minister & his cabinet ministers (1820), Boston incorporated as a city in Massachusetts (1822), the Battle of the Alamo began (1836), Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, D.C. (1861), Zachary Taylor led US troops against the Mexican army at the Battle of Buena Vista (1847), Mississippi readmitted to the Union (1870), Alabama became the first US state to enact an antitrust law (1883), the Times of London published the world’s first classified ad (1886), the Tootsie Roll introduced by Leo Hirshfield (1896), Émile Zola imprisoned for his “j’accuse” letter accusing the French government of anti-Semitism & wrongly jailing Alfred Dreyfus (1898), Japan imposed a treaty on Korea turning it into a Japanese protectorate (1904), Benito Mussolini founded the Fascist Party in Italy (1919), Leopold III crowned king of Belgium (1934), Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land” (1940), Walt Disney’s animated film “Pinocchio” released (1940), Joseph Stalin ordered the forced deportation of the chechen & Ingush people to Central Asia (1944), US forces defeated Japanese at the Battle of Eniwetok (1944), US Marines raised an American flag on Mt. Suribachi in Iwo Jima, captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Joe Rosenthall (1945), Jonas Salk initiated the first mass polio inoculation in Pittsburgh (1954), Luciano Pavarotti made his debut in “La Traviata” at the Wiener Staatsoper (1963), Milton Obote seized power in a coup d’état in Uganda (1966), the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution adopted regarding presidential succession (1967), Guyana became a republic (1970), Juan Carlos of Spain defeated the ‘Tejerazo’ coup d’état by Lt. Col. Antonio Tejero Molina (1981), Edwin Meese III confirmed by the US Senate as attorney general (1985), military coup d’état in Thailand (1991), Danny Boyle’s film “Trainspotting” opened in the UK & Ireland (1996), scientists in Scotland announced the cloning of Dolly the sheep (1997), Osama bin LAden published a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews & Crusaders (1998), Jason Collins made history to be the first openly gay athlete to play in the NBA (2014), Donald Trump won the Nevada primary & Bernie Sanders won the Nevada Democratic caucuses (2016), Sudan’s dictator president Omar al-Bashir declared a national emergency (2019), Muhammadu Buhari won re-election as president of Nigeria (2019), Ahmaud Arbery murdered by two white supremacists in Georgia (2020), demonstrations in Delhi against India’s new citizenship law enacted by the BJP majority in parliament (2020) on this day.
 
 
February 24
 
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500), Don Juan of Austria (1545), Holy Roman Emperor Matthias (1557), Charles Le Brun (1619), Gen. John Burgoyne (1723), Wilhelm Grimm (1786), Edwin Freiherr von Manteuffel (1809), Georg Leo von Caprivi (1831), Winslow Homer (1836), Arrigo Boito (1842), Chester Nimitz (1885), Abe Vigoda (1921), Michael Harrington (1928), Michel Legrand (1932), Jay Sandrich (1932), Bettino Craxi (1934), Renata Scotto (1934), Barry Bostwick (1944), Steve Jobs (1955), Paula Zahn (1956), Judith Butler (1956) & Eddie Murray (1956) were born #OnThisDay. Æðelbert of Kent (616), François, Duc de Guise (1563), Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1704), Carlo Buonaparte (1785), Robert Fulton (1815), Joshua Chamberlain (1914), Malcolm Forbes (1990), Dinah Shore (1994), Henny Youngman (1998) & Sridevi Kapoor (2018) died on this day. Diocletian issued the first imperial edict ordering the persecution of Christians throughout the Roman Empire (303), St. Francis of Assisi recieved his vocation in Portiuncula at the age of 26 (1208), a Danish victory over Sweden at the Battle at Falköping (1389), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V crushed the French army in the Battle of Pavia, killing 15,000 & capturing François I of France (1525), Ferdinand von Habsburg crowned king of Bohemia (1527), Charles V crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement V (1530), Pope Gregory XIII announced the Gregorian ‘New Style’ calendar (1582), Claudio Monteverdi’s opera “Orfeo” premiered in Mantua (1607), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Rinaldo” premiered at the Haymarket Theatre in London (1711), London’s Drury Lane Theatre burned to the ground, leaving owner Richard Brinsley Sheridan destitute (1804), Agustín de Iturbide & Vicente Guerrero agreed to the Plan of Iguala for Mexico as a constitutional monarchy (1821), Col William Travis issued a call for help on behalf of Texans defending the Alamo in San Antonio (1836), Louis-Philippe abdicated & France was declared a republic (1848), Arizona Territory created (1863), the US House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 to impeach Andrew Johnson (1868), Henrik Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” premiered in Oslo (1876), Fernand de Lesseps’ company began work on Panama Canal (1881), China & Russia signed the Sino Russian Treaty of Ili (1881), Louisville (KY) became the first local government in the US to adopt the secret (‘Australian’) ballot (1888), the American University chartered by an act of the Congress (1893), the Cuban war for independence from Spain began (1895), US ambassador to the UK Walter Page presented with the ‘Zimmerman Telegram’ from Germany promising Mexico restoration of Texas, Arizona & New Mexico in return for its participation in World War I on the Axis side (1917), Estonia’s independence guaranteed by a peace treaty (1920), Mohandas Gandhi released from jail (1924), the League of Nations demanded that Japan withdraw from Manchuria (1933), Argentina’s minister of war Juan Domingo Perón led a coup d’état (1944), Manila liberated from Japanese occupation (1945), Juan Domingo Perón elected president of Argentina (1946), Israel & Egypt signed an armistice agreement (1949), the Labour Party won a British parliamentary election by five seats (1950), Cole Porter’s last musical “Silk Stockings” opened on Broadway (1955), Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana ousted as president in a coup d’état (1966), north Vietnam ended the Tet Offensive (1968), “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” starring Maggie Smith premiered in London (1969), Jimmy Carter announced that US foreign aid would take human rights into consideration (1977), war broke out between North & South Yemen (1979), Prince Charles announced his engagement to Lady Diana Spencer (1981), the US Supreme Court voted 8-0 to overturn the $200,000 settlement awarde to Rev. Jerry Falwell for a parody in “Hustler” magazine (1988), the US-led Gulf War ground offensive against the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait began (1991), Elton John knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in London (1998), “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” won for best film, & Peter Jackson won for best director 55th British Film & Television Awards (BAFTAs) (2002), “No Country for Old Men”, Daniel Day-Lewis & Marion Cotillard won Oscars at the 80th Academy Awards ceremony (2008), “Green Book” (best film), Alfonso Cuarón (best director), Rami Malek (best actor) & Olivia Colman (best actress) won Oscars at the 91st Academy Awards: Best Picture at the 91st Academy Awards ceremony (2019), Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape (2020), Donald Trump began a visit to India to meet prime minister Narendra Modi (2020), Zahir Zakir Jaffer sentenced to death in Islamabad for the rape, murder & beheading of Noor Muqaddam after she refused to marry him, highlighting violence towards women in Pakistan (2022) & Russia began its invasion of Ukraine before dawn (2022) on this day.
 
 
February 25
 
Carlo Goldoni (1707), René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou (1714), Armand-Louis Couperin (1727), José de San Martín (1778), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841), Benedetto Croce (1866), Enrico Caruso (1873), John Foster Dulles (1888), Myra Hess (1890), Meher Baba (1894), Herbert Manfred ‘Zeppo’ Marx (1901), Millicent Fenwick (1910), Jim Backus (1913), Anthony Burgess (1917), Bobby Riggs (1918), Sun-myung Moon (1920), Sally Jessy Raphael (1935), Bob Schieffer (1937), Tom Courtenay (1937), George Harrison (1943), Néstor Kirchner (1950), Carrot Top [Scott Thompson] (1965), Téa Leoni (1966), Sean Astin (1971), Julio Iglesias, Jr. (1973) & Chelsea Handler (1975) were born #OnThisDay. St. Walburga (779), Dafydd ap Llywelyn, king of Gwynedd (1246), Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1601), Albrecht von Wallenstein (1634), Friedrich (Frederick) I of Prussia (1713), Sir Christopher Wren (1723), Daoguang, 8th Qing emperor of China (1850), Thomas Moore (1852), John Tenniel (1914), Mark Rothko [Marcus Rothkovich] (1970), Elijah Muhammad [Elijah Robert Poole] (1975), Tennessee Williams (1983), James Coco (1987), Baruch Goldstein (1994), Maurice André (2012), C. Everett Koop (2013) & Hosni Mubarak (2020) died on this day. Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius as his successor (138), Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth Tudor (1570), Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex executed for treason (1601), Irish captain Walter Devereaux killed Albrecht von Wallenstein on the orders of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (1634), more than 100 principalities abolished in a major internal reorganization of the Holy Roman Empire — reducing the number of its principalities from nearly 300 to just 39 in the ‘deutsche Mediatisierung’ (German mediatization & secularization) authorized by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluß (Final Recess of the Imperial Deputation) (1803), (1828), John Adams (son of John Quincy Adams) married his first cousin, Abigail Smith (1828), Victor Hugo’s play “Hernani” premiered in Paris (1830), Samuel Colt patented the first multi-shot revolving-cylinder revolver (1836), P. T. Barnum exhibited African American slave Joice Heth, claiming she was the 161 year-old nursemaid to George Washington (1836), Hiram R. Revels sworn in as the first African American member of Congress as a Republican US Senator from Mississippi (1870), J M Synge’s “Riders to the Sea” premiered at the Irish National Theater Society (1904), the US declared the Dominican Republic a protectorate (1907), Marie-Adélaïde, the eldest of six daughters of Guillaume IV, became the first reigning Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (1912), the 16th Amendment to the Constitution provided the legal basis for the progressive income tax (1913), the Living Buddha Hutuktu crowned king of Mongolia as the country declares independence from China (1921), Francisco Franco became Spain’s youngest general at 33 (1926), Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler obtained German citizenship (1932), Turkey declared war on Germany (1945), Communists seized control of Czechoslovakian government and Klement Gottwald became prime minister (1948), Gamal Abdel Nasser appointed prime minister of Egypt (1954), Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1956), Congress enacted the Legal Tender Act authorizing the US government to use paper currency to pay its debts in lieu of gold or silver, helping to fund the Union war effort in the Civil War (1862), Cassius Clay (a.k.a., Muhammad Ali) became the world heavyweight boxing champion (1964), Stephen Sondheim’s musical “A Little Night Music” premieres at Shubert Theatre in Manhattan (1973), the British political comedy “Yes Minister” — written by Antony Jay & Jonathan Lynn & starring Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne & Derek Fowlds — premiered on BBC2 (1980), Corazon Aquino became president of the Philippines as the dictator Ferdinand Marcos fled the country (1986), the Republic of Korea adopted the first fully democratic constitution in South Korea’s history (1988), Nicaraguans voted out the Sandinistas (1990), Israeli extremist Baruch Goldstein massacred 30 Palestinians in illegally occupied Hebron (1994), “Gladiator” won for best film & Ang Lee won for best director at the 54th British Film & Television Awards (BAFTAs) (2001), Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” opened in the US (2004), “The Departed” (best film), Forest Whitaker (best actor) & Helen Mirren (best actress) won Oscars at the 79th Academy Awards ceremony (2007), in the Irish general election, the Fianna Fáil-led government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government since the formation of the Irish state in 1921 (2011), French fashion house Christian Dior suspended its chief designer John Galliano after he was arrested for an anti-Semitic verbal attack in Paris (2011), the Syrian army killed 100 civilians in artillery shelling of Homs and Hama (2012) Al-Qaeda suicide bombing killed at least 26 people in Mukalla (Yemen) (2012), Raúl Castro announced he would not seek another term as president of Cuba in 2018 (2013), Tom Perez elected chair of the Democratic National Committee (2017), Norway won a record 39 medlas (19 gold) at the Pyeongchang XXIII Winter Olympic Games (2018) & Xi Jinping faced skepticism over his claim that China had eradicated extreme poverty (2021).
 
 
February 26
 
Holy Roman Emperor Wenceslas of Bohemia (1361), Christopher Marlowe (baptized) (1564), Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671), Victor Hugo (1802), Honoré Daumier (1808), Nathan Kelley (1808), Levi Strauss (1829), Alexander III of Russia (1845), William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (1846), Herbert Henry Dow (1866), Frank Bridge (1879), Jean Negulesco (1900), John Herbert ‘Jackie’ Gleason (1916), Robert Taft, Jr. (1917), Tony Randall [Leonard Rosenberg] (1920), Noboru Takeshita (1924), Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino (1928), Ariel Sharon (1928), Monique Leyrac (1928), Aldonis Kalniņš (1928), Anatoli Vassilyevich Filipchenko (1928), Robert Novak (a.k.a., ‘the Prince of Darkness’) (1931), Johnny Cash (1932), Emma Kirkby (1949), Elizabeth George (1949), Helen Clark (1950), Michal Bolton [Bolotin] (1953), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954), Michel Houellebecq (1958), Tim Kaine (1958), Wang Dan (1969), Erykah Badu [Erica Abi Wright] (1971) & John Tartaglia (1978) were born #OnThisDay. Roger Mortimer, 2nd Earl of March (1360), Eric XIV of Sweden (1577), Princess Alexandra, 2nd Duchess of Fife (1959), Mohammed V of Morocco (1961), Jimmie Lee Jackson (1965), Karl Jaspers (1969), Eugene Fodor (2011), Theodore Hesburgh (2015) & Nexhmije Hoxha (2020) died on this day. Valentinian I proclaimed Roman emperor (364), English Catholic priest William Sawtrey convcited of heresy (Lollardy) (1401), the Roman Inquisition demanded that Galileo Galilei recant (1616), the Bank of England issued its first £1 note (1797), Napoléon Bonaparte left Elba to begin ‘Les Cents Jours’ (1815), Russia’s Tsar Nicholas I revoked the Polish constitution (1832), the Seconde République Française (2nd French Republic) proclaimed (1848), Abraham Lincoln signed the National Currency Act into law (1863), the New York state legislature established the New York City Metropolitan Board of Health (1866), Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 4 (‘Tragic’) premiered in Vienna (1869), the Berlin Conference recognized Léopold II of Belgium’s control of the Congo & British control of Nigeria (1885), Henrik Ibsen’s play “Hedda Gabler” premiered in Oslo (1891), Ottoman Turkey recognized Austria’s annexation of Bosnia & Herzegovina in exchange for compensation (1909), Russian troops seized the Persian city of Kermansjah (1916), Woodrow Wilson informed of the Zimmermann Telegram (1917), Russian army mutiny in response to Nicholas II’s orders to quell civil unrest in Petrograd (1917), Woodrow Wilson designated the Grand Canyon a national park (1919), Adolf Hitler went on trial for treason in organizing the Beer Hall Putsch failed coup d’état in Munich (1924), Calvin Coolidge designated Grand Teton a national park (1929), Adolf Hitler authorized the creation of the Third Reich’s Luftwaffe (1935), Adolf Hitler introduced Ferdinand Porsche’s ‘Volkswagen’ (1936), military coup d’état in Japan (1936), Werner Heisenberg gave a lecture on nuclear fission for Nazi officials (1942), Winston Churchill announced Britain’s atomic bomb (1952), Allen Dulles appointed the fifth director of the CIA (1953), the US Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public transportation unconstitutional (1962), mass graves discovered in Hue after 2,800 South Vietnamese civilians were massacred by North Vietnamese troops during the Tet Offensive (1968), Desi Bouterse instigated a military coup d’état in Surinam (1980), Egypt & Israel exchanged ambassadors for the first time (1980), Rev. Jesse Jackson acknowledged his ‘Hymies in Hymietown’ comment (1984), the last US Marines left Beirut (1984), Sandinistas defeated in Nicaragua’s parliamentary elections (1990), US & coalition forces bombed Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait, creating the ‘Highway of Death’ (1991), the World Trade Center bombed in Manhattan (1993), Texas cattlemen lost their defamation suit against Oprah Winfrey (1998), George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin (2012), Seth Rogen testified about Alzheimer’s disease before the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services (2014), “Moonlight” won the Academy Award for best film at the 89th Academy Awards ceremony after “LaLa Land” was mistakenly declared the winner in the biggest mix-up in the history of the Oscars (2017), the city of Venice introduced a day tax on visitors (2019) & Amnesty International issued a report on Eritrean crimes against humanity committed in an attack on the Ethiopian city of Aksum 28-29 November (2021) on this day.
 
 
February 27
 
Constantine the Great (272), Lord George Bentinck [William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck] (1802), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807), Hubert Parry (1848), Hugo Black (1886), Lotte Lehmann (1888), William Demarest (1892), Marian Anderson (1897), John Steinbeck (1902), Michael Fox (1921), Joanne Woodward (1930), Elizabeth Taylor (1932), Ralph Nader (1934), Mirella Freni (1935), Paddy Ashdown (1941), Charlayne Hunter-Gault (1942), Timothy Spall (1957), Chelsea Clinton (1980) & Josh Groban (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Louis Vuitton (1892), Ivan Pavlov (1936), Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (1985), S.I. Hayakawa (1992), Harold Acton (1994), Spike Milligan (2002), Fred Rogers (2003), Otis Chandler (2006), William F. Buckley, Jr. (2008), Van Cliburn (2013), Leonard Nimoy (2015), Boris Nemtsov (2015), & George Kennedy (2016) died on this day. Sachsen (Saxony) & Hessen (Hesse) formed the Protestant Torgauer Bund (League of Torgau) to oppose Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s Edict of Worms (1526), Protestant princes formed the Schmalkaldischer Bund (Schmalkaldic League) (1531) to defend Luthernism against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1531), the first Russian embassy arrived in London (1557), Henri IV crowned king of France (1594), Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I expelled Jews from Austria (1670), Ludwig van Beethoven’s 8th Symphony in F premiered in Vienna (1814), first Mardi Gras in New Orleans (1827), Robert Schumann saved from a suicide attempt in Rhine River (1854), Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Cooper Union in Manhattan helped propelled him to the White House (1860), Mathew Brady photographed Abraham Lincoln for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar (1860), John Menard became the first African American to give a speech to Congress in the US Capitol (1869), Charlotte Ray graduated from Howard University, becoming the first African American female lawyer in the US (1872), the Dominican Republic declared its independence from Spain (1844), the first Union prisoners of war arrived at the Confederate prison in Andersonville (1864), Sigmund Freud & Carl Jung met for the first time in Vienna (1907), the International Working Union of Socialist Parties founded in Vienna (1921), Fascists incited a riot in Florence (1921), Reichstag fire (1933), Britain & France recognized Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in Spain (1939), “Rebecca”, James Stewart & Ginger Rogers won Academy Awards at the 13th Academy Awards ceremony (1941), Rosenßtrasse protest in Berlin (1943), Chaim Weizmann became the first president of the state of Israel (1949), Gen. Chiang Kai-shek elected president of the Republic of China on Taiwan (1950), Mao Zedong’s famous speech to the Supreme State Conference “On Correct Handling of Contradictions Among People” expounding Maoist ideals (1950), Ngô Đình Diệm’s palace bombed by dissident air pilots in a failed assassination attempt against South Vietnam’s president (1962), Italy’s government solicited suggestions on how to prevent the Leaning Tower of Pisa from collapsing (1964), CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite delivered a scathing editorial on America’s chances of winning the Vietnam War (1968), Hafez al-Assad seized power in a coup d’état in Syria (1969), Shanghai Communiqué issued by Richard Nixon & Zhou Enlai (1972), American Indian Movement members occupied Wounded Knee in South Dakota (1973), final meeting between Richard Nixon & Mao Zedong (1976), Donald Regan resigned as White House chief of staff (1987), Britain’s House of Lords ended male primogeniture, agreeing to end 1,000 years of male precedence by giving a monarch’s first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as any first born son (1998), Olusegun Obasanjo became Nigeria’s first elected president since 1983 (1999), “The King’s Speech” (best film) & Colin Firth (best actor) & Natalie Portman (best actress) won Academy Awards at the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony (2011), Pope Benedict XVI gave his farewell address to the Vatican City (2013), Arseniy Yatsenyuk appointed Ukraine’s prime minister (2014), Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a ‘religious freedom’ bill that would have allowed businesses to turn away gay customers (2014), Russian politician Boris Nemtsov assassinated in Moscow (2015), second summit between Donald Trump & Kim Jong-un in Hanoi (2019), Luke Perry suffered a stroke in LA (2019), Dow Jones Index suffered its biggest points fall in history, closing down 1,190.95 in New York amid concerns about COVID-19 (2020), Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine approved in the US (2021).
 
 
February 28
 
Margaret of Scotland, queen of Norway (1261), Michel de Montaigne (1533), Jost Bürgi [Jobst Bürg] (1552), René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683), Alexei, tsarevich of Russia (1690), Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm (1712), John Tenniel (1820), Geraldine Farrar (1882), Vaslav Nijinsky (1890), Linus Pauling (1901), Vincente Minnelli (1903), Stephen Spender (1909), Clara Petacci (1912), Charles Durning (1923), Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926), Frank Gehry (1929), Gavin MacLeod [Allan See] (1931), Tommy Tune (1939), Mario Andretti (1940), Paul Krugman (1953) & Gilbert Gottfried (1955) were born #OnThisDay. Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor (1525), Christian IV (1648), Henry James (1916), Friedrich Ebert (1925), Alfonso XIII of Spain (1941), Maxwell Anderson (1959), Henry Luce (1967), Mr. Ed (the talking horse) (1979), Olof Palme (1986), Aisin Gioro Pu Chieh (brother Pu Yi, the last emperor of China) (1994), Arthur M. Schlesinger (2007), Paul Harvey (2009), Annie Girardot (2011), Jane Russell (2011) & André Previn [Andreas Priwin] (2019) died on this day. Liu Bang’s coronation as the Gaozu Emperor initiated four centuries of Han dynasty rule over China (202 BCE), Valentinian I became Roman emperor (364), Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec Emperor, was tortured & murdered by (1215), Magnus Stenbock’s Swedish forces defeated Jørgen Rantzau’s invading Danish army at the Battle of Helsingborg (1710), Henry Fielding’s novel “Tom Jones” was published (1749), John Wesley chartered the first Methodist Church in the US (1784), French Gen. Charles Pichegru arrested for organizing the Pichegru Conspiracy to overthrow Napoléon (1804), the first public performance of Franz Schubert’s song “Schäfers Klageleid” (1819), Dr. Elias Lönnrot published the Finnish epic poem the Kalevala (1835), Sweden’s prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated while walking home (1986), the University of Utah opened in Salt Lake City (1850), the Republican Party founded in a school house in Ripon (1854), the Arkansas state legislature enacted a law requiring free African Americans to choose exile or slavery (1859), France ousted Madagascar’s Queen Ranavalona (1896), Maurice Ravel’s orchestral suite “Le tombeau de Couperin” premiered in Paris (1920), on Adolf Hitler’s advice, Paul von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree eliminating civil liberties in Germany & outlawing the German Communist Party (KPD) (1933), Chiang Kai-shek killed 28,000 Taiwanese in the Feb. 28 Massacre suppressing a popular uprising in Taiwan (1947), James Watson & Francis Crick took credit for Rosalind Franklin’s discovery of DNA while conspiring to obscure their use of her work for which they received a Nobel Prize (1953), John F. Kennedy appointed Henry Kissinger a special advisor (1961), Congress created the Colorado Territory (1861), a West German court rules that impostor Anna Anderson failed to prove that she was missing Russian duchess Anastasia Romanov, ending a legal case that lasted almost 30 years (1967), Richard Nixon concluded his week-long visit to China (1972), Spain withdrew from Western Sahara, leaving Ceuta & Melilla (Spanish Morocco) as the last European possessions in Africa (1976), J. Paul Getty left a $1.2 billion bequest to the museum he created (1982), CBS aired the final episode of “M*A*S*H”, a 2-hour special directed by series star Alan Alda titled “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” to a record audience of 125 million (1983), the British satirical puppet show “Spitting Image” premiered on ITV (1984), Saddam Hussein ended the Gulf War by accepting a ceasefire following Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait (1991), the US Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) raided the Branch Davidian compound in Waco (1993), the Brady Law came into effect (1994), US fighter planes shot down four Serbian war planes in the first NATO’s military action in the alliance’s history (1994), Serbian police began the offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army in the Kosovo War (1998), former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra arrested on corruption charges upon returning to Thailand from exile (2008), Pope Benedict XVI resigned as pope (2013), Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to invade the Crimea (2014), the lost Caravaggio painting “Judith & Holofernes” (1607) announced rediscovered in a Toulouse attic in 2014 to be auctioned worth $171 million (2019), Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un ended without any agreement (2019), Myanmar security forces opened fire on protests around the country, killing at least 18 in the bloodiest day since the military coup (2019), Chadwick Boseman was posthumously awarded a Golden Globe for best actor (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 1
 
Martial (40), Sandro Botticelli (1445), Wladyslaw Jagiello, king of Bohemia & Hungary (1456), Albrecht V von Wittelsbach, duke of Bavaria (1528), Caroline von Brandenburg-Ansbach, wife of Georg II & queen of England (1683), Fryderyk Franciszek (Frédéric François) Chopin (1810), Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848), Lytton Strachey (1880), Oskar Kokoschka (1886), Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896), Glenn Miller (1904), David Niven (1910), Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914), (Fannye) Dinah Shore (1917), Terrence Cardinal Cooke, archbishop of New York (1921), Yitzhak Rabin (1922), Harry Belafonte [Harold George Ballanfanti, Jr.] (1927), John Breaux (1944), Roger Daltrey (1944), Dirk Benedict (1945), Alan Thicke (1947), Zoia Ceauşescu (1949), Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (1954), Javier Bardem (1969), Lupita Nyongo (1983) & Justin Bieber (1994) were born #OnThisDay. David (patron saint of Wales) (589), Lothair, king of the West Franks (986), Stephen II of Hungary (1131), Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II (1792), Francisco Solano López (1870), Gabriele d’Annunzio (1938) & Jack Welch (2020) died on this day. Romulus (the first king of Rome) celebrated the first Roman triumph after his victory over the Caeninenses following the Rape of the Sabine Women (752 BCE), Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, conquered Damascus (1260), François de Guises’ troops fired on a Huguenot congregation in Vassy — the first event in the Wars of Religion that would tear France apart (1562), Estácio de Sá founded the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil (1565), Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, & Tituba arrested for witchcraft in Massachusetts, initiating the Salem witch hunt (1692), the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation (1781), presidential succession act enacted by Congress (1785), Congress authorized the first US Census (1790), Ohio became the 17th state (1803), John Tyler signed a resolution annexing the Republic of Texas (1845), Howard University chartered in Washington, D.C. (1867), Ulysses Grant signed a bill into law creating Yellowstone, the first national park (1872), “A Study in Scarlet” by Arthur Conan Doyle — the first Sherlock Holmes story — published (1890), 80,000 Ethiopians defeated 20,000 Italians at the Battle of Adwa in Ethiopia (1896), the Zimmermann Telegram published in the US (1917), Russian sailors revolted in Kronstadt (1921), Charles & Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s baby kidnapped (found dead May 12) (1932), Henry Pu Yi crowned the Kangde emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (1934), the Bank of England nationalized 252 years after its establishment (1946), the International Monetary Fund began operation (1947), Joseph Stalin suffered a stroke & collapsed (dying four days later) (1953), Israel killed 48 in an assault on Gaza (1955), cellist Jacqueline du Pré’s debut at the Wigmore Hall in London (1961), John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps (1961), the Ba’ath Party seized power in Syria (1966), the Soviet probe Venera 3 crashed into Venus (1966), Dominica & St. Lucia gain independence from Britain (1967), US House of Representatives voted 307-116 to expel Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1967), Queen Elizabeth Hall in London’s South Bank Centre opened (1967), Bruno Kreisky led the Social Democratic Party to victory in Austria’s parliamentary elections (1970), Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” released (1973), seven of Richard Nixon’s aides indicted by the Watergate grand jury (1974), Terry Nichols convicted of state murder charges & being an accomplice to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (2004), Barack Obama warned Vladimir Putin about involvement in Ukraine (2014), Hillary Clinton & Donald Trump swept the Super Tuesday primaries (2016), Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the presidential race (2020) the first known COVID-19 case in New York identified (2020) & Nicholas Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in France for bribery (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 2
 
Robert II of Scotland (1316), Camille Desmoulins (1760), DeWitt Clinton (1769), Sam Houston (1793), [Friedrich] Bedřich Smetana (1824), Carl Schurz (1829), Théophile Ysaÿe (1865), Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) (1876), Kurt Weill (1900), Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) (1904), Dezi Arnaz (1917), Mikhail Gorbachev (1931), Porky the Pig (1935), Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1937), Lou Reed (1942), Karen Carpenter (1950), Jon Bon Jovi (1962) & Daniel Craig (1968) were born #OnThisDay. Lothair, king of the Franks (855), John Wesley (1791), Berthe Morisot (1895), D.H. Lawrence (1930) & Howard Carter (1939) died on this day. Charles I dissolved England’s parliament & jailed 9 MPs (1629), The Loves of Mars and Venus becomes the first ballet performed in England (1717), Napoléon Bonaparte appointed commander-in-chief of the French army in Italy (1796), Congress banned the slave trade within the US (1807), Arkansas Territory organized (1819), Texas declared its independence from Mexico (1836), the University of Illinois opened (1868), Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election by 185-184 (1877), Queen Victoria narrowly escaped assassination (1882), Alexander II became tsar of Russia (1855), William McKinley signed the bill into law creating Mt. Rainier National Park (1899), the Martha Washington Hotel for women opened in NYC (1803), Vladimir Jabotinsky formed a Jewish militia in Palestine (1915), Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act into law granting Puerto Ricans citizenship (1917), “King Kong” premiered in NYC (1933), the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (1943), “Casablanca” won the Academy Award for best film (1944), Ho Chi Minh elected president of North Vietnam (1946), Morocco declared independence from France (1956), “The Sound of Music” was released (1965), Sen. Robert F. Kennedy proposed a plan to end the Vietnam War (1967), Soviet & Chinese forces fired on each other at a border outpost on the Ussuri River (1969), Jean-Bédel Bokassa appointed himself president for life of Central African Republic (1972), Pioneer 10 launched to Jupiter (1972), a grand jury named Richard Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator in the Watergate cover-up (1974), Charlie Chaplin’s corpse stolen from a cemetery in Switzerland (1978), Greyhound Bus strike (1990), Augusto Pinochet left the UK for Chile after being informed by British home secretary Jack Straw that he wouldn’t be extradited to Spain (2000), Operation Anaconda as part of the US invasion of Afghanistan (2002), police killed 8 protesters in Yerevan demonstrating against the Armenian presidential election (2008), “12 Years a Slave,” Matthew McConaughey & Cate Blanchett won Academy Awards at the 86th Academy Awards ceremony (2014), Russia’s parliament approved Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Crimea (2014), US attorney general Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation of Donald Trump’s campaign (2017), Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the Democratic presidential race & endorsed Joe Biden (2020), Vladimir Putin proposed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage (2020), six Dr. Seuss withdrawn by Dr. Seuss Enterprises for their racist & insensitive imagery (2021) & Dolly Parton received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on this day.
 
 
March 3
 
Reginald Cardinal Pole (1500), Gyula Andrássy, Sr., prime minister of Hungary (1832), George Pullman (1831), Alexander Graham Bell (1847), Charles [Carlo] Ponzi (1882), Matthew Ridgway (1895), Jean Harlow [Harlean Harlow Carpenter] (1911), Lee Radziwill Ross (1933), Miranda Richardson (1958), Jackie Joyner-Kersee (1962), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (1965) & Camila Cabello [Karla Camila Cabello Estrabao] (1997) were born #OnThisDay. Vladimir III Rurikovich, Grand Prince of Kiev (1239), Johann Friedrich the Generous, Elector of Saxony & head of the Schmalkaldic League (1554), Robert Hooke (1703), Aurangzeb, 6th Mughal emperor (1707), Robert Adam (1792), Lou Costello (1959), Paul Wittgenstein (1961), Hergé [Georges Prosper Remi] (1983), Marguerite Dura (1996), Fred Friendly (1998), Giuseppe di Stefano (3008), Michael Foot (2010), René Préval (2017) & Roger Bannister (2018) died on this day. Andrea Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico inaugurated in Vicenza (1585), premiere of Joseph Haydn’s 101st Symphony in D (1794), Congress passed the Missouri Compromise (1820), premiere of Felix Mendelssohn’s 3rd (‘Scottish’) Symphony (1842), Congress overrode John Tyler’s veto — the first Congressional override of a presidential veto in US history (1845), Florida admitted as the 27th state (1845), Minnesota Territory organized (1849), Alexander II signed the Emancipation Manifesto freeing Russia’s serfs (1861), Abraham Lincoln approved the charter of the National Academy of Sciences (1863), Idaho Territory organized (1863), Congress enacted a conscription law instituting the first wartime draft in US history (1863), Abraham Lincoln established the US Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands established to help destitute freed African Americans (1865), the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation opened (1865), Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen” premiered at the Opéra Comique in Paris (1875), Rutherford B. Yahes inaugurated as the 19th US president in a private ceremony (1977), Bulgaria liberated from Ottoman Turkey in the Peace of San Stefano (1878), the US Geological Survey created by Congress (1879), American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) incorporated (1885), Anne Sullivan began teaching six-year-old Helen Keller (1887), Tsar Nicholas II agreed to significant concessions in response to the first Russian Revolution (1905), Ida B. Wells insisted on marching with the Illinois delegation through Washington, D.C. despite African American women being told by organizers Alice Paul & Lucy Burns to march in a separate section (1913), D.W. Griffith’s film “The Birth of a Nation” opened in Manhattan (1915), Congress enacted the first excess profits tax on US corporations (1917), German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann confirmed the authenticity of the ‘Zimmermann Telegramm’ which generated support for the US declaration of war on Germany in April (1917), Bolsheviks forced to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany & Austria (1918), the Senate rejected US membership of the International Court of Justice in the Hague (1923), Herbert Hoover signed a bill into law making “The Star-Spangled Banner” the official US national anthem (1931), Cab Calloway recorded “Minnie the Moocher” (the first million record jazz music seller) (1931), Mount Rushmore dedicated (1933), 173 killed in the Bethnal Green Underground station disaster during an air raid in London (1943), Finland declared war on Nazi Germany (1945), “Heartbreak Hotel” became Elvis Presley’s first hit to make it to Billboard’s top 10 (1956), Morocco gained independence from France (1956), Hassan II became king of Morocco (1961), Winnie Mandela sentenced to a year in prison in South Africa (1971), Stone Mountain sculpture of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson completed in Georgia (1972), Linda McCartney charged with possession of marijuana in the US (1975), Pierre Elliott Trudeau sworn in for the second time as prime minister of Canada (1980), “Moonlighting” with Cybill Shepard & Bruce Willis premiered on ABC (1985), Robert McFarlane got a $20,000 fine & two years probation for his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair (1989), Los Angeles police severely beat Rodney King (1991), Switzerland voted to lower the voting age from 20 to 18 (1991), George H.W. Bush apologized for breaking his promise not to raise taxes (1992), the Republic of Bosnia & Herzegovina established (1992), Joe Biden won nine states & Bernie Sanders won four in Democratic presidential primaries on Super Tuesday (2020) & Sarah Everard was raped & murdered by a British policeman after being arrested in London under false pretenses (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 4
 
Blanche of Castile (1188), Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1394), Antonio Vivaldi (1678), Knute Rockne (1888), Eleanor ‘Sis’ Daley (1907), Harry Helmsley (1909), Giorgio Bassani (1916), Joan Greenwood (1921), Richard DeVos (1926), Bernard Haitink (1929), Alice Rivlin (1931), Leslie Gelb (1937), Paula Prentiss [Ragusa] (1938), Rick Perry (1950), François Fillon (1954), Jim Dwyer (1957), Patricia Heaton (1958), Chaz [née Chastity Sun] Bono (1969), Jazmin Grace Grimaldi of Monaco (1992) & Bobby Kristina Brown (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Stephan III of Hungary (1172), Saladin (1193), Louis III, Prince de Condé & Duc de Bourbon (1710), Jean-François Champollion (1832), Nikolai Gogol (1852), Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1858), Alexander H. Stephens (1883), Franz Marc (1916), William Carlos Williams (1963), Ding Ling (1986), Nicholas Ridley (1993), John Candy (1994), Minnie Pearl [Sarah Ophelia Colley] (1996), Harry Blackmun (1999), Harold Stassen (2001), Thomas Eagleton (2007), Luke Perry (2019) & Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (2020) died on this day. Friedrich Barbarossa elected Holy Roman Emperor (1152), Mongol forces of Batu Khan defeated Russians under Yuri II of Vladimir-Suzdal near Yaroslavl (1238), Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila) crowned king of Poland (1386), Edward Plantagenet laid claim to the throne of England as Edward IV in London (1461), James IV of Scotland concluded an alliance with France against England (1492), Anne Boleyn made her debut at the English court at the Green Castle pageant (1522), Jakarta renamed ‘Batavia’ by the Dutch (1621), Charles I of England granted a royal charter to the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628), Charles II of England declared war on the Netherlands (1665), Quaker William Penn received a charter from Charles II of England for Pennsylvania (1681), Jews expelled from Lübeck (1699), first sighting of the Orion nebula by William Herschel (1774), the first US Congress met & declared the Constitution in effect (1789), France divided into 83 départements & the old provinces abolished (1970), Vermont admitted as the 14th state (1791), George Washington’s second inauguration as president of the United States (133 word speech), John Adams inaugurated as the second president of the United States (1797), Andrew Jackson’s inaugural open house at the White House turned into an embarrassing chaotic brawl (1829), Vincenzo Bellini’s opera “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” premiered at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice (1830), Chicago incorporated as a city (1837), William Henry Harrison gave the longest US presidential inauguration speech (8,443) before serving the shortest term as president (1841), Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration (1861), Idaho Territory created (1863), the Confederate Congress approved the official Confederate flag (1865), John Wilkes Booth attended Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration (1865), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake” had its world premiere with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow (1877), Gustav Mahler conducts the premiere of his incomplete 2nd Symphony (‘Resurrection’) in Berlin, Germany, with the Berlin Philharmonic (1895), the first cases of ‘Spanish flu’ reported at a US Army hospital in Kansas (1918), Finland declared war on Nazi Germany (1945), Princess Elizabeth joined the British Auxiliary Transport Service as a driver (1945), the United Nations Security Council recommended UN membership for Israel (1949), Ernest Hemingway finished writing “The Old Man & the Sea,” which would go on to win the 1953 Pulitzer Prize (1952), Ronald Reagan & Nancy Davis married (1952), Lucille Ball & Dezi Arnaz divorced (1960), John Lennon provoked a media frenzy by saying that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus” (1966), Harold Wilson replaced Edward Heath as British prime minister (1974), Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) came to power (1980), the Louvre pyramid designed by I. M. Pei inaugurated by François Mitterrand in Paris (1989), John Candy died of a sudden heart attack (1994), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also applied when both parties are the same sex (1998), Danish golfer Mianne Bagger became the first openly transgendered athlete to compete in a professional golf tournament when she played the Women’s Australian Open (2004), Martha Stewart released from prison after serving five months for perjury in an insider trading case (2005), the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes & crimes against humanity in Darfur — the first sitting head of state to be indicted (2009), Vladimir Putin won the presidential election in Russia amidst allegations of widespread voter fraud (2012), the College of Cardinals met to select the successor to retiring Pope Benedict XVI (2013), Ben Carson dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination (2016), Gary Oldman won an Academy Award for best actor for “Finest Hour” (2018), Sergei Skripal & his daughter Yulia Skripal poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury on the orders of Vladimir Putin (2018), Jane Philpott resigned from Justin Trudeau’s government to protest his complicity in the scandal involving bribes from SNC-Lavalin (2019), Michael Bloomberg dropped out of the Democratic presidential race after winning just one delegate in the Super Tuesday primaries (2020), World Weather Attribution published a study confirming that human-caused climate changed made the 2020 Australian bushfire season much worse (2020), Moscow’s ‘once in a century’ winter was the hottest in 140 years with an average temperature 7.5 C (13.5 F) with virtually no snow (2020) on this day.
 
 
 
March 5
 
Henry II of England (1133), David II of Scotland (1324), Louis I (‘the Great’) of Hungary & Poland (1326), Gerardus Mercator (1512), Johann Georg I, Kurfürst von Sachsen (Elector of Saxony) (1585), Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (1658), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696), Frank Norris (1870), Rosa Luxemburg (18871), Sir William Beveridge (1879), Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887), Soong Mei-ling [Madame Chiang Kai-shek] (1897), Zhou Enlai (1898), Rex Harrison (1908), Momofuku Ando (1910), Dean Stockwell (1936), Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ (1937), Felipe González (1942), Elaine Paige (1948), Eugene Fodor (1950), Russell Feingold (1953), Andy Gibb (1958), Aasif Mandvi [Mandviwala] (1966) & Feng Congde (1966) were born #OnThisDay. Crispus Attucks (1770), Joseph Stalin (1953), Sergei Prokofiev (1953), Herman J. Mankiewicz (1953), Patsy Cline [Virginia Henlsely] (1963), Mohammad Mosaddegh (1967), Yip Harburg [Isidore Hochberg] (1981), John Belushi (1982), Tito Gobbi (1984), William Powell (1984), Hugo Chávez (2013), Nikolaus Harnoncourt (2016) & Kurt Moll (2017) died on this day. Roman Emperor Julian left Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire in a campaign that would lead to his own death (363), Henry VII of England granted John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) a commission to explore North America (1496), “De Revolutionibus” by Nicolaus Copernicus placed on the Roman Catholic Church’s banned books index (1616), Gustavus Adolphus led his Swedish army to victory over the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III’s forces at the Battle of Jankau in Bohemia (1645), the first American production of a play by William Shakespeare — “Richard III” in Manhattan (1750), Don Antonio de Ulloa of Spain took possession of the Louisiana Territory from France as its first Spanish governor (1766), African American Crispus Attucks & four others killed by British soldiers on King Street in the Boston Massacre (1770), Ludwig van Beethoven’s 4th Symphony in B premiered in Vienna (1807), Britain declared war on Burma, initiating the First Burmese War (1824), Charlotte Brontë wrote to the Reverend Henry Nussey to decline his offer of marriage (1839), Heinrich Steinweg founded Steinway & Sons in New York (1853), the Royal Opera House destroyed in a fire in London’s Covent Garden (1856), abolitionists established Crispus Attucks Day in Boston (1858), Parma, Tuscany, Modena & Romagna vote in referendums to join the Kingdom of Sardinia (1860), Arrigo Boito’s opera “Mefistofele” premiered in Milan (1868), Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial began in the US Senate (1868), Winston Churchill gave his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in Missouri (1946), ‘Guerrillero Heroico’ photo of Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda in Havana (1960), the graves of Nicholas II of Russia & the tsar’s family were found in St. Petersburg (1995), “The Osbournes” premiered on MTV (2002), the “Planet Earth” documentary narrated by David Attenborough premiered on the BBC (2006), Nicolás Maduro assumes the presidency after the death of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (2013), Bugatti announced the most expensive new car ever made — the La Voiture Noire costing €16.7 million (almost $19 million) — of which only one will be made (2019) & Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the Democratic presidential race (2020) on this day.
 
 
March 6
 
John of Gaunt (1340), Jacob Fugger (1459), Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475), Cyrano de Bergerac (1619), Casimir Pulaski (1747), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806), Philip Sheridan (1831), George Dayton (1857), Oscar Straus (1870), Lou Costello (1906), Kirill Kondrashin (1914), Julius Rudel (1921), Ed McMahon (1923), William Webster (1924), Alan Greenspan (1926), H.C. Robbins Landon (1926), Gabriel García Márquez (1927), Lorin Maazel (1930), Marion Barry (1936), Ivan Boesky (1937), Valentina Tereshkova (1937), Kiri Te Kanawa (1944), Rob Reiner (1947), Suzanne Crough (1963), Connie Britton (1967), Shaquille O’Neal (1972), Yannick Nézet-Séguin (1975) & Alaska Thunderf**k [Justin Andrew Honard] (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Davy Crockett (1836), Jim Bowie (1836), Constanze Mozart (1842), Louisa May Alcott (1888), Gottlieb Daimler (1900), John Philip Sousa (1932), Anton Cermak (1933), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1935), Nelson Eddy (1967), William Hopper (1970), Thurston Dart (1971), Pearl Buck (1973), Ayn Rand [Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum] (1982), Cathy Berberian (1983), Martin Niemöller, (1984), Georgia O’Keeffe (1986), Melina Mercouri (1994), Simon Cadell (1996), Michael Manley (1997), Jean Baudrillard (2007), Ernest Gallo (2007) & Nancy Reagan (2016) died on this day. Ferdinand Magellan reached Guam (1521), Ferdinand II issued his Edict of Restitution asserting his absolute power as Holy Roman Emperor (1629), Louis XIV of France signed a treaty with the Elector of Brandenburg (1664), the Treaty of Rastatt ended hostilities between France & Austria & brought the War of the Spanish Succession to an end (1714), Napoléon captured Jaffa in Ottoman Palestine (1799), Illinois enacted the first state vaccination legislation in the US (1810), James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise bill into law (1820) Edgar Allan Poe expelled from the military academy at West Point (1831), Thomas Carlyle’s maid accidentally burned the first volume of his history of the French Revolution (1835), Davy Crockett & Jim Bowie were killed along with hundreds of other Texans as Mexican soldiers took the Alamo in San Antonio (1836), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” premiered in Venice (1853), the US Supreme Court ruled that African Americans could not be US citizens in the landmark Dred Scott case (1857), Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first periodic table of the elements to the Russian Chemical Society (1869), Bayer patented aspirin (1899), Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II survived a failed assassination attempt in Bremen (1901), Poland occupies the free city of Danzig (Gdańsk) (1933), Julius & Ethel Rosenberg went o trial (1951), Georgy Malenkov succeeded Joseph Stalin as first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party one day after his death (1953), Dred Scott’s grave discovered on the 100th anniversary of the US Supreme Court ruling against him (1957), Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Allilujeva approached the US Embassy in New Delhi & asked for political asylum (1967), the Beatles released the single “Let It Be” (1970), Walter Cronkite signed off as anchorman of CBS Evening News (1981), Helmut Kohl led the CDU/CSU to victory in German Bundestag elections (1983), George H.W. Bush declared victory over Iraq in the Gulf War (1991), Pope Francis announced the canonization of murdered Salvadorean Archbishop Óscar Romero (2018), Forbes names Amazon founder Jeff Bezos the world’s richest person for the first time at $112 billion, Bill Gates no. 2 (2018), Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg reveals plans to turn the social media platform into a more “privacy-focused platform” (2019) & the Dalai Lama got a COVID-19 vaccine (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 7
 
Lucilla (daughter of Marcus Aurelius & sister of Commodus) (148), Publius Septimius Geta (189), Rob Roy (1671), Alessandro Manzoni (1773), Antoine César Becquerel (1788), John Herschel (1792), Luther Burbank (1849), Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850), Piet Mondrian (1872), Maurice Ravel (1875), Anna Magnani (1908), Jacques Chaban-Delmas (1915), Patrick ‘Paddy’ Clancy (1922), Antony Armstrong-Jones [Viscount Snowdon] (1930), Willard Scott (1934), Michael Eisner (1942), Tammy Faye Bakker (Messner) (1942), Bryan Cranston (1956), Alan Hale (1958), Donna Murphy (1959), Denyce Graves (1964), Wanda Sykes (1964), Rachel Weisz (1970), Jenna Fischer (1974), Ricardo Rosselló (1979), Laura Prepon (1980) & Amanda Gorman (1998) were born #OnThisDay. Aristotle (322 BCE), Antoninus Pius (161), Thomas Aquinas (1274), Guido Starhemberg (1737), Aristide Briand (1932), Alice B. Toklas (1967), Kirill Kondrashin (1981), Jacob Javits (1986), Leonie Rysanek (1998), Stanley Kubrick (1999), Charles Gray (2000), Ali Farka Touré (2006) & Lynne Stewart (2017) died on this day. Antoninus Pius was succeeded by co-emperors Marcus Aurelius & Lucius Verus (161), Constantine declared Sunday (the day of Solis Invicti) a day of rest throughout the Roman Empire (321), Pope Clement VII denied Henry VIII’s request for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon (1530), George III charged Bostonians with attempting to injure British commerce (1774), Napoléon’s French army entered Rome, the prelude to his creation of the Roman Republic (1798), Napoléon’s French army defeated Russian & Prussian forces at the Battle of Craonne (1814), Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 (1850), Alexander Graham Bell obtained a patent for the telephone (1876), Gilbert & Sullivan’s last operetta “Grand Duke” premiered in London (1896), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” collection published in London after public pressure to revive his famous detective (1905), Leon Trotsky led the Red Army in an attack on the sailors of Kronstadt naval base (1921), “The New Republic” published Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923), the New York Times agreed to capitalize the ‘N’ in ‘Negro’ (1930), Adolf Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by sending German troops into the Rhineland (1936), Josep Broz Tito formed a government in Yugoslavia (1945), Bikini Atoll islanders evacuated by the US government to make way for a nuclear testing site (1946), the Guomintang & the Communist Party of China resumed a full-fledged civil war (1947), Italian rule of the Dodecanese islands ended as they rejoined Greece (1948), Alabama state troopers attacked & assaulted African American civil rights activists on ‘Bloody Sunday’ (1965), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party won parliamentary elections in Pakistan (1977), after rejecting what the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) said was a final offer, representatives of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) called a strike, costing the Hollywood studios over $500 million over five months (1988), Nelson Mandela rejected demands by white right-wingers for separate homeland in South Africa (1994), the United States Supreme Court rules in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. that parodies of an original work are generally covered by the doctrine of fair use (1994), the first democratically elected Palestinian parliament formed (1996), Charlie Sheen fired from the CBS sitcom “Two and a Half Men” (2011), Hilary Mantel awarded the 2013 David Cohen Prize for literature (2013), the UN Security Council approved further North Korean sanctions for its nuclear testing (2013), 54 people killed & 143 wounded by 5 Boko Haram suicide bombings in Maiduguri in Nigeria (2015), Prince Harry & Meghan Marle alleged racist abuse by the palace in an interview with Oprah Winfrey (2021) & Andrew Cuomo adamantly refused to resign as governor of New York in the face of multiple credible accusations of sexual assault (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 8
 
Anne Bonny (1702), Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714), Karl Ferdinand von Graefe (1787), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841), Franco Alfano (1876), Mátyás Rákosi (1892), Konstantinos Karamanlis (1907), Claire Trevor [Wemlinger] (1910), Alan Hovhaness (1911), Eva Dahlbeck (1920), Alan Hale, Jr. (1921), Cyd Charisse [Tula Finklea] (1922), Shigeru Mizuki (1922), Richard Fariña (1937), Juvénal Hayarimana (1937), Robert Tear (1939), Johnny Ventura [Juan de Dios Ventura] (1940), Lynn Redgrave (1943), Carole Bayer Sager (1947), Aidan Quinn (1959), Lester Holt (1959), Freddie Prinze, Jr. (1976) & James Van Der Beek (1977) were born #OnThisDay. Francesco Sforza, Duca di Milano (1466), Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1661), William III of England (1702), Karl XIV Johan of Sweden & Norway (1844), Edward John Dent (1853), Hector Berlioz (1869), Millard Fillmore (1874), Henry Ward Beecher (1887), William Howard Taft (1930), Sherwood Anderson (1941), Thomas Beecham (1961), William Walton (1983), Joe DiMaggio (1999), Abu Abbas [Muhammad Zaidan] (2004), Max Von Sydow (2020) & Trevor Peacock 92021) died on this day. Henry VIII recognized as supreme head of the Church of England by the Convocation of Canterbury (1531), Peace of Roskilde between Denmark & Sweden (1658), Anne Stuart succeeded William III as queen of England, Scotland & Ireland (1702), the Wiener Stadtbank established in Vienna (1706), Pennsylvania militiamen murdered 96 Native American Christians in the Gnadenhutten Massacre in Ohio (1782), Oscar I succeeded Karl Johan as king of Sweden & Norway (1844), US Commodore Matthew Perry’s second trip to Japan (1854), St. Augustine surrendered to Union troops (1861), Susan B. Anthony testified before the US House Judiciary Committee in favor of a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote (1884), New York enacted the first state law in the US requiring the licensing of dogs (1894), the 2nd symphony of Jean Sibelius premiered in a performance by the Helsinki Philharmonic Society (1902), the Internal Revenue Service began to levy & collect income taxes in the US (1913), the February Revolution began in Petrograd, leading to Nicholas II’s overthrow (1917), Edwin Hubble’s photo showed as many galaxies as the Milky Way had stars (1934), Japanese forces captured Rangoon (1942), the Dutch colonial army on Java surrendered to Japan (1942), the US Supreme Court ruled in McCollum v. Board of Education that religious instruction in public schools was unconstitutional (1948), ‘Lonely Hearts Killers’ Martha Beck & Raymond Martinez Fernandez executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York (1951), Egypt opened the Suez Canal (1957), Malcolm X resigned from the Nation of Islam (1964), US Marines landed at Da Nang (1965), Paul & Linda McCartney fined £100 for growing cannabis (1973), Charles de Gaulle Airport opened in Paris (1974), China ended its invasion of Vietnam, withdrawing troops (1979), Ronald Reagan used the term ‘Evil Empire’ to describe the USSR in a speech in Florida (1983), Martina Navratilova became the first tennis player to earn $10 million (1986), Joel & Ethan Coen’s film “Fargo” released in the US (1996), “Beavis & Butthead” premiered on MTV (1993), the US Supreme Court upheld the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh (1999) & Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 with 239 people disappeared (2014) on this day.
 
 
March 9
 
Amerigo Vespucci (1454), Alexis I of Russia [Aleksey Mikhaylovich], Tsar of Russia (1645-76) (1629), Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (1749), Leland Stanford (1824), Ernest Bevin (1881), Vyacheslav Molotov [Skryabin] (1890), Vita Sackville-West (1892), Samuel Barber (1910), Mickey Spillane [Frank Morrison Spillane] (1918), James L. Buckley (1923), André Courrèges (1923), Walter Kohn (1923), Thomas Schippers (1930), Yuri Gagarin (1934), Joyce Van Patten (1934), Raul Julia (1940), Bobby Fischer (1943), Michael Kinsley (1951), Bobby Sands (1954), Fernando Bujones (1955), Faith Daniels (1957), Martin Fry (1958), Kato Kaelin (1959), Lonny Price (1959), Juliette Binoche (1964) & Matteo Salvini (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Sverre of Norway (1202), David Rizzio (1566), Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1661), Johann Pachelbel (1706), Arnold Toynbee (1883), Wilhelm I, king of Prussia & first emperor of the Second German Reich (1888), Frank Wedekind (1918), Carrie Chapman Catt (1947), Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1988), Robert Mapplethorpe (1989), Menachem Begin (1992), George Burns (1996), John Profumo (2006), David Broder (2011), James Levine (2021) & Roger Mudd (2021) died on this day. Liu Che began his 54-year-long reign as the Emperor Wu of Han (141 BCE), Lithuania first mentioned in the annals of Quedlinburg (1009), Augsburg became a free imperial city (1276), Pedro Álvares Cabral departed Lisbon at the head of a 13-ship expedition to India that would claim Brazil for Portugal (1500), Martin Luther began preaching his ‘Invocavit’ sermons in Wittenberg (1522), Naples banned kissing in public (1562), Mary, Queen of Scots’ private secretary David Rizzio murdered on the orders of the king consort of Scotland (Henry, Lord Darnley) (1566), Sweden & Russia signed the Peace of Stolbowa (1617), Jean Calas was posthumously exonerated for the murder of his son after a successful public campaign by Voltaire (1765), Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” published (1776), Spain began a siege of the city of Pensacola (1781), the French Foreign Legion founded (1834), Prussia’s government limited the work week for children to 51 hours (1839), the US Supreme Court freed kidnapped slaves from the Spanish schooner Armistad in US v. Armistad (1841), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Nabucco” premiered in Milan (1842), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Ernani” premiered in Venice (1844), Carl Otto Nicolai’s opera “Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor” premiered at the Königliches Opernhaus in Berlin (1849), Ulysses S. Grant appointed commander of the Union army (1864), Ambroise Thomas’ opera “Hamlet” premiered in Paris (1868), the Great Blizzard of 1891 began in England, killing 200 people & 6,000 animals (1891), Mexican general Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa attacked the New Mexico border town of Columbus (1916), Germany declared war on Portugal (1916), the Bolshevik Party became the Communist Party (1918), a Ukrainian mob massacred the Jews of Seredino Buda (1918), Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht’s satirical opera “The Rise & Fall of the City of Mahagonny” premiered in Leipzig (1930), Eamon de Valera became president of the Irish Republic (1932), Henry PuYi installed as emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (1932), Adolf Hitler announced the creation of the Nazi Luftwaffe (1935), 34 US B-29 Superfortresses dropped 120,000 fire bombs on Tokyo (1945), Joseph Stalin’s funeral in Moscow ended four days of national mourning (1953), Edward R. Murrow publicly criticized Sen. Joe McCarthy on “See It Now” (1954), Dwight Eisenhower privately criticized Sen. Joe McCarthy in a letter to a friend (1954), the Barbie doll made its debut at the American Toy Fair in Manhattan (1959), Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser declared that Gaza belonged to the Palestinian people (1962), the US Supreme Court issued a decision in New York Times vs. Sullivan declaring that public officials must prove malice to claim libel & recover damages (1964), the last Japanese soldier in the Philippines surrendered 29 years after the end of World War II (1974), major league baseball teams ordered to open their locker rooms to reporters in the wake of a sex discrimination lawsuit (1979), Dan Rather appointed led anchor of the CBS evening news (1981), the first Adopt-a-Highway sign went up on Highway 69 on Texas (1985), Audrey Hepburn appointed a UNICEF Special Ambassador (Goodwill Ambassador 1989) (1988), Eastern Airlines filed for bankruptcy (1989), the Senate rejected George H.W. Bush’s nomination of John Tower as US defense secretary (1989), the Soviet Union officially accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (1989), Dr. Antonia Novello sworn in as the first Latino & first female US surgeon general (1990), “The Suze Orman Show” premiered on CNBC (2002), liquid water discovered on Saturn’s moon Enceladus (2006), the US Justice Department released an internal audit that found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had acted illegally in its use of the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about US citizens (2007), Italy announced a national COVID-19 lockdown (2020), Piers Morgan left ITV’s “Good Morning” after 41,000 complaints made about him saying he did not believe Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s statement about her mental health (2021), Elizabeth II publicly expressed ‘concern’ after Harry & Meghan alleged racism within the British royal family (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 10
 
Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I (1503), Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk (1538), Lorenzo da Ponte [Emanuele Conegliano] (1740), Friedrich von Schlegel (1772), Louise, wife of Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia (1776), Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788), Pablo de Sarasate (1844), Kate Sheppard (1847), Lillian Wald (1867), Arthur Honegger (1892), Eva Turner (1892), Gregory La Cava (1892), Leon Bismarck ‘Bix’ Beiderbecke (1903), Richard Haydn (1905), Charles Groves (1915), Heywood Hale Broun (1918), James Earl Ray (1928), Sara Montiel (1928), Chuck Norris (1940), David Rabe (1940), [Avril] Kim Campbell (1947), Bob Greene (1947), Morgan Tsvangirai (1952), Osama bin Laden (1957), Adolfo Horta (1957), Matt Knudsen (1957), Shannon Lee Tweed (1957), Sharon Stone (1958), Prince Edward (1964), Jon Hamm (1971), Robin Thicke (1977), Janet Mock (1983) & Carrie Underwood (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Tiberius Claudius Nero (37 CE), John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1792), Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1819), Muzio Clementi (1832), Maximilian II of Bavaria (1864), Giuseppe Mazzini (1872), Harriet Tubman [Araminta Ross] (1913), Jan Masaryk (1948), Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor (1973), E. Power Biggs (1977), Konstantin Chernenko (1985), Ray Milland (1986), Andy Gibb (1988), Lloyd Bridges (1998), Anna Moffo (2006) & Hubert de Givenchy (2018) died on this day. Romans sunk the Carthaginian fleet in the Battle of the Aegates Islands, bringing the First Punic War to an end (241 BCE), Jews excluded from public office in the Roman Empire (418), Ben Ahmad’s Giralda minaret for the Almohad mosque in Seville completed (1198), Bishop Tomés de Berlanga discovered the Galapagos Islands (1535), Elizabeth I of England gives Johan Casimir £20,000 to aid Dutch rebellion (1578), Britain declared war on Spain (1624), France’s Louis XIV declared himself his own chief minister (1661), Peter the Great of Russia began his tour of Europe (1697), Huguenot Jean Calas died after being tortured, inspiring Voltaire to launch a campaign to exonerate him & advance religious toleration & legal reform (1762), the first British census found a population of 10 million (1801), Louis Philippe established the French Foreign Legion to support France’s war in Algeria (1831), Abraham Lincoln applied for a patent for a boat-lifting device (1849), Britain & France recognized Zanzibar’s independence (1862), the US issued its first paper money in the form of $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500 and $1000 notes (1862), Abraham Lincoln appointed Ulysses Grant commander of the Union armies (1864), Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call (1876), premiere of Caesar Franck’s symphonic poem for chorus & orchestra “Psyché” (1888), Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) became a French colony (1893), the Japanese army captured Mukden (Shenyang) (1905), premiere of Maurice Ravel’s “Sonatine” by pianist Paule de Lestang in Lyon (1906), the Republic of China abolished slavery (1910), Ottoman Turkish troops began their evacuation of Baghdad (1917), the British parliament enacted the Home Rule Act, which was rejected by the counties that would eventually form the Irish Republic (1920), Nevada became the first state to regulate narcotics (1933), William Wyler’s film “Jezebel” starring Bette Davis & Henry Fonda premiered (1938), WCBS-TV in New York City broadcast Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” in the first televised broadcast of an opera in the US (1940), more than 100,000 Japanese died in the firebombing of Tokyo (1945), US troops landed on Mindanao in Operation Victor IV (1945), Czechoslovakia’s Communist government announced the ‘suicide’ of foreign minister Jan Masaryk (1948), military coup d’état in Cuba led by General Fulgencio Batista (1962), a popular uprising against Chinese occupation of Tibet began in Lhasa (1959), Simon & Garfunkel recorded the first version of “The Sound of Silence” at Columbia Studios in New York City (1964), James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1969), the US Army charged Capt. Ernest Medina & four other soldiers in the My Lai Massacre of March 1968 (1970), Peter Bogdanovich’s film homage to screwball comedies — “What’s Up, Doc?” — starring Ryan O’Neal, Barbra Streisand, Madeline Kahn & Kenneth Mars premiered (1972), the rings of Uranus discovered (1977), “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” opened at the Belasco Theater in Manhattan for 45 performances (1975), Kim Carnes released the single “Bette Davis Eyes” (1981), Ronald Reagan announced economic sanctions against Libya (1982), France’s ruling Parti Socialiste Français lost parliamentary elections (1985), Andy Gibb died at 30 (1988), anti-abortion extremist Michael Frederick Griffin murdered Dr. David Gunn (1993), a million Greeks attended Melina Mercouri’s funeral (1994), New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani visited Israel (1996), Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel warned Vladimir Putin that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was illegal (2014), judges upheld the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, the first woman elected president of the Republic of Korea (2017), Xi Jinping visited Wuhan three months after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic there (2020), Russia’s Duma enacted legislation allowing Vladimir Putin to be president for life (2020) & the Senate confirmed Joe Biden’s appointment of Merrick Garland as US attorney general (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 11
 
Torquato Tasso (1544), Marius Petipa (1819), Frederick IX of Denmark (1899), Lawrence Welk (1903), Helmuth von Moltke (1907), Harold Wilson (1916), Astor Piazzolla (1921), Ralph Abernathy (1926), Rupert Murdoch (1931), Nigel Lawson (1932), Sam Donaldson (1934), Antonin Scalia (1936), Catharina ‘Nina’ Hagen (1955), the Lady Chablis [Benjamin Knox] (1957), Qasem Soleimani (1957) & Jesse Jackson, Jr. (1965) were born #OnThisDay. Elagabalus (222), Eulogius of Córdoba (859), Charles Sumner (1874), Benjamin Waugh (1908), Pierre Renoir (1952), Oscar Mayer (1955), Geraldine Farrar (1967), Erle Stanley Gardner (1970) & Slobodan Milošević (2006) died on this day. Roman emperor Elagabalus murdered by the Praetorian Guard (222) Giovanni de’ Medici elected Pope Leo X (1513), Queen Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish militia bill, the last time a British monarch vetoed legislation (1708), Sotheby’s held its very first auction (of books) in London (1744), Benjamin Banneker & Pierre Charles L’Enfant began laying out Washington, D.C. (1789), Prussian Jews granted citizenship (1812), a 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn revived Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St Matthew Passion,” conducting a performance in Berlin (1829), Chiefs Hone Heke and Kawiti led 700 Māoris to chop down the British flagpole & drive settlers out of the British colonial settlement of Kororareka because of breaches of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi in the Flastaff War in New Zealand (1845), Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine & Robert Baldwin became the first prime ministers of the province of Canada to be democratically elected under a system of responsible government (1848), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto” premiered in Venice (1851), delegates from seven Southern states adopted the constitution of the Confederate States of America (1861), Abraham Lincoln removed George McClellan as commander-in-chief of the Union armies (1862), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Don Carlos” premiered in Paris (1867), Japan annexed Okinawa (1872), Fridtjof Nansen set out on a voyage to study Arctic zoology (1882), US Army mess cook Private Albert Gitchell of Fort Riley became the first documented case of Spanish flu in a global pandemic that would kill 50-100 million (1918), Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the lend-lease bill into law (1941), Lorraine Hansberry’s stage drama “A Raisin in the Sun” — the first Broadway play by a black woman — starring Ruby Dee & Sidney Poitier opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in Manhattan (1959), Indonesia’s president Sukarno signed the ‘Supersemar’ order giving army commander Lt. Gen. Suharto the authority to do whatever he “deemed necessary” to restore order (1965), Indonesia’s president overthrown in a coup d’état led by Sukarno Lt. Gen. Suharto (1965), Augusto Pinochet’s second term began under Chile’s new authoritarian constitution (1981), Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (1985), Paul McCartney knighted by Elizabeth II (1997), the International Criminal Court held its inaugural session in the Hague (2003), a terrorist attack on Atocha station & trains in Madrid killed 193 & injured more than 2,000 (2004), Michelle Bachelet inaugurated as the first female president of Chile (2006), Plácido Domingo named “The King of Singers” in BBC Music Magazine (2008), Sebastián Piñera elected president of Chile (2010), the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan caused a tsunami to hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant — the second worst nuclear disaster in history after Chernobyl (2011), 16 Afghan civilians killed by a US soldier (2012), the European Union banned the sale of cosmetics that have been tested on animals (2013), North Korea cut the phone line with South Korea, breaching the 1953 armistice (2013), 99.8% of Falkland Islanders voted to remain an overseas British territory in a referendum on sovereignty (2013), China’s National People’s Congress approved the removal of term limits, allowing Xi Jinping to be president for life (2018), Israel’s president Reuven Rivlin rejected prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that “Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people & only it” (2019), Algeria’s president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced he would not seek a fifth term & postponed elections after mass protests (2019), COVID-19 declared a pandemic by the head of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, with 121,564 cases worldwide and 4,373 deaths (2020), Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years for sexual assault (2020), Prince William said the royal family is “very much not a racist family” in his first public comments since Harry & Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 12
 
Prince Charles, Comte de Valois (1270), Giuliano de’ Medici (1479), André Le Nôtre (1613), Anne Hyde, queen of England (1637), Victor-Maurice, Comte de Broglie (1647), George Berkeley (1685), Thomas Arne (1710), Luitpold von Bayern (1821), Gustav Kirchhoff (1824), Clement Studebaker (1831), Charles Boycott (1832), Salvatore di Giacomo (1860), Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863), Hans Knappertsbusch (1888), Vaslav Nijinsky (1890), Michael Polany (1891), Agathe von Trapp (1913), Gordon MacRae (1921), Giovanni ‘Gianni’ Agnelli (1921), Jack Kerouac (1922), Lane Kirkland (1922), Raúl Alfonsín (1927), Edward Albee (1928), U Win Tin (1929), Andrew Young (1932), Al Jarreau (1940), Ratko Mladić (1942), Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano (1945), Liza Minnelli (1946), Mitt Romney (1947), James Taylor (1948), Kent Conrad (1948), Darryl Strawberry (1962), Tammy Duckworth (1968) & Jake Tapper (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Pope Innocent I (417), Pope Gregory I (‘Gregory the Great’) (604), Cesare Borgia (1507), John Bull (1563), Tirso de Molina (1648), George Berkeley (1753), George Westinghouse (1914), Sun Yat-Sen (1925), David Beatty (1936), Charles-Marie Widor (1937), Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker (1955), Eugene Ormandy [Blau] (1985), Yehudi Menuhin (1999), Morton Downey, Jr. (2001), Victor Sokolov (2006) & Howard Metzenbaum (2008) died on this day. Orvieto city officials announced that they would behead & burn Jewish-Christian couples (1350), University of Vienna founded (1365), Bermuda became a British colony (1609), the Dutch settlement on Java renamed ‘Batavia’ (1619), Ignatius de Loyola declared a saint (1622), Abel Tasman became the first European to reach New Zealand (1642), the dethroned James II of England landed in Ireland (1689), Jean-Baptiste Pointe de Sable founded the settlement that would become Chicago (1773), the rebuilt Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane (1794), Austria declared war on France (1799), the ballet La Sylphide first premiered at the Opéra de Paris (1832), France’s Second Republic established (1848), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Simon Boccanegra” premiered in Venice (1857), Union troops began their disastrous Red River campaign in Louisiana (1864), Britain annexed Basutoland (later Lesotho) (1868), Coca-Cola sold in glass bottles for the first time (1894), Mohandas Gandhi began his march to the sea to protest the British salt tax in India (1930), Franklin Delano Roosevelt broadcast his first ‘fireside chat’ by radio (1933), Paul Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” premiered in Berlin (1934), Nazi Germany invaded Austria (Anschluß) (1938), Pope Pius XII’s coronation in the Vatican (1939), Finland ceded 11% of its territory to the Soviet Union in the Moscow Peace Treaty (1940),Gen Friedrich Fromm executed by firing squad for his part in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler (1945), the Italian Communist Party called for an armed uprising in Italy (1945), the Soviet Union returned Transylvania to Romania (1945), Harry Truman announced the Truman Doctrine on Soviet Communist containment (1947), 58% of Belgians voted for the return of Léopold III (1950), North Korean troops driven out of Seoul (1951), “Dennis the Menace” comic strip first appeared in the British comic magazine “The Beano” (1951), premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s opera “Moses und Aron” in a concert performance in Hamburg (1954), Random House & Houghton-Mifflin co-published “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss (1957), British Empire Day renamed ‘Commonwealth Day’ (1958), the US House of Representatives followed the Senate in voting in favor of Hawaii’s statehood (1959), Indonesia’s parliament stripped Sukarno of authority & named Gen. Suharto as acting president (1967), Mauritius gained independence from Britain (1968), Hafez al-Assad named himself president of Syria (1971), Anwar Sadat pledged to regain territory Egypt lost to Israel (1977), John Wayne Gacy found guilty of murdering 33 men & boys in Chicago (1980), the Church of England ordained (33) women as priests for the first time (1994), the Congress party lost parliamentary elections in India (1995), former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary & Poland joined NATO (1999), Chris Wedge & Carlos Saldanha’s film “Ice Age” premiered (2002), Elizabeth Smart found after having been missing for nine months (2003), backlash against the Dixie Chicks over their criticism of George W. Bush for initiating the Iraq war (2003), Roh Moo-hyun became the first president of the Republic of Korea to be impeached (2004), Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin & dozens of others charged in the ‘Varsity Blues’ college admissions scandal (2019), Theresa May’s government suffered a second defeat on a Brexit deal with 391 British MPs voting against & 242 voting for (2019), Broadway went dark after NewYork City & state officials imposed restrictions that closed theaters for an unprecedented 32 days (2020), Mario Draghi imposed new COVID restrictions in Italy as cases exceeded 25,000 a day (2021) on this day.
 
 
 
March 13
 
Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1741), Charles, 2nd Earl Grey (1764), Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781), Hugo Wolf (1860), Hugh Walpole (1864), Fritz Busch (1890), John Van Vleck (1899), Mircea Eliade (1907), L. Ron Hubbard (1911), William Casey (1913), Edward O’Hare (1914), Lindy Boggs [Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs] (1916), Rosalind Elias (1931), Frank Murkowski (1933), Neil Sedaka (1939), Mahmoud Darwish (1941), Yonaton Netanyahu (1946), Lesley Collier (1947), William H. Macy (1950), Charles Krauthammer (1950), Dana Delany (1956), Jamie Dimon (1956) & Rick Lazio (1958) were born #OnThisDay. Alexander II (1881), Leland Stanford, Jr. (1884), Benjamin Harrison (1901), Susan B. Anthony (1906), Sergei Witte (1915), Clarence Darrow (1938), Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1938), Stephen Vincent Benét (1943), John Pierpont Morgan, Jr. (1943), Catherine ‘Kitty’ Genovese (1964), Fannie Lou Hamer (1977), Gerald Moore (1987), Bruno Bettelheim (1990), Karl Münchinger (1990), Garson Kanin (1999), Bidu Sayão (1999), Hans-Georg Gadamer (2002), Maureen Stapleton (2006), Reuben Askew (2014), Breonna Taylor (2020) & Kenneth Cooper (2021) died on this day. Muhammad’s Muslim forces defeated the Meccan army at the Battle of Badr (624), the Comte d’Anjou defeated Huguenots at the Battle of Jarnac (1569), the first meeting of what would become the Academie Française chez Valentin Conart (1634), Cambridge College renamed for John Harvard (1639), Jews denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam (1656), Massachusetts gained title to Maine for $6,000 (1677), William Herschel discovered Uranus (1781), Luigi Cherubini’s opera “Medée” premiered in Paris (1797), Uncle Sam made his debut in the “New York Lantern” weekly (1852), Jefferson Davis signed a bill into law authorizing the Confederate army to enlist slaves as soldiers (1865), the US Senate began the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson (1868), the Arkansas state legislature enacted an anti-Ku Klux Klan law (1869), Chester Greenwood patented earmuffs (1877), Alexander II of Russia assassinated in St. Petersburg (1881), Mahdist forces began the siege of Khartoum (1884), the US adopted standard time (1884), the Great Blizzard of 1888 (1888), France limited the working day for women & children to 11 hours (1900), Mata Hari performed her dance act for the first time at the Musée Guimet in Paris (1905), Mongolia declared independence from China (1921), Tennessee made the teaching of evolution illegal (1925), Clyde Tombaugh announced the discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory (1930), Joseph Goebbels became Nazi Germany’s minister of information & propaganda (1933), Nazis liquidated the Jewish ghetto in Kraków while Oskar Schindler saved his workers by keeping them in his factory overnight (1943), Queen Wilhelmina returned to the Netherlands (1945), Paul-Henri Spaak formed a Belgian government that would fall on March 31 (1946), Viet Minh General Võ Nguyên Giáp initiated the assault on French forces at Dien Bien Phu (1954), the Beatles released the single “Lady Madonna” in the UK (1968), Apollo 9 returned to earth (1969), the European Monetary System created (1979), the New Jewel Movement overthrew Matthew Gairy’s dictatorship in Grenada (1979), John Wayne Gacy received a death sentence for the murder of 12 men & boys in Illinois (1980), cult leader Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo murdered mark Kilroy at Rancho Santa Elena in Mexico (1989), the drag ball scene documentary “Paris Is Burning” premiered (1991) 33.3% of Austrians voted for the extreme right-wing Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) (FPÖ) (Freedom Party) (1994), Luciano Pavarotti’s last stage performance in Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Met (2004), Bob Iger named CEO of Walt Disney Int’l., succeeding Michael Eisner (2005), Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that it would no longer publish printed versions of its encyclopedia (2012), the European Parliament rejected a European Union budget for the first time (2013), Jorge Mario Bergoglio elected Pope Francis (2013), the Knesset voted 65-1 to end the military service exemption for Orthodox Jewish seminary students in Israel (2014), Donald Trump fired nRex Tillerson as secretary of state in a tweet (2018), National Geographic magazine admitted its past coverage was racist in a special issue to mark 50 years since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. (2018), Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort sentenced to a further 43 months in jail in addition to his previous 47 months (2019), Donald Trump designated Medgar & Myrlie Evers’ house in Jackson a national monument (2019), California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced an indefinite moratorium on the death sentence in the state (2019), British MPs voted 321 to 278 to reject Theresa May’s no-deal Brexit (2019) & African American Breonna Taylor was shot & killed by police in Louisville (2020) on this day.
 
 
March 14
 
Johann Strauß der Ältere (1804), Vittorio Emmanuele II of Sardinia & Italy (1820), Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835), Umberto I of Italy (1844), Paul Ehrlich (1854), Albert Einstein (1879), Sylvia Beach (1887), Raymond Aron (1905), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908), Diane Arbus [Nemerov] (1923), Frank Borman (1928), Michael Caine (1933), Quincy Jones, Jr. (1933), Billy Crystal (1948), Tom Coburn (1948), Albert II of Monaco (1958), Danny Meyer (1958), Zbigniew Karkowski (1958), Grace Park (1974) & Simone Biles (1997) were born #OnThisDay. Thomas Malory (1471), Frederick Henry, stadtholder & prince of Orange (1647), Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton (1811), Karl Marx (1883), George Eastman (1932), Susan Hayward (1975), Busby Berkeley [Enos] (1976), Fannie Lou Hamer (1977), Huw Wheldon (1986), Willi Apel (1988), Zita of Bourbon-Parma, empress of Austria & queen of Hungary (1989), Howard Ashman (1991), Peter Graves [Aurness] (2010), Tony Benn (2014) & Stephen Hawking (2018) died on this day. Venice forced Caterina Cornaro — the last queen of Cyprus — to abdicate (1489), Henri IV of France defeated the Catholic League at the Battle of Ivry (1590), Ultimate Pi Day (1592), England granted a patent for Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island) (1644), Bavaria, Cologne, France & Sweden signed the Truce of Ulm near the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1647), Scotland dismissed William III & Mary Stuart as king & queen (1689), Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin machine (1794), Henry Addington became prime minister of the United Kingdom after his friend William Pitt the Younger resigned, being unable to persuade George III of the need for Catholic Emancipation (1801), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Macbeth” premiered at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence (1847), Gioachino Rossini’s “Petite Messe Solennelle” premiered at his home in Paris (1864), Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera “Mikado” premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London (1885), the German supreme court banned the Nazi party (1923), Warren Harding became the first president to pay taxes (1923), Nazi Germany dissolved the republic of Czechoslovakia (1939), Nazi liquidation of the Kraków Jewish ghetto (1943), FBI’s “10 Most Wanted Fugitives” program began (1950), Jack Ruby sentenced to death for Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder (1964), “Born Free” released (1966), Mikhail Gorbachev elected president of the Soviet Union (1990), Cedar Revolution demonstrations against the Syrian military presence in Lebanon following the assassination of prime minister Rafik Hariri (2005), Mike Wallace retired from “60 Minutes” after 37 years with the CBS show (2006), Xi Jinping named president of the People’s Republic of China (2013), Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops out of Syria (2016), Marco Rubio dropped out of the Republican presidential race (2016), a NASA twin study found that Scott Kelly was no longer identical to his twin brother after one year in space, 7% of his genes altered (2018), Angela Merkel sworn in for a fourth germ as Germany’s Bundeskanzlerin (2018), Brazilian human rights activist Marielle Franco murdered in Rio de Janeiro (2018) & Beto O’Rourke announced his presidential candidacy (2019) on this day.
 
 
 
March 15
 
St. Nicholas [Nikolaos of Myra] (270), the Shunzhi emperor of Qing China (1638), Cesare Beccaria (1738), Andrew Jackson (1767), William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779), John Snow (1813), Eduard Strauß (1835), Rezā Shāh Pahlavi [Rezā Khan], Shah of Iran (1925-41) (1878), Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887), Colin McPhee (1900), Richard Ellmann (1918), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933), Kate Bornstein (1948), Howard Koh (1952) & Eva Longoria (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Julius Caesar (44 BCE), Odoacer [Odiaker] (493), Aristotle Onassis (1975), Leonide Massine (1979), René Clair (1981), Rebecca West (1983), Dr. Benjamin Spock (1998) & Ann Sothern (2001) died on this day. Julius Caesar assassinated on the Ides of March (44 BCE), Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great murderered King Odoacer of Italy with his sword at a banquet in Ravenna (493), Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage to the New World (1493), George Washington put an end to the Newburgh Conspiracy (1783), Maine admitted as the 23rd state (1820), Hungary’s Revolution of 1848 (1848), the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first professional baseball team (1869), New York State introduced voting machines (1892), an exhibition of the late Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings in Paris created a sensation in the art world (1901), Finland became the first European country to grant women the right to vote (1907), Maurice Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espanole” premiered (1908), Nicholas II abdicated as tsar of Russia in favor of his brother Grand Duke Michael (1917), Benito Mussolini eliminated the multi-party system in Italy (1928), Adolf Hitler summoned Czechoslovakia’s president Emil Hácha to Berlin to inform him of Nazi Germany’s imminent attack on Czechslovakia, reneging on his pledge in the Munich peace pact & ordering Nazi Germany’s invasion & annexation of Czechoslovakia (1939), British prime minister Clement Attlee agreed to grant India independence (1946), UN forces recapture Seoul — the fourth & final time the city changes hands in the Korean War (1951), Mohammed Mossadegh’s government nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (1951), Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for passage of the Voting Rights Act (1965), British foreign secretary George Brown resigned after having a drunken row with prime minister Harold Wilson (1968), Francis Ford Coppola’s film “The Godfather” released (1972), four Los Angeles Police Department police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King (1991), Hu Jintao became president of the People’s Republic of China (2003), an Australian white supremacist killed 51 & wounded 40 in a mosque in Christchurch in the deadliest day in New Zealand’s recent history (2019), the Vatican issued a judgement that priests cannot bless same-sex unions, that God “does not and cannot bless sin” (2021), Deb Haaland confirmed as US Secretary of the Interior by the Senate, becoming the first Native American to lead a cabinet agency (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 16
 
Caroline Herschel (1750, James Madison (1751), Napoléon IV, Prince Imperial (1856), Mike Mansfield (1903), Dr. Joseph Mengele (1911), Patricia [Thelma Catherine] Nixon (1912), Reginald Leo McKern (1920), Jerry Lewis [Joseph Levitch] (1926), Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927), Karlheinz Böhm (1927), Christa Ludwig (1928), Teresa Braganza (1935), David Del Tredici (1937), Bernardo Bertolucci (1941), Robert Guéï (1941), Erik Estrada (1949), Isabelle Huppert (1953), Jorge Ramos (1958), Flavor Flav [William Drayton, Jr.] (1959), Jens Stoltenberg (1959) & Phung Vuong (1963) were born #OnThisDay. Valentinian III (455), Anne Neville (1485), Giovanni Pergolesi (1736), Christian Augustus von Anhalt-Zerbst (1747), Selma Lagerlöf (1940), Constantin Brancuşi (1957), Thomas E. Dewey (1971), Kamal Jumblatt (1977), Jean Monnet (1979), Arthur Godfrey (1983) & Rachel Corrie (2003) died on this day. Babylonians captured Jerusalem, replacing Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king (597 BCE), pogrom of Jews in York (1190), the Mughal emperor Babur defeated Rana Sanga’s Rajput forces at the Battle of Khanua (1527), Louis XIV sent French troops to Ireland (1690), Count Jacob Johan Anckarström shot Gustav III of Sweden at a masked ball (1792), the US Military Academy established at West Point (1802), slavery approved & legalized by the constitution of the Republic of Texas (1836), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” published by Ticknor, Reed and Fields in Boston (1850), Arizona Territory voted to secede from the Union (1861), Edward Clark replaced Sam Houston as governor of Texas after he was ousted for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy (1861), Hiram Revels became the first African American to give an official speech in the US Senate (1869), the US Senate ratified the Geneva Convention of 1864 (1882), Jules Massenet’s opera “Thaïs” — featuring his celebrated “Méditation” — premiered in Paris (1894), Gustav Mahler’s “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” premiered (1896), Sir Arthur Evans rediscovered the Bronze Age city of Knossos in Crete (1900), First Lady Helen Herron Taft planted the first cherry tree in Washington, D.C. (1912), Grand Duke Michael declined to succeed Nicholas II as tsar of Russia (1917), Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “Der Unbestechliche” premiered in Vienna (1923), Benito Mussolini’s Italy annexed Fiume (1924), Adolf Hitler ordered German re-armament in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles (1935), National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C. (1941), British bombers destroyed 90% of Würzburg & killed 5,000 in only 20 minutes (1945), Billie Holiday released from prison early for good behavior (1948), Dwight Eisenhower upheld the use of atomic weapons in case of war (1955), 400 Vietnamese civilians killed in the My Lai Massacre (1968), Robert F. Kennedy announced his presidential candidacy (1968), Harold Wilson announced his resignation as British prime minister (1976), Jimmy Carter argued for a Palestinian state (1977), Aldo Moro kidnapped by the Red Brigade (1978), Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson taken hostage in Beirut (1985), a federal grand jury indicted Oliver North & John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair (1988), Ronald Reagan ordered US troops to Honduras (1988), Tonya Harding pleaded guilty to a felony attack on former Olympic figure skating teammate Nancy Kerrigan (1994), the Mississippi House of Representatives formally abolished slavery & ratifies 13th Amendment (1995), Robert Blake acquitted of the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley (2005), the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to establish the UN Human Rights Council (2006), J.P. Morgan Chase bought investment bank Bear Stearns for $2 per share (2008), Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court (2016), Otto Warmbier sentenced to 15 years hard labor in North Korea (2016), a declassified US intelligence report concluded that Vladimir Putin authorized covert efforts to re-elect Donald Trump (2021), a white supremacist shot & killed eight Asian American women at three different spas in Atlanta (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 17
 
James IV of Scotland (1473), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537), Roger Brooke Taney (1777), Gottlieb Daimler (1834), Paul Ramadier (1888), Eisaku Satō (1901), Bayard Rustin (1910), Nat King Cole (1919), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1922), Myrlie Evers-Williams (1933), Rudolf Nureyev (1938), John Wayne Gacy (1942), Patrick Duffy (1949), Kurt Russell (1951), Lesley-Anne Down (1954), Cynthia McKinney (1955), Gary Sinise (1955), Dana Reeve (1961), Rob Lowe (1964), [Lee] Alexander McQueen (1969), Stormy Daniels [Stephanie Clifford] (1979), & Martin Shkreli (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Antonius Marcus Aurelius (180), Saint Patrick (461), Giuliano de’ Medici (1516), François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1680), Ramon Magsaysay (1957), Luchino Visconti (1976), Helen Hayes (1993), George F. Kennan (2005), Oleg Cassini (2006), John Demjanjuk (2012) & Lyle Waggoner (2020) died on this day. Commodus succeeded Marcus Aurelius as Roman emperor after the death of his father (180), Saint Patrick died at Saul in Downpatrick (Ireland) (432), the armies of Castile & Murcia defeated forces of the Emirate of Granada at the Battle of Los Alporchones (1452), Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines (1521), François I of France released from captivity in Spain (1526), the first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in St. Augustine in Spanish Florida (1601), St. Patrick’s Day first celebrated in New York City at the Crown & Thistle Tavern (1756), New York City’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade (1762), George Washington forced British troops to evacuate Boston (1776), Friedrich Schiller’s play “Wilhelm Tell” premiered (1804), Japanese representatives arrived in San Francisco to sign a Treaty of Friendship with the United States (1860), Italy’s reunification complete (1861), Isadora Duncan gave her first European performance in London (1900), at a show in Paris, 71 Vincent van Gogh’s paintings caused a sensation 11 years after his death (1901), the Camp Fire Girls organization founded (1912), Vladimir Lenin proclaimed a New Economic Policy for the USSR (1921), Kronstadt sailors’ revolt against Bolshevik rule (1921), March Constitution of Poland’s Second Republic adopted (1921), Benito Mussolini’s Italian air force supported Francisco Franco by bombing Barcelona (1938), the Battle of Nanjing between Japan & the Guomindang (1939), the Philippines’ president Ramon Magsaysay & 24 others killed in a plane crash on Mt. Maunggal in Cebu (1957), Mount Agung erupted on Bali killing 1,900 (1963), the Bee Gees made their US TV debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” performing “To Love Somebody” & “Words” (1968), Golda Meir became Israel’s fourth prime minister & first woman to hold the office (1969), Franklin Delano Roosevelt married Eleanor Roosevelt (1905), Elizabeth II opened the new London Bridge (1973), Lithuania rejected a Soviet demand to renounce its independence (1990), Robin Cook resigned from Tony Blair’s cabinet in protest over British plans to join the US in making war on Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (2003), New York State Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, succeeded by David Paterson (2008), Vladimir Putin declared the Republic of Crimea independent of Ukraine (2014), New York’s Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced her presidential candidacy (2019) & Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro arrived in Washington, DC for meetings with Donald Trump (2019) on this day.
 
 
 
March 18
 
Mary Tudor, queen of France (1496), François de Valois, duc d’Alençon, duc d’Anjou & duc de Brabant (1556), Frederik III of Denmark (1609), John C. Calhoun (1782), Grover Cleveland (1837), Stéphane Mallarmé (1842), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844), Rudolf Diesel (1858), Neville Chamberlain (1869), Edgar Cayce (1877), Cluny MacPherson (1879), Edward Everett Horton (1886), Wilfred Owen (1893), Robert Donat (1905), Ernest Gallo (1909), Chiang Ching-huo (1910), Margaret, princess of Heese & the Rhine (1913), Peter Graves [Aurness] (1926), Fidel Ramos (1928), Jürgen Schadeberg (1931), F.W. de Klerk (1932), John Updike (1932), Shashi Kapoor [Balbir Raj Kapoor] (1938), Wilson Pickett (1941), James Conlon (1950), Vanessa Williams (1963), Bonnie Blair (1964), Queen Latifah [Dana Owen] (1970) & Reince Priebus [Rheinhold Priebus] (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Marcus Aurelius Alexander (235), Edward the Martyr, king of the Anglo-Saxons (978), Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar (1314), Robert Walpole (1745), Anna Leopoldovna, regent of Russia (1746), Lawrence Sterne (1768), Anne Robert Turgot (1781), Johnny Appleseed [John Chapman] (1845), George I of Greece (1913), Eleftherios Venizelos (1936), Farouk I of Egypt (1965), Lauritz Melchior (1973), Erich Fromm (1980), Umberto II of Italy (1983), Bernard Malamud (1986), Gösta Winbergh (2002), Natasha Richardson (2009) & Chuck Berry [Charles Andersen] died on this day. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (a.k.a., ‘Caligula’) proclaimed emperor by the Roman Senate after it annulled Tiberius’ will (37), Edward the Martyr, king of England murdered, possibly on the orders of his stepmother Queen Ælfthryth (978), the first Lateran Council in Rome ratified the Concordat of Worms (1123), Crusaders killed 57 Jews in Bury St. Edmunds (1190), Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II browned himself king of Jerusalem (1229), Kraków ravaged by Mongols (1241), Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, burned at the stake by Philip IV of France (1314), the first public bus service began operating in Paris as the ‘Carosses à Cinq Sou’ (until 1675), promoted by Blaise Pascal (1662), the British parliament repealed the hated Stamp Act (1766), Wells Fargo launched (1952), Richard Nixon ordered the secret bombing of Cambodia (1969), Paris Commune revolt (1871), Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Frederick Douglass marshal of Washington, D.C. (1877), the Barnum & Bailey Circus debuted at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan (1881), Otto von Bismarck resigned after 19 years as Reichskanzler after disagreement with Kaiser Wilhelm II (1890), William Pickering discovered Saturn’s moon Phoebe (1899), Enrico Caruso became the first well-known performer to make a professional recording (1902), Arnold Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” premiered in Vienna (1902), Frederick Converse’s opera “The Pipe of Desire” became the first American opera to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera (1910), Irving Berlin obtained a copyright for “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” one of the most popular songs of the 20th century (1911), George I of Greece assassinated in Thessaloniki (1913), British magistrates in India sentenced the Mahatma Gandhi to 6 years imprisonment for disobedience (1922), Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan held a bat mitzvah for his daughter in New York City — the first public celebration of a bat mitzvah (1922), Schick put the first electric shavers on sale in the US (1931), Studebaker went bankrupt (1933), Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met at the Brenner Pass, il Duce agreeing that Italy would join Nazi Germany in war (1940), Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9102 creating the War Relocation Authority to oversee the internment (imprisonment) of Japanese Americans during World War II (1942), Nazi Germany occupied Hungary (1944), Dwight Eisenhower signed the Hawaii statehood bill into law (1959), Dmitri Shostakovich became a member of the USSR’s Supreme Soviet (1962), French government representatives met with the Front de Libération National (FLN) to sign a peace agreement ending France’s disastrous seven-year colonial war in Algeria & 130 years of colonial rule (1962), Poppin’ Fresh Pillsbury Dough Boy introduced (1965), Gen. Lon Nol led a military coup d’état, forcing Prince Sihanouk to flee Cambodia (1970), Vietnam released US soldiers missing in action (MIAs) (1977), former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto sentenced to death by the military junta in Pakistan (1978), in the first free elections in East Germany, the Christian Democratic Party defeated the Communist Party (1990), Leona Helmsley sentenced to four years for tax evasion (1992), Zsa Zsa Gabor files for bankruptcy (1994), Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube removed at her husband’s request (2005), Transnistria formally requested to join the Russian Federation (2014), Vladimir Putin elected to a new six-year term, his fourth term as president of the Russian Federation (2018) & the US House Judiciary Committee hearing held on the rise of violence & discrimination against Asian-Americans with 3,800 hate incidents recorded over the previous 12 months (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 19
 
William Bradford (baptized) (1589), Georges de la Tour (1593), Aleksei Romanov (first Romanov tsar of Russia) (1629), Tobias Smollett (baptized) (1721), Tupac Amaru II (1742), David Livingstone (1813), Richard Francis Burton (1821), Constantin Dimitrescu (1847), Wyatt Earp (1848), William Jennings Bryan (1860), Sergei Diaghilev (1872), Max Reger (1873), Josef Albers (1888), Earl Warren (1891), John Sirica (1904), Albert Speer (1905), Roy Roberts (1906), Adolf Eichmann (1906), Fred Clark (1914), Jiang Qing (1914), Irving Wallace (1916), Constantin ‘Dinu’ Lipatti (1917), Brent Scowcroft (1925), Hans Küng (1928), Lynda Bird Johnson Robb (1944), Myung-Wha Chung (1944), Said Musa (1944), Sirhan Sirhan (1944), Joseph Celli (1944), Tom Constanten (1944), Glenn Close (1947), Harvey Weinstein (1952) & Bruce Willis (1955) were born #OnThisDay. Edmund of Woodstock, first Earl of Kent, son of Edward I of England (1330), Ibn Khaldūn (1406), Arthur Balfour (1930), Anne Klein (1974), Willem De Kooning (1997), Arthur C. Clarke (2008), Paul Scofield (2008) & Jimmy Breslin (2017) died on this day. Mongol victory at the naval Battle of Yamen ended China’s Song dynasty (1279), Friedrich von Habsburg crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Nicholas V in Rome (1452), Giovanni da Verrazano landed in the Carolinas (1524), the Peace of Amboise granted religious rights to Huguenots in France (1563), Spanish troops occupied Manila (1571), mass suicide of 200 members of the Ming imperial family (1644), Robert Cavalier de La Salle murdered by his own men (1687), Joseph Haydn’s “Die Schöpfung” premiered in Vienna (1799), Charles IV of Spain abdicated, succeeded by Ferdinand VII (1808), Spain’s first constitution adopted (1812), Boston incorporated as a city in Massachussetts (1822), Charles Gounod’s opera “Faust” premiered in Paris (1859), the First Taranaki War ended in New Zealand (1861), Charles Gounod’s opera “Mireille” premiered in Paris (1864), the foundation stone laid for Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (1882), Pluto photographed for the first time (but not identified as such) (1915), the US Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles for the second time, refusing to ratify League of Nations’ covenant (1920), Nevada legalized gambling (1931), Adolf Hitler issued his ‘Nero Decree’ to destroy all German factories (1945), French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique & Reunion became overseas ‘départements’ of France (1946), the Academy Awards were televised for the first time on NBC (1953), Nicolae Ceauşescu became leader of Romania’s Communisty Party (1965), Howard University’s administration building taken over by students (1968), the Chicago 8 indicted after the Democratic national convention (1969), Cambodia’s parliament granted Lon Nol emergency powers to suspend the constitution (1970), John Dean told Richard Nixon, “There is a cancer growing on the presidency” (1973), the last episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” aired on CBS (1977), Argentine forces landed on South Georgia Island, precipitating the Falklands War (1982), “Kate & Allie” premiered on CBS starring Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin (1984), Jim Bakker resigned amid rape accusations (1987), the Duke & Duchess of York (Prince Andrew & Sarah Ferguson) announced their separation (1992), the largest omelette (1,383 sq. ft.) in world history made with 160,000 eggs in Yokohama (1994), George W. Bush launched the US & British invasion of Iraq (2003), Russian forces captured the Ukrainian naval base at Savastopol (2014), the world’s last Northern White Rhino (‘Sudan’) died in Kenya (2018), Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his resignation after nearly 30 years in office (2019), Sam Smith came out as non-binary (2019), & Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted in Iceland for the first time in 800 years (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 20
 
Friedrich Hölderlin (1770), Henrik Ibsen (1828), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873), Lauritz Melchior (1890), BF Skinner (1904), Abraham Beame (1906), Michael Redgrave (1908), Sviatoslav Richter (1915), Pierre Messmer (1916), Vera Lynn (1917), Carl Reiner (1922), John Erlichman (1925), Fred Rogers (1928), Hal Linden (1931), Willie Brown (1934), Brian Mulroney (1939), William Hurt (1950), Spike Lee (1957) & Holly Hunter (1958) were born #OnThisDay. Henry IV (1413), Albert of Prussia (1568), Adrienne Lecouvreur (1730), Lajos Kossuth (1894), Ferdinand Foch (1929), C. Wright Mills (1962), Brendan Behan (1964), Juliana of the Netherlands (2004), Malcolm Fraser (2015), David Rockefeller (2017) & Kenny Rogers (2020) died on this day. Saturn conjoined with Jupiter & Mars in the midst of the Black Death (1345), the Linköping Bloodbath (1600), Alessandro Volta reported his discovery of the electric battery 91800), Napoleon began his 100-day rule (‘Les Cents-Jours’) (1815), “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published in Boston (1852), Col. Sanders founded Kentucky Fried Chicken (1930), the first Nazi concentration camp was completed at Dachau (1933), Tunisia won independence from France (1956), LBJ removed gold backing from the US dollar (1968), Jacques Chirac was elected mayor of Paris (1977), Indira Ganhdi’s Congress Party lost a general election in India (1977), the New York City Council enacted a gay rights law (1986), David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly” premiered on Broadway (1988), George W. Bus launched the ground invasion of Iraq (2003), Stephen Harper was elected Conservative Party leader in Canada (2004), Cynthia Nixon announced her run for governor of New York (2018) & Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Donald Trump at the White House (2018) on this day.
 
 
 
March 21
 
Zhao Kuangyin~emperor Taizi of Song China (927), Moritz, Kurfürst von Sachsen (Maurice, Elector of Saxony) (1521), Modest Mussorgsky (1839), Florenz Ziegfeld (1869), Hans Hofmann (1880), Paul Tortelier (1914), Arthur Grumiaux (1921), Peter Brook (1925), Hans-Dietrich Genscher (1927), James Coco (1930), Michael Heseltine (1933), Marie-Christine Barrault (1944), Slavoj Žižek (1949), Jair Bolsonaro (1945), Gary Oldman (1958), Matthew Broderick (1962) & Rosie O’Donnell (1962) were born #OnThisDay. Thomas Cranmer (1556), Pocahontas (1617), John Law (1729), Robert Southey (1843), Joseph E. Johnston (1891), Alexander Glazunov (1936), Walter Francis White (1955), Candy Darling [James Slattery] (1974), Dean Martin, Jr. (1987), Michael Redgrave (1985), Robert Preston [Meservey] (1987), Herman Talmadge (2002), Bobby Short (2005), Wolfgang Wagner (2010), Chinua Achebe (2013), Andrew Grove [András Gróf] (2016), Martin McGuinness (2017) & Colin Dexter (2017) died on this day. Jews killed in Black Death riots in Erfurt (1349), Henry V became king of England (1413), Code Napoléon adopted in France (1804), Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in B flat major (Op 130) premiered in Vienna (1826), Henry Morton Stanley began his expedition to Africa (1871), Otto von Bismarck elevated to rank of Fürst (prince) (1871), Germany launched an offensive on the Somme (1918), Gov. Austin Peay signed the Butler Act into law making Tennessee the first state to outlaw the teaching of the theory of evolution (1925), Paul von Hindenburg & Adolf Hitler presided over the opening of the new Reichstag building in Berlin (1933), Persia renamed Iran (1935), police killed 19 at a Puerto Rican nationalist parade (the Ponce massacre) (1937), Nazi Germany demanded the return of Danzig (Gdańsk) from Poland (1939), Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Rebecca” — based on Daphne du Maruier’s novel & starring Laurence Olivier & Joan Fontaine — premiered in Miami (1940), Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9835 requiring loyalty to the US on the part of all federal employees (1947), South African police killed 72 in the Sharpeville Massacre as the African National Congress was outlawed (1960), Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay closed (1963), socialist Mário Soares banished to Sao Tomé after having been arrested by secret police on the orders of Portugal’s dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1968), CBS broadcast the episode of “Dallas” in which J.R. was shot (1980), Strawberry Fields memorial to John Lennon dedicated in Manhattan’s Central Park (1984), Twitter founder Jack Dorsey tweeted his first ‘tweet’ (2006), Russia formally annexed Crimea to international condemnation (2014) & Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg admits they “made mistakes” after data on 50 million users is harvested by Cambridge Analytica (2018) on this day.
 
 
March 22
 
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459), Anthony Van Dyck (1599), Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany (1797), Leonard ‘Chico’ Marx (1887), Karl Malden [Mladen George Sekulovich] (1912), Werner Klemperer (1920), Marcel Marceau (1923), E.D. Hirsch (1928), Lynden Pindling (1930), Pat Robertson (1930), Stephen Sondheim (1930), Derek Bok (1930), William Shatner (1931), Orrin Hatch (1934), Alan Opie (1945), Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948), Wolf Blitzer (1948), Fanny Ardant (1949), Bob Costas (1952), Reese Witherspoon (1976) & Constance Wu (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Jean-Baptiste Lully (1687), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1832) & William Hanna (2001) died on this day. Æthelred of Wessex defeated an invasion of Danish Vikings (871), pogrom of Jews in Fulda blamed for the Black Death (1349), Reginald Cardinal Pole named archbishop of Canterbury (1556), the British parliament enacted George Grenville’s Stamp Act (1765), Edmund Burke spoke in the House of Commons in favor of a peaceful settlement with the British colonies in North America (1775), George Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson the first US secretary of state (1790), Charles Grey persuaded parliament to enact the Reform Act which significantly changed the British electoral system (1832), Puerto Rico abolished slavery (‘Emancipation Day’) (1873), the US became the first country to recognize Russia’s new post-revolutionary government (1917), James Stewart became the first American movie star to be inducted into the US military in World War II (1941), the Arab League formed (1945), Harry Truman signed an executive order establishing a Loyalty Review Board to investigate potential Communist sympathizers in the federal government (1947), Nicolae Ceauşescu elected general secretary of Romania’s Communist Party (1965), Jarmila Novotná resigned as president of Czechoslovakia (1968), Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment, which subsequently failed to get the required number of states to be ratified (1972), teachers at the McMartin preschool in California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school, charges later determined to be completely unfounded (1984), Congress overrode Ronald Reagan’s veto of a civil rights bill (1988) & the New York City Board of Estimate was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court (1989) on this day.
 
 
March 23
 
Marguerite d’Anjou (Margaret of Anjou) (1430), [Aloysius] Ludwig Minkus (1826), Fanny Farmer (1857), Felix Yussupov (1887), Juan Gris (1887), Dane Rudhyar [Daniel Chennevière] (1895), Erich Fromm (1900), Joan Crawford ([Lucille Le Sueur] (1905), Akira Kurosawa (1910), Wernher von Braun (1912), Ugo Tognazzi (1922), Roger Bannister (1929), Rex Tillerson (1952), Chaka Khan [Yvette Marie Stevens] (1953), Jayson Blair (1976), Perez Hilton [Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr] (1978), Kim Wall (1987), Eugenie, Princess of York (1990) & Kyrie Irving (1992) were born #OnThisDay. Agrippina the Younger (59), Peter the Cruel, king of Castile & Leon (1369), Pope Julius III [Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte] (1555), Nicolas Fouquet (1680), Tsar Paul I of Russia (1801), Stendhal [Marie-Henri Beyle] (1842), Bhagat Singh (1931), Raoul Dufy (1953), Peter Lorre (1964), Cristóbal Balenciaga (1972), Patricia Roberts Harris (1985), Rowland Evans (2001), Eileen Farrell (2002), Sarah Caldwell (2006), Elizabeth Taylor (2011), Adolfo Suárez (2014), Lee Kuan Yew (2015), Ken Howard (2016), Joe Garagiola (2016) & George Segal (2021) died on this day. Agrippina the Younger murdered on the orders of her son Nero (59), Pedro el Cruel (Peter the Cruel) of Castilla y León murdered by his half brother Henry of Trastámara (1369), London premiere of Georg Friedrich Händel’s “Messiah” at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1743), Patrick Henry declared “Give me liberty or give me death!” at the second Virginia convention (1775), “Les Liaisons dangereuses” by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos published by Durand Neveu (1782), Tadeusz Kościuszko returned to Poland (1794), Tsar Pavel (Paul) I of Russia assassinated (1801), Napoléon put his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain (1808), O.K.’ first published in the Boston Morning Post (1839), Austrian troops defeated the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia at the Battle of Novara (1849), Elisha Otis installed his first elevator at 488 Broadway in Manhattan (1857), Congress overrode Andrew Johnson’s veto to enact the 2nd Reconstruction Act (1867), Umberto Giordano’s opera “Andrea Chénier” premiered in Milan (1896), Germany began using a long-range gun — the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz’ (‘Emperor William Gun,’ a.k.a. the ‘Paris Gun’ — to shell Paris from Crépy-en-Laonnais (1918), Benito Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento (fascist party) in Italy (1919), the first telephone installed on the president’s desk at the White House (1929), Indian independence fighters Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru & Sukhdev Thapar hanged (1931), the Reichstag enacted the Enabling Act giving Adolf Hitler absolute power (1933), Italy & Austria-Hungary signed the Pact of Rome (1936), the Battle of Okinawa (1945), Gen. Efraín Rios Montt deposed Guatemala’s president Romeo Lucas in a military coup d’état (1982), Barney Clark died 112 days after becoming the world’s first recipient of an artificial heart (1983), Ronald Reagan called for the creation of a Strategic Defense Initiative (‘Star Wars’) in a televised address (1983), presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Coliso assassinated in Mexico (1994), “Titanic” won a record 11 Academy Awards (1998), the last territory of the ISIS ‘caliphate’ recaptured (2019) & Rochester police killed African American Daniel Prude (2020) on this day.
 
 
March 24
 
 
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681), Joseph Priestley (1733), Rufus King (1755), Maria Malibran (1808), Edmond Becquerel (1820), William Morris (1834), Andrew Mellon (1855), Harry Houdini [Erich Weiss] (1874), Luigi Einaudi (1874), Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle (1887), Thomas E. Dewey (1902), Clyde Barrow (1909), Joseph Barbera (1911), Dorothy Height (1912), Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919), Dario Fo (1926), Steve McQueen (1930), Mary Berry (193), David Suzuki (1936), Benjamin Luxon (1937), Christine Gregoire (1947), Tommy Hilfiger (1951), Dolora Zajick (1952), Nena [Gabrielle Kerner] (1960), Star Jones (1962), Jim Parsons (1973), Peyton Manning (1976) & Jessica Chastain (1977) were born #OnThisDay. Harun al-Rashid (809), Elizabeth Tudor (1603), Philip Dormer Stanhope [Lord Chesterfield] (1773), Walter Bagehot (1877), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1882), Jules Verne (1905), John Millington Synge (1909), Enrique Granados (1916), Théophile Ysaÿe (1918), Harold Laski (1950), Mary (May von Teck), queen of England (1953), Bernard Montgomery (1976), Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador (1980), George London (1985), An Wang (1990), Robert Culp (2010) & Terrence McNally (2020) died on this day.
 
 
May be an image of 1 person, beard and text that says '"The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make." William Morris'
 
 
 
 
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March 25
 
St. Catherine of Siena (1347), Joachim Murat (1767), Caroline Bonaparte (1782), Arturo Toscanini (1867), Béla Bartok (1881), Ed Begley (1901), A.J.P. [Alan John Percival] Taylor (1906), Bridget D’Oyly Carte (1908), David Lean (1908), Magda Olivero (1910), Jack Ruby (1911), Nancy Barbato Sinatra (1917), Howard Cosell (1918), Simone Signoret (1921), Alexandra of Greece & Denmark, queen of Yugoslavia (1921), Eileen Ford (1922), Flannery O’Connor (1925), Gloria Steinem, Johnny Burnette (1934), Anita Bryant (1940), Aretha Franklin (1942), Paul Michael Glaser (1943), Elton John [Reginald Kenneth Dwight] (1947), Marcia Cross (1962), Sarah Jessica Parker (1965) & Naftali Bennett (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Novalis [Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg] (1801), Claude Debussy (1918), Faisal, king of Saudi Arabia (1975), Roland Barthes (1980), Nancy Walker (1992), Warren Burger (1995), Larry Mc Murtry (2021) & Bill Brock (2021) died on this day. Venice founded (421), Richard I (‘the Lionheart’) of England wounded by a crossbow (1199), consecration of the Cappella Scrovegni (Arena) in Padova (Padua) (1305), Robert the Bruce crowned king of Scotland (1306), Pope Eugene IV consecrated the cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore — Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome was then the largest in the world (1436), Henry Hudson embarked on an exploration for Dutch East India Company to find a passage to Asia (1609), the first English colonists to colonize Maryland arrive on St. Clement’s Island (1634), Voltaire left the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia in Potsdam (1753), the British parliament enacted the Boston Port Act to punnish Bostonians for the Boston Tea Party of 1773 (1774), the House of Commons voted to abolish the slave trade throughout the British Empire (1807), George Canning became British foreign secretary (1807), Percy Bysshe Shelley expelled from the University of Oxford for his publication of the pamphlet “The Necessity of Atheism” (1811), official declaration of the ongoing Greek revolution against Ottoman Turkish rule (1821), 146 young women killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory fire in Manhattan (1911), the League of Nations Covenant adopted at the Paris peace conference (1919), Greek Independence Day (1920), Trans-Jordan granted autonomy within the British empire (1923), the US Supreme Court vacated the convictions of the ‘Scottsboro Boys’ on charges of raping a white woman in Alabama (1932), US Customs seized copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” for its alleged ‘obscenity’ (1955), the Treaty of Rome established European Economic Community (1957), France’s Charles de Gaulle recognized the Oder-Neisse line as the boundary between Germany & Poland (1959), a New York court ruled D.H. Lawrence’s novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” not obscene (1960), Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led 25,000 in a civil rights march to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery (1965), the US Supreme Court ruled the ‘poll tax’ unconstitutional (1966), Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march against the Vietnam War (1967), Lyndon Baines Johnson’s nine ‘Wise Men’ advised him to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War (1968), Faisal of Saudi Arabia assassinated (1975), Edwin Meese III became US attorney general (1985), “Dances with Wolves”, Kathy Bates & Jeremy Irons won Academy Awards at the 63rd Academy Awards ceremony (1991) on this day.
 
 
March 26
 
 
Charles, duc de Mayenne (1554), A.E. Housman (1859), Fuʾād I [Aḥmad Fuʾād Pasha], king of Egypt (1922-36) (1868), Robert Frost (1874), Syngman Rhee (1875), Duncan Hines (1880), William Backhaus (1884), Palmiro Togliatti (1893), Joseph Campbell (1904), Tennessee Williams (1911), William Westmoreland (1914), Sterling Hayden (1916), William Milliken (1922), Pierre Boulez (1925), Sandra Day O’Connor (1930), Leonard Nimoy (1931), Alan Arkin (1934), Mahmoud Abbas (1935), James Caan (1940), Nancy Pelosi (1940), Rod Lauren (1940), Richard Dawkins (1941), Erica Jong [Mann] (1942), Bob Woodward (1943), Diana Ross [Earle] (1944), Vicki Lawrence (1949), Martin Short (1950), Elaine Chao (1953), Lincoln Chafee (1953), Curtis Sliwa (1954), Chris Hansen (1959) & Kenny Chesney (1968), Keira Knightley (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Sigurd I of Norway (1130), Sancho I of Portugal (1212), Alfonso XI of Castile & Leon (1350), Heinrich Isaac (1517), Antonio de Cabezon (1566), John Winthrop (1649), Ludwig van Beethoven (1827), Walt Whitman (1892), Cecil Rhodes (1902), Sarah Bernhardt (1923), David Lloyd George (1945), Édouard Herriot (1957), Raymond Chandler (1959), Noël Coward (1973), Anthony Blunt (1983), Ahmed Sékou Touré (1984), Halston (1990), David Packard (1996), Edmund Muskie (1996), Daniel Patrick Moynihan (2003), James Callaghan (2005) & Geraldine Ferraro (2011) died on this day. William Caxton published his translation of Aesop’s Fables (1484), François I returned to France after captivity in Spain (1526), British troops took over Bombay (1668), the British Gazette & Sunday Monitor became the first Sunday newspaper to be published in the United Kingdom (1780), Congress enacted the US Naturalization Act (1790), a pro-royalist uprising in the Vendée region of France (1793), Napoléon captured Jaffa in Palestine (1799),
 
 
March 27
 
Robert II, king of the Franks (972), Francis II Rákóczi (1676), Carlo Buonaparte (1746), Louis XVII of France (1785), Georges Eugène, Baron Haussmann (1809), Wilhelm Röntgen (1845), Vincent d’Indy (1851), Henry Royce (1863), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886), Ferde Grofé (1892), Gloria Swanson (1899), Satō Eisaku (1901), James Callaghan (1912), Cyrus Vance (1917), Sarah Vaughan (1924), Anthony Lewis (1927), Mstislav Rostropovich (1927), David Janssen (1930), Michael York (1942), Maria Ewing (1950), Maria Schneider (1952), Mariano Rajoy (1955), Susan Molinari (1958), Quentin Tarantino (1963), Mariah Carey (1969), Princess Leila Pahlavi of Iran (1970) & Fergie [Duhamel] (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Marie de Bourgogne (duchess of Burgundy & Holy Roman Empress) (1482), James VI of Scotland & James I of England (1625), Giovanni Tiepolo (1770), Susan Blow (1916), Michael Joseph Savage (1940), Yuri Gagarin (1968), M.C. Escher (1972), Arthur Bliss (1975), Milton Berle (2002), Dudley Moore (2002), Billy Wilder (2002), Lyn Nofziger (2006), Farley Granger (2011), Adrienne Rich (2012), Hilton Kramer (2012) & Stéphane Audran (2018) died on this day. Ptolemy V ascended the throne of Egypt (196 BCE), Pope Clement V excommunicated Venice & Venetians (1309), Juan Ponce de León & his expedition first sighted Florida (1513), Elizabeth Tudor appointed Robert Devereux (Earl of Essex) Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1599), Charles I became king of England (1625), Charles II of England gave Bombay to the East India Company (1668), Spain ceded Menorca & Gibraltar to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Thomas Jefferson elected to the second Continental Congress (1775), Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, became British prime minister (1782), the modern shoelace with an aglet patented in England by Harvey Kennedy (1790), Andrew Rankin patented the urinal (1866), Andrew Johnson vetoed a civil rights bill that would later become the 14th Amendment (1866), Abraham Lincoln met with Ulysses Grant & William Tecumseh Sherman to plan the final Union drive to win the Civil War (1865), fingerprints were used for the first time to solve a murder case in London (1905), First Lady Helen Taft & the Japanese ambassador’s wife Viscountess Chinda planted cherry trees on the banks of the Potomac (1912), Typhoid Mary [Mary Mallon] arrested & returned to quarantine on North Brother Island (1915), Moldova & Bessarabia joined Romania (1918), Adolf Hitler signed Directive 27 directing an attack on Yugoslavia (1941), Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen’s film “Singin’ in the Rain” premiered at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan (1952), “Around World in 80 Days”, Ingrid Bergman & Yul Brynner won Academy Awards at the 29th Academy Awards ceremony (1957), Nikita Khruschchev became Soviet premier as well as general secretary of the Communist Party (1958), the strongest earthquake in US history hit southern Alaska (1964), UN troops arrived on Cyprus (1964), Suharto officially succeeded Sukarno as president of Indonesia (1968), “The Godfather”, Marlon Brando & Liza Minnelli won Academy Awards at the 45th Academy Awards ceremony (1973), Marlon Brando declined an Academy Award to protest Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans (1973), Washington, D.C.’s Metro system opened (1976), 583 died in the Tenerife airport disaster — the worst ever disaster in aviation history (1977), Mount St. Helens erupted for the first time in 123 years (1980), Jiang Zemin became president of the People’s Republic of China (1993), “Forrest Gump”, Jessica Lange & Tom Hanks won Academy Awards at the 67th Academy Awards ceremony (1995), the US Federal Drug Administration approved use of the drug Viagra (1998), UN General Assembly condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea (2014), Narendra Modi announced that India had become a ‘space power’ (2019), Theresa May promised to step down as British prime minister if parliament voted for her Brexit plan (2019), a report on Yahya Jammeh’s corruption concluded that he stole $1 billion from Gambia as president (2019), Facebook announced a ban on white supremacy & white nationalism after the Christchurch terrorist attack on a mosque in New Zealand (2019), Boris Johnson announced that he contracted COVID-19 but would continue to serve as British prime minister (2020), Donald Trump signed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package (2020), & 114 people were killed in Myanmar protesting the military’s coup d’état (2021) on this day.
 
 
March 28
 
Fra Bartolommeo (1472), Rafaello Sanzio (1483), Teresa de Ávila (1515), Pieter de Groot (1615), Frederick Pabst (1836), Aristide Briand (1862), Maxim Gorky (1868), Paul Whiteman (1890), Flora Robson (1902), Rudolf Serkin (1903), Myfanwy Piper (1911), Edmund Muskie (1914), Dirk Bogarde [Derek van den Bogaerde] (1921), Frederick ‘Freddie’ Bartholomew (1924), Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928), Michael Parkinson (1935), Mario Vargas Llosa (1936), Neil Kinnock (1942), Samuel Ramey (1942), Daniel Dennett (1942), Conrad Schumann (1942), Jerry Sloan (1942), Ken Howard (1944), Rodrigo Duterte (1945), Dianne Wiest (1948), Nydia Velázquez (1953), Reba McEntire (1955), Bernice King (1963), Iris Chang (1968), Vince Vaughn (1970) & Lady Gaga [Stefani Germanotta] (1986) were born #OnThisDay. Publius Helvius Pertinax (193), Ivan the Terrible (1584), Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1794), Modest Mussorgsky (1881), Virginia Woolf (1941), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1943), Mary [Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary], Princess Royal & Countess of Harewood (1965), Dwight Eisenhower (1969), Dino Ciani (1974), Marc Chagall [Moise Chagall] (1985), Maria von Trapp (1987), Eugene Ionesco (1994), Peter Ustinov (2004), Caspar Weinberger (2006), Ronald Hines (2017) & Tom Coburn (2020) died on this day. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (‘Caligula’) accepted the title of princeps conferred on him by the Senate (37), Roman Emperor Pertinax assassinated by Praetorian Guards, who then sold the throne in an auction to Didius Julianus (193), Philip II crowned king of Spain (1556), parliament urged George II to demand redress from Spain, eventually leading to the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1738), the British parliament enacted the Coercive Acts to punish Bostonians for the Boston Tea Party, only further fueling the American Revolution (1774), Juan Bautista de Anza identified the site for the Presidio in San Francisco (1776), the Musée du Louvre officially opened to the public (1794), the state of New York abolished slavery (1799), Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin’s funeral in France (1814), the US Congress censured Andrew Jackson for refusing to turn over documents (1834), Britain and France declared war on Russia, launching the Crimean War (1854), the first ambulance went into service (1866), Umberto Giordano’s opera “Andrea Chenier” premiered at the Teatro alla Scala di Milano (1896), 31-year-old Leon Thrasher became the first American killed in World War I (1915), Giacomo Puccini’s opera “La Rondine” premiered in Monte Carlo (1917), Tomáš Masaryk elected president of Czechoslovakia (1920), Constantinople & Angora changed their names to Istanbul & Ankara (1930), Leni Riefenstahl’s film “Triumph of the Will” released (1935), Madrid fell to Francisco Franco’s Nationalists, bringing the Spanish Civil War to an end (1939), the People’s Republic of China dissolved Tibet’s government 11 days after a popular uprising began in Tibet & installed the Panchen Lama in the place of the Dalai Lama (1959), Morarji Desai formed a new government in India (1977), the government of British prime minister Jim Callaghan fell (1979), Three Mile Island nuclear power plant disaster in Pennsylvania (1979), right-wing parties won parliamentary elections in France (1993), Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition won parliamentary elections in Italy (1994), two people in California tested positive for the H1N1 swine flu — the first cases in the US (2009), Donald Trump signed an ‘energy independence’ executive order undoing Barack Obama’s climate-related measures (2017), Kim Jong-un met with Xi Jinping in Beijing on the DPRK dictator’s first trip outside of North Korea since coming to power in 2011 (2018) & the European Parliament enacted a ban on single-use plastics to come into effect in 2021 (2019) on this day.
 
 
 
March 29
 
Jørgen Jørgensen (1780), John Tyler (1790), Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (1799), Ludwig Büchner (1824), Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826), Edwin Luytens (1869), Lou Henry Hoover (1874), Lavrentiy Beria (1899), William Walton (1902), E. Power Biggs (1906), Eugene McCarthy (1916), Pearl Bailey (1918), Sam Walton (1918), John McLaughlin (1927), Norman Tebbit (1931), Billy Carter (1937), John Major (1943), Walt ‘Clyde’ Frazier (1945), Bud Cort (1948), Karen Ann Quinlan (1954), Kurt Thomas (1956) & Amy Sedaris (1961) were born #OnThisDay. Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland (1461), Gustav III of Sweden (1792), Marquis de Condorcet (1794), Maria Fitzherbert (1837), John Jacob Astor (1848), Mark Hopkins (1878), Georges Seurat (1891), Robert Falcon Scott (1912), Annunzio Mantovani (1980), Carl Orff (1982), John, Earl Spencer (1992), Paul Henreid (1992), William ‘Bill’ Inge Lindon-Travers (1994), Johnny Cochran (2005), Howell Heflin (2005), Maurice Jarre (2009), Hobart ‘Hobie’ Alter (2014), Patty Duke [Anna Marie] & Krzysztof Penderecki (2020) died on this day. Paris was sacked by Viking raiders under Ragnar Lodbrok (845), Edward of York defeated the Lancastrian army at the Battle of Towton, deposing Henry VI of England & proclaiming himself Edward IV (1461), Salvador da Bahia — Brazil’s first capital — founded (1549), Québec restored to France in the Treaty of Saint-Germain (1632), Swedish Lutherans founded the first permanent European settlement in Delaware (1638), Charles II accepted the Test Act banning Catholics from public office (1673), Gustav III of Sweden died 13 days after being shot at a masked ball (1792), the 24-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven debuted as a pianist in Vienna (1795), Switzerland form as a republic (1798), New York’s state legislature enacted a law phasing out slavery (1799), Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden abdicated after a coup d’état (1809), Finland’s four Estates pledged allegiance to Alexander I of Russia at the Diet of Porvoo, commencing the transfer of the Grand Duchy of Finland from Sweden (1809), 20,000 attended Ludwig Beethoven’s burial in Vienna (1827), the great Bosnian uprising against Ottoman Turkish rule (1831), Niagara Falls froze over for 30 hours in an ice jam (1848), Britain formally annexed the Punjab after defeating Sikhs in India (1849), Gen. Ulysses Grant launched the final Union campaign of the Civil War (1865), Queen Victoria opened the Royal Albert Hall (1871), Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera “Yevgeny Onegin” premiered in Moscow (1879), the Catholic men’s organization the Knights of Columbus founded (1882), Japan went on the gold standard (1897), Captain Robert Falcon Scott — storm-bound in a tent near South Pole — made last entry in his diary — “the end cannot be far” (1912), Hjalmar Hammarskjöld resigned as prime minister over his defense of Sweden’s neutrality in World War I (1917), Yeshiva College (now University) chartered in Manhattan (1928), Herbert Hoover had the first telephone installed on the president’s desk in the Oval Office of the White House (1929), Heinrich Brüning appointed Germany’s Reichskanzler (1930), Benjamin Britten’s Requiem Symphony premiered (1941), the Royal Air Force bombed Lübeck — the RAF Bomber Command’s first major success in World War II (1942), Jimmy Stewart promoted to full colonel — one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel (1945), Frankfurt fell to Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army (1945), Turkey recognized the state of Israel (1949), Julius & Ethel Rosenberg convicted of spying for the Soviet Union & sentenced to death (1951), Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical “The King & I” premiered in Manhattan (1951), “All About Eve”, Judy Holliday & José Ferrer won Academy Awards at the 23rd Academy Awards ceremony (1951), Billy Wilder’s film “Some Like It Hot” released (1959), ratification of the 23rd Amendment to the US Constitution allowing Washington, D.C. residents to vote in presidential elections (1961), Lt. William Calley, Jr. found guilty in My Lai massacre in Vietnam (1971), Salvador Allende nationalized banks & copper mines in Chile (1971), the last US combat troops left South Vietnam as North Vietnam released the remaining American prisoners of war held in the north (1973), Chinese farmers discovered Qin Shi Huang Di’s terracotta army near Xi’an (1974), NASA’s Mariner 10 became the first spacecraft to visit Mercury (1974), “Lady Marmalade” by Labelle reached #1 on US singles chart (1975), “The Carol Burnett Show” aired for the last time on CBS after winning 25 Emmy Awards (1978), dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla resigned as president of Argentina (1981), “Chariots of Fire”, Henry Fonda & Katharine Hepburn won Academy Awards at the 54th Academy Awards ceremony (1982), “Rain Man,” Dustin Hoffman & Jodie Foster won Academy Awards at the 61st Academy Awards ceremony (1989), I.M. Pei’s pyramid entrance to the Musée du Louvre opened in Paris (1989), junk bond king Michael Milken indicted on racketeering charges (1989), Édouard Balladur formed a conservative government in France (1993), Elizabeth Taylor received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her AIDS/HIV activism at 65th Academy Awards ceremony (1993), the Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places (2004), the first British same-sex couples married after enactment of the Marriage Act of 2013 (2014), Ivanka Trump took an unpaid position as an advisor to Donald Trump (2017), British prime minister Theresa May sent a letter to the European Union invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, formally triggering Brexit (2017), Democrat Lucy Flores accused Joe Biden of an inappropriate kiss (2019), Derek Chauvin went on trial in Minneapolis for the murder of George Floyd (2021) & Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law (2022) on this day.
 
 
 
March 30
 
Mehmed II (‘the Conqueror’) (1432), Franciso Goya (1746), Maria Reynolds (1768), Robert Bunsen (1811), Paul Verlaine (1844), Vincent Van Gogh (1853), Sean O’Casey (1880), Brooke Astor (1902), Ernst Gombrich (1909), Richard Helms (1913), McGeorge Bundy (1919), Ingvar Kamprad (1926), John Heddle Nash (1928), Richard Dysart (1929), John Astin (2940), Warren Beatty (1937), Robbie Coltrane (1950), Piers Morgan (1965), Céline Dion (1968) & Mark Consuelos (1970) were born #OnThisDay. François I of France (1547), George ‘Beau’ Brummell (1840), Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1842), Conchita Supervía (1936), Léon Blum (1950), Maxfield Parrish (1966), Airey Neave (1979), James Cagney (1986), Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (2002), Alistair Cooke (2004) & G. Gordon Liddy (2021) died on this day. Sicilian Vespers (1282), Edward I of England sacked Berwick-upon-Tweed (1296), Henry VIII appointed Thomas Cranmer archbishop of Canterbury (1533), George III gave royal assent to the New England Restraining Act requiring colonists to trade exclusively with Britain (1775), forces of the Sixth Coalition marched into Paris after defeating Napoléon (1814), Joachim Murat issued the Rimini Declaration that would later inspire the Risorgimento (movement for the reunification of Italy) (1814), East & West Florida merged into the Florida Territory by Congress (1822), ether used as an anesthetic for the first time by Dr. Crawford Long in Georgia (1842), ‘Border Ruffians’ from Missouri invaded Kansas & precipitated violence in ‘Bloody Kansas’ (1855), the Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War (1856), Prince Wilhelm Georg von Schleswig-Holstein Sonderburg-Glücksburg chosen to be king George I of Greece (1863), Bedřich Smetana’s comic opera “Die Verkaufte Braut” (The Bartered Bride) premiered at Prague’s Provisional Theatre (1866), US secretary of state William Seward signed a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7,200,000 ($109 million in 2018, roughly 2 cents an acre) (1867), ratification of the 15 Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing all men the right to vote regardless of race (1870), Texas became the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union (1870), the Queensborough Bridge opened linking Manhattan to Queens (1909), the University of Southern Mississippi established by the Mississippi state legislature (1910), France established a protectorate in Morocco (1912), Henry Wallace criticized Harry Truman’s Cold War foreign policy (1948), “On the Waterfront”, Marlon Brando & Grace Kelly won Academy Awards at the 27th Academy Awards ceremony (1955), James Wong Howe became the first Asian American to win an Academy Award (for best cinematography) at the 27th Academy Awards ceremony (1955), India granted the Dalai Lama political asylum after his flight from Tibet following the People’s Republic of China’s invasion (1959), a car bomb destroyed the US embassy in Saigon & killed 19 Vietnamese, two Americans & one Filipino (1965), Israel killed six Palestinians protesting land theft (1976), Airey Neave killed by an Irish National Liberation Army car bomb as he left the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) in London (1979), John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan (1981), Hugh Hudson’s film “Chariots of Fire” premiered in London (1981), NYPD detective Robert Cunningham offered waitress Phyllis Penzo half of his lottery ticket which won $6 million the next day (1984), Marlee Matlin, Paul Newman & “Platoon” won Academy Awards at the 59th Academy Awards ceremony (1987), Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” sells for a record £22.5 million ($39.7 million) (1987), “The Silence of the Lambs”, Anthony Hopkins & Jodie Foster won Academy Awards at the 64th Academy Awards ceremony (1992), Richard Branson knighted by the Prince of Wales (2000), Park Geun-hye arrested on corruption charges after being the first president of the Republic of Korea to be impeached (2017) & Palestinians began the ‘Great March of Return’ to protest Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip & theft of land in illegally occupied Palestine (2018) on this day.
 
March 31
 
 
 
 
 
 
April 1
 
Otto von Bismarck (1815), Gaetano Mosca (1858), Ferruccio Busoni (1866), Edmond Rostand (1868), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873), Leonidas ‘Lon’ Chaney (1883), Clementine Ogilvy Spencer-Churchill (1885), Alberta Hunter (1895), Whittaker Chambers (1901), Abraham Maslow (1908), Toshiro Mifune (1920), William Manchester (1922), Brendan Byrne (1924), Milan Kundera (1929), George Baker (1931), Ali MacGraw (1939), Wangari Maathai (1940), Samuel R. Delany, Jr. (1942), Paul Manafort (1949), Samuel Alito (1950), Susan Boyle (1961), Rachel Maddow (1973), David Oyelowo (1976) & Logan Paul (1995) were born #OnThisDay. Shenzong emperor of Song China (1085), Eleanor of Acquitaine (1204), Scott Joplin (1917), Kaiser Karl I (Austrian emperor Charles I) (1922), Cosima Liszt Wagner (1930), Helena Rubinstein (1965), Marvin Gaye (1984), Erik Bruhn (1986), Martha Graham (1991), Juan de Borbon & Battenberg (1993), Nicanor Zabaleta (1993), Jolie Gabor (1997), Leslie Cheung (2003), Carrie Snodgress (2004), John Forsythe (2010), Miguel de la Madrid (2012), Steven Bochco (2018), Efraín Ríos Montt (2018) & Michel Sénéchal (2019) died on this day. Scots recaptured Berwick-upon-Tweed from the English (1318), Plymouth colonists concluded a defensive alliance with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags (1621), Cotton Mather blamed witchcraft for the death of his four-day-old son (1693), April Fools’ Day popularized in England (1700), Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre rediscovered the ruins of Pompeii (1748), New Orleans businessman Oliver Pollock created the $ symbol (1778), Jane Austen wrote to the Prince Regent, rejecting the future George IV’s suggestion that she write a historical romance novel (1816), Union troops defeated a Confederate army at the Battle of Five Forks (1865), the Second German Reich adopted a constitution (1871), Paul Gauguin left Marseille for Tahiti (1891), the Wrigley Co. founded in Chicago (1891), the Royal Air Force formed through the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) & the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) (1918), Adolf Hitler sentenced to five years labor for the Beer Hall Putsch but Gen. Erich Ludendorff acquitted (1924), Hebrew University dedicated in Jerusalem (1925), Louie Marx introduced the Yo-Yo (1929), “Der Blaue Engel” (The Blue Angel) starring Marlene Dietrich premiered (1930), Clyde Barrow killed two young highway patrolmen with Bonnie Parker, turning the public against Bonnie & Clyde (1934), Aden became a British colony (1937), the US recognized Francisco Franco’s fascist government in Spain (1939), 50,000 US troops landed on Okinawa (1945), the Faroe Islands granted autonomy within the Kingdom of Denmark (1948), the Big Bang theory first proposed in the journal “Physical Review” (1952), the US Census determined the resident population of the United States to be 179,245,000 (1960), U Nu elected prime minister of Burma (1960), the soap operas “General Hospital” (ABC) & “Doctors” (NBC) premiered (1963), Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs’ parents house in Cupertino, California (1976), the last episode of “The Bob Newhart Show” aired on NBC (1978), the US formally transferred the Canal Zone to Panama (1982), Marvin Gaye, Jr. shot & killed by Marvin Gaye, Sr. (1984), dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (1991), Alan Bennett’s play “The Madness of George III” premiered in London (1993), Nunavut territory carved out of the eastern part of Canada’s Northwest Territories (1999), the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s former president Slobodan Milošević surrendered to special forces on war crimes charges (2001), the Netherlands became the first country to legalize euthanasia (2002), Google introduced Gmail (2004), Michael Phelps won his record seventh gold medal, surpassing his own world record in Melbourne (2007), Croatia & Albania joined NATO (2009), NATO suspended all civilian & military cooperation with Rusia (2014), Bob Dylan received his Nobel Prize for Literature at a private ceremony in Stockholm (2017), the Japanese government announced the reign name ‘Reiwa’ for the next emperor of Japan (Naruhito) (2019), Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee & five other pro-democracy protesters were convicted in Hong Kong (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 2
 
Karl der Große (Charlemagne) (742), Prince George of Denmark, prince consort to Queen Anne of England (1653), Giacomo Casanova (1725), August Heinrich Hoffmann (1798), Hans Christian Andersen (1805), Émile Zola (1840), Walter Chrysler (1875), Max Ernst (1891), Christian ‘Buddy’ Ebsen (1908), Alec Guinness (1914), Jack Webb (1920), George MacDonald Fraser, Joseph Bernardin (cardinal & archbishop) (1928), Serge Gainsbourg (1928), Marvin Gaye (1939), Penelope Keith (1940), Linda Hunt (1945), Camille Paglia (1947), Emmylou Harris (1947), Christopher Meloni (1961), Rodney King (1965) & Aiden Turner (1977) were born #OnThisDay. Arthur, Prince of Wales (1502), Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (1791), Hermann Rorschach (1922), Georges Pompidou (1974), Pope John Paul II (2005) & Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (2018) died on this day. Turkish forces under Sultan Mehmed II began the siege of Constantinople (İstanbul) — which fell on May 29 (1453), Juan Ponce de León claimed Florida for Spain as the first European to reach Florida (1513), England & France signed the first Treaty of Le Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), Ludwig van Beethoven’s first symphony premiered in Vienna (1800), the British navy under Horatio Nelson destroyed the Danish fleet in the naval Battle of Copenhagen (1801), the first parliament of a united Italy met in Turin (18760), Confederate president Jefferson Davis fled Richmond (1865), Sun Yat-Sen founded China’s Guomindang (‘Nationalist Party’) (1912), Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany (1917), Ras Tafari Makonnen became Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) (1930), Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti returned to Italy from the Soviet Union (1944), Sen. Eugene McCarthy won the Democratic primary in Wisconsin (1968), “2001 A Space Odyssey” — directed by Stanley Kubrick & starring Keir Dullea & Gary Lockwood — premiered at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. (1968), “The Sting”, Glenda Jackson & Jack Lemmon won Academy Awards at the 46th Academy Awards ceremony (1974), Khiu Sampan succeeded Prince Sinahouk as prime minister of Cambodia (1976), “Dallas” premiered on CBS (1978), Martina Navratilova won her first WTA Tour Championship, beating Evonne Goolagong Cawley of Australia in Oakland (1978), anthrax poisoning killed 62 in Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk) (1979) Argentine troops seized the Falkland Islands (las Malvinas, igniting the Falklands War (1982), Ed Koch signed the gay rights bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in New York City (1986), Edith Cresson resigned as prime minister of France, the first woman to head a French government (1992), Mafioso John Gotti convicted of murder (1992), NY Police Department & New York Transit Police merged into one organization (1995), Israeli forces besieged the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (2002), Uruguay’s parliament enacted legislation recognizing same-sex marriage (2013), Lori Lightfoot elected the first female African American Mayor of Chicago (2019) & Spain’s COVID-19 death toll surpassed 10,000 (10,003) (2020) on this day.
 
 
 
April 3
 
Philip III of France (1245), Henry IV of England (1367), George Herbert (1593), Washington Irving (1793), Edward Everett Hale (1822), William Magear ‘Boss’ Tweed (1823), Léon Michel Gambetta (1838), J.B.M. Hertzog (1866), Mistinguett [Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois] (1871), Alcide de Gasperi (1881), Leslie Howard [Stainer] (1893), Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895), Henry Luce (1898), Camille Chamoun (1900), Michael Woodruff (1911), Henry Caen (1916), John Demjanjuk (1920), Doris Day [Kappelhoff] (1922), Marlon Brando (1924), Tony Benn (1925), Helmut Kohl (1930), Lawton Chiles (1930), Max Frankel (1930), Wally Moon (1930), Jane Goodall (1934), Petunia Pig (Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies) (1937), David Maves (1937), Marsha Mason (1942), Tony Orlando [Cassavitis] (1944), Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1946), Garrick Ohlsson (1948), Alec Baldwin (1958), David Hyde Pierce (1959), Eddie Murphy (1961), Nigel Farage (1964), Matthew Goode (1978), Amanda Bynes (1986), Julie Sokolow (1987) & Paris Jackson (1998) were born #OnThisDay. Jesus of Nazareth’s crucifixion (according to astronomer Humphreys & Waddington) (33), Khosrow II, Sāsānian king of Persia (579-628) (628), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1682), Jesse James (1882), Johannes Brahms (1897), Richard D’Oyly Carte (1901), Bruno Hauptmann (1936), Conrad Veidt (1943), Kurt Weill (1950), Ferde Grofé (1972), Peter Pears (1986), Sarah Vaughan (1990), Graham Greene (1991), Carl Stokes (1996), Ron Brown (1996), Eugène Terre’Blanche (2010), Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (2013), Sarah Brady (2015) & Andrew Porter (2015) died on this day. Edward the Confessor crowned king of England (1043), Peter of Castile defeated his brother Henry at the Battle of Navarrete [Nájera] (1367), Spain & France signed 2nd Treaty of Le Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell refused the crown of England (1657), Robert Walpole became the first Lord of the Treasury (in effect, British prime minister (1721), Joseph II crowned Holy Roman Emperor (1764), the Continental Congress authorized privateers to attack British ships (1776), the Pony Express began operating between St. Joseph (Missouri) & Sacramento (California) (1860), Union forces occupied Richmond & Petersburg (1865), Jesse James killed by fellow gang member Robert Ford in St. Joseph (1882), Vladimir Lenin arrived in Petrograd, returning to Russia from exile in Switzerland (1917), Austria expelled the Habsburgs (1919), Joseph Stalin appointed General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party by an ailing Vladimir Lenin (1922), Istanbul’s Ottoman Topkapi Palace converted into a museum on the orders of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1924), Bruno Hauptmann executed for the kidnapping & murder of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh, Jr. (1936), Winston Churchill warned Joseph Stalin that Nazi Germany was planning to invade the Soviet Union (1941), Harry Truman signed the bill into law creating the Marshall Plan (1948), Juliana of the Netherlands addressed the US Congress (1952), the American Civil Liberties Union announced that it would defend Allen Ginsberg’s book “Howl” against obscenity charges (1955), “Planet of the Apes” premiered (1968), US defense secretary Melvin Laird announced the policy of ‘Vietnamization’ (1969), 50th Academy Awards: “Annie Hall”, Richard Dreyfuss & Diane Keaton won Academy Awards at the 50th Academy Awards ceremony (1978), Jane Byrne was elected mayor of Chicago, becoming the first woman to lead a major US city (1979), Brixton race riots in London (1981), the UN Security Council demanded that Argentina withdraw from the Falkland Islands (1982), the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels auctioned for £31,380,197 (1987), the UN Security Council adopted a Gulf War truce resolution (1991), Theodore John Kaczynski arrested by the FBI after it determined he was the Unabomber (1996), US commerce secretary Ronald Brown & 32 other Americans killed in a plane crash in Croatia near Dubrovnik (1996), Australia formally adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2009), Barack Obama officially secured the Democratic presidential nomination (2012), publication of the Panama Papers documenting the corruption of the global elite (2016) & Brunei’s new Sharia law punishing adultery & homosexuality with death by stoning provoked worldwide outrage (2019) on this day.
 
 
 
April 4
 
Caracalla (188), William Strachey (1572), Pierre Paul Prud’hon (1758), Bettina von Arnim (1785), Thaddeus Stevens (1792), Dorothea Dix (1802), Tad Lincoln (1853), Pierre Monteux (1875), Maurice de Vlaminck (1875), Georg von Trapp (1876), Isoroku Yamamoto (1884), Arthur Murray (Moses Teichman] (1895), John Cameron Swayze (1906), Muddy Waters [McKinley Morganfield] (1913), Marguerite Dumas (1914), Antony Tudor (1919), Éric Rohmer [Maurice Schérer] (1920), Maya Angelou [Marguerite Johnson] (1928), Estelle Harris (1928), Anthony Perkins (1932), Richard Lugar (1932), A. Bartlett Giamatti (1938), Kitty Kelley (1942), Gen. Wiranto (1947), Christine Lahti (1950), Hun Sen (1951), Jane Eaglin (1960), Hugo Weaving (1960), Robert Downey, Jr. (1965), Heath Ledger (1979), Jamie Lynn Spears (1991) & Grumpy Cat [Tardar Sauce] (2012) were born #OnThisDay. Alfonso X (‘the Wise’) (1284), Oliver Goldsmith (1774), William Henry Harrison (1841), Karl Benz (1929), André Michelin (1931), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1972), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1979), Gloria Swanson (1983), John Heinz (1991), Roger Ebert (2013) & Alexander Thynn, 7th Marquess of Bath (2020) died on this day. Ignatius de Loyola became the first superior-general of the Jesuit order (1541), Elizabeth Tudor knighted Francis Drake aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford (1581), Christian IV succeeded Frederik II as king of Denmark (1588), James II issued his Declaration of Indulgence, ordering it read in churches throughout England (1686), Napoléon abdicated as emperor of the French in favor of his son (1814), John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison as president following his death (1841), City of Los Angeles incorporated (1850), Abraham Lincoln had a dream that presaged his assassination (1865), Alexander II of Russia narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by Dmitry Karakozov in St. Petersburg (1866), Golden Gate park established in San Francisco under City Order #800 (1870), Susanna Madora Salter elected mayor of Argonia (Kansas), becoming the first woman elected mayor of any US city (1887), Jean-Baptiste Sipido attempted to assassinate the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) as a protest over British participation in the Boer War (1900), Cecil Rhodes started the Rhodes Scholarship fund with $10 million (1902), “The Perils of Pauline” film series premiered in Los Angeles (1914), the US Senate voted 82-6 to declare war on Germany (1917), the Second Battle of the Somme ended (1918), Gen. Charles de Gaulle formed a French government in exile with Communists & others (1944), Soviet forces liberated Hungary from Nazi German occupation (1945), US forces liberated Ohrdruf, the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by the US Army (1945), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty signed in Washington, D.C. (1949), Lana Turner’s 14-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane stabbed mobster Johnny Stompanato in self-defense (1958), “Ben-Hur”, Charlton Heston & Simone Signoret won Academy Awards at the 32nd Academy Awards ceremony (1960), Senegal declared its independence from France (1960), Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the Vietnam War in a major address at Riverside Church in Manhattan (1967), Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, provoking riots across the country (1968), Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” premiered at Winter Garden Theater in Manhattan (1971), the World Trade Center opened in Manhattan, becoming the tallest building in the world (1973), Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth’s home run record (1974), Microsoft founded (1975), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto executed in Pakistan (1979), Henry Cisneros elected mayor of San Antonio, the first Mexican-American to be elected mayor of a US city (1981), Sen. John Heinz & six others killed in a plane/helicopter collision in Pennsylvania (1991), Jack Ma founded Alibaba (1999), the Angolan government & UNITA rebels signed a peace treaty ending the Angolan civil war (2002), Don Imus made disparaging comments about Rutgers’ women’s basketball team (2007), German Nobel Laureate Günter Grass published controversial poem that claims Israel is plotting to wipe out Iran (2012), Jack Ma’s Alibaba became the world’s largest retailer (2017), Belgian prime minister Charles Michel apologized for the kidnapping of thousands of mixed-race children during colonial period in the Congo, Burundi & Rwanda (2019) & Kathie Lee Gifford left NBC’s “Today” show after 11 years (2019) on this day.
 
 
 
April 5
 
Bianca Maria Sforza (1472), Thomas Hobbes (1588), Elihu Yale (1649), Adrienne Lecouvreur (1692), Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732), Sébastien Érard (1752), Jules Ferry (1832), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837), Booker T. Washington (1856), Albert Roussel (1869), Spencer Tracy (1900), [Ruth Elizabeth] Bette Davis (1908), Herbert von Karajan (1908), Gregory Peck (1916), Arthur Hailey (1920), Nguyen Van Thieu (1923), Nigel Hawthorne (1929), Colin Powell (1937), Pedro Rosselló (1944), Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (1947), Agnetha Fältskog [Anna Ulvaeus] (1950), Pharrell Williams (1973), Sterling K. Brown (1976), Hayley Atwell (1982) & Lily James (1989) were born #OnThisDay. St. Vincent Ferrer (1419), Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier (la Grande Mademoiselle) (1693), Charles XI of Sweden (1697), Georges Danton (1794), George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon (1923), Douglas MacArthur (1964), Howard Hughes (1976), Abe Fortas (1982), John Tower (1991), Sam Walton (1992), Kurt Cobain (1994), Allen Ginsberg (1997), Saul Bellow (2005) & Charlton Heston [John Carter] (2008) died on this day. St. Patrick returned to Ireland as a missionary bishop (456), Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod defeated the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of the Ice (1242), James I returned to Scotland after 18 years in captivity at the English court (1424), James VI of Scotland left Edinburgh to become James I of England (1603), Pocahontas married John Rolfe in Jamestown (1614), Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen became the first European to reach Easter Island (Rapa Nui) (1722), parliament enacted George Grenville’s legislation levying a Sugar Tax on the American colonies (1764), Benjamin Franklin sent an open letter to British prime minister Lord North (1774) George Washington issued the first US presidential veto (1792), Ludwig van Beethoven conducted the premiere of his second symphony in D in Vienna (1803), British troops stormed the fortress of Badajoz held by French & Spanish forces (1812), Mount Tambora erupted on Java for the first time in several centuries (1815), Chile’s independence movement led by Bernardo O’Higgins & José de San Martín won a decisive victory over Spanish troops at the Battle of Maipú (1818), Johann Strauss Jr’s opera “Die Fledermaus” premiered in Vienna (1874), Chile declared war on Bolivia & Peru, starting the War of the Pacific (1879), Anne Sullivan taught Helen Keller the word ‘water’ (1887), Oscar Wilde lost his libel case against the Marquees of Queensberry (1895), failed assassination attempt against the Prince of Wales in Brussels (1900), Ricardo Viñes performed Maurice Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante defunte (Pavane for A Dead Princess)” at its premiere in Paris (1902), Gen. Erich Ludendorff formally ended Operation Michael, the first stage of the final major German offensive of World War I (1918), Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) (1933), Hitler Jugend membership declared mandatory for German youth (1939), Julius & Ethel Rosenberg sentenced to death on espionage charges (1951), Anthony Eden succeeded Winston Churchill as British prime minister (1955), the first driverless trains ran on the London Underground (1964), “My Fair Lady”, Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady) & Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins) won Academy Awards at the 37th Academy Awards ceremony (1965), Sri Lanka’s Communist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) launched an insurrection against the United Front government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike (1971), Harold Wilson succeeded James Callaghan as British prime minister upon his resignation (1976), Lord [Peter] Carrington resigned as British foreign secretary over Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands (las Malvinas) (1982), the Fox TV network premiered with “Married With Children” & “The Tracey Ullman Show” (1987), Poland’s government granted legal status to trade union Solidarność (Solidarity) (1989), Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized biography of Nancy Reagan published (1991), Alberto Fujimori suspended Peru’s constitution & dissolved its Congress (1992), Kurt Cobain’s suicide (1994), Steve Irwin’s “The Crocodile Hunter” debuted (1997), North Korea launched its controversial Kwangmyŏngsŏng 2 rocket (2009), Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned after the Panama Papers leak showed a conflict of interest (2016), San Francisco became the first US city to mandate paid parental leave (2016), PayPal announced cancellation of a $3.6 million investment in North Carolina after the state enacted anti-LGBT legislation (2016), Pepsi pulled an ad featuring Kendall Jenner after criticism that it was trivializing Black Lives Matter demonstrations against police brutality (2017), British prime minister Boris Johnson was admitted to the hospital with a case of COVID-19 (2020), India recorded over 100,000 new daily COVID cases for the first time, more than half in the state of Maharashtra (2021) & Italy scrapped its 1914 film censorship law that could ban films on moral and religious grounds (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 6
 
Raffaello Sanzio (1483), Aasmund Olavsson Vinje (1818), Joseph Medill (1823), Gustave Moreau (1826), René Lalique (1860), Joseph Lincoln Steffens (1866), Donald Wills Douglas (1892), Kurt Kiesinger (1904), Ian Paisley (1926), James Watson (1928), André Previn (1929), Billy Dee Williams (1937), Merle Haggard (1937), Felicity Palmer (1944), Marilu Henner (1952), Ralph Correa (1963), Paul Rudd (1969), Zach Braff (1975) & Candace Cameron Buré (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Richard the Lionheart, king of England (1199), Raffaello Sanzio (1520), Albrecht Dürer, (1528), Sir Francis Walsingham (1590), Dr. Sam Sheppard (1970), Igor Stravinsky (1971), Chiang Kai-shek (1975), Isaac Asimov (1992), Juvénal Habyarimana (1994), Greer Garson (1996), Tammy Wynette (1998), Habib Bourguiba (2000), Rainier III of Monaco (2005), Fang Lizhi (2012), Mickey Rooney (2014), Merle Haggard (2016), Don Rickles (2017), Daniel Akaka (2018) & Richard Green (2019) died on this day. Julius Caesar defeated Caecilius Metellus Scipio & Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger) at the battle of Thapsus (46 BCE), Stilicho’s Roman army defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Pollentia (402), Karl der Große (Charlemagne) confirmed the gift to the Pope of the territories belonging to Ravenna made by his father Pepin the Short at Quiercy-sur-Loire in 753 (774), Scots reaffirmed their independence by signing the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), the Dutch East India Company under Jan van Riebeeck founded the Cape Colony — the first European settlement in South Africa (1652), Charles II of England signed the Carolina Charter (1663), Louis XIV’s France declared war on the Netherlands (1672), Catherine the Great lifted Peter the Great’s 1698 tax on Russian men with beards (1772), Rama I overthrew Taksin in a coup d’état in Siam (Thailand) (1782), Joseph Smith & five others officially organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Fayette (New York) (1830), the Black Hawk war began in Illinois (1832), the cornerstone laid for the second Mormon temple in Nauvoo (Illinois) (1841), John Tyler sworn in as president upon the sudden death of William Henry Harrison (1841), Queen Victoria appointed William Wordsworth British poet laureate (1843), Union troops defeated Confederate forces at the Battle of Shiloh (1862), the city of Vancouver incorporated in British Columbia (1886), Tonga made neutral by the Declaration of Berlin (1886), George Eastman began selling his Kodak flexible rolled film (1889), Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City dedicated (1893), “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces” by J. Stuart Blackton — the world’s first animated film (1906), Robert Peary & Matthew Henson reached the North Pole (1909), the House of Representatives voted for a US declaration of war on Germany two days after the Senate (1917), the Bavarian Soviet Republic declared (1919), Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi orders a general strike in India (1919), Hostess Twinkies invented by bakery executive James Dewar (1930), 418 Lutheran ministers arrested in Nazi Germany (1934), Nazis began evacuating prisoners from Buchenwald concentration camp (1945), the City of New York ended trolley car service (1957), “Gigi,” Susan Hayward & David Niven won Academy Awards at the 31st Academy Awards ceremony (1959), France’s prime minister Georges Pompidou formed a new government (1967), Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey” released (1968), Dr. Sam Sheppard died at the age of 46 (1970), the Scarman Tribunal Report (an inquiry into the causes of violence during the summer of 1969 in Northern Ireland) published, finding that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had been seriously at fault (1972), Indian troops invaded Sikkim (1973), ABBA for Sweden won the 19th Eurovision Song Contest singing “Waterloo” in Brighton (1974), the plane carrying Rwanda’s president Juvénal Habyarimana & Burundi’s president Cyprien Ntaryamira is shot down by surface-to-air missiles, abruptly ending peace negotiations & sparking the Rwanda genocide (1994), Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz re-elected prime minister of Hungary (2014), Bernie Sanders won the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary & Ted Cruz won the Wisconsin Republican presidential primary (2016), France enacted a law criminalizing paying for sex (2016), 30,000 Peruvians demonstrated in Lima against presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori on the 24th anniversary of her father Alberto Fujimori’s coup d’état (2016), China’s Xi Jinping arrived in Florida for talks with Donald Trump (2017), the Bronx Zoo’s tiger Nadia became the first cat to test positive for human-to-cat transmitted COVID-19 (2020) & Jeff Bezos topped the Forbes list of 2,755 billionaires with a fortune of $177 billion (2021) on this day.
 
 
 
April 7
 
(St.) Francis Xavier (1506), François de Neufville, duc de Villeroi (1644), John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham & Normanby (1648), William Wordsworth (1770), William Ellery Channing (1780), William Rufus DeVane King (1786), Flora Tristan (1803), Gabriela Mistral [Lucila Godoy Alcayaga] (1889), Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890), Allen Dulles (1893), Walter Winchell (1897), Robert Casadesus (1899), Billie Holiday [Eleanora Fagan], (1915), Ravi Shankar [Chowdhury] (1920), Kenneth Peacock (1922), James Garner (1928), Anderew Sachs (1930), Daniel Ellsberg (1931), Wayne Rogers (1933), Ian Richardson (1934), Hodding Carter III (1935), Tariq Aziz (1936), Jerry Brown (1938), David Frost (1939), Franciso Ford Coppola (1939), Gerhard Schröder (1944), Jackie Chan (1954), Christopher Darden (1956), Russel Crowe (1964), Leif Ove Andsnes (1970) & Guillaume Depardieu (1971) were born #OnThisDay. Charles VIII of France (1498), Doménikos Theotokópoulos (‘El Greco’) (1614), Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (1719), Dick Turpin (1739), Toussaint L’Ouverture (1803), P.T. [Phineas Taylor] Barnum (1891), Henry Ford (1947), Frank Church (1984), Ruth Page (1991), Agathe Uwilingiyimana (1994), François de Grossouvre (1994), Mike Wallace (2012), Peaches Geldof (2014) & Tim Pigott-Smith (2017) died on this day. Attila the Hun sacked Metz (451), Byzantine emperor Justinian I issued the first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis (529), Prague University founded by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (1348), Ferdinand Magellan reached Cebu (1521), Albrecht von Wallenstein appointed supreme commander of the Holy Roman Emperor’s army (1625), Michael Cardozo became the first Jewish lawyer in Brazil (1645), Fabio Chigi succeeded Pope Innocent X as Pope Alexander VII (1655), 6 white men killed in a slave revolt in New York & 21 African Americans executed for participating in it (1712), Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St John Passion” premiered in Leipzig (1724), Dick Turpin executed in England for horse stealing (1739), Revolutionary France adopted the metric system (1795), Ludwig van Beethoven conducted the premiere of his thir (‘Eroica’) symphony in Vienna (1805), Lewis & Clark’s expedition began at Fort Mandan on the Missouri River (1805), John Walker invented wooden matches (1827), Dom Pedro abdicated as emperor of Brazil, succeeded by Dom Pedro II (1831), Ulysses Grant defeated Confederate forces at the Battle of Shiloh (1862), Fridtjof Nansen reached a record 86°13.6′N latitude north (1895), Manuel de Falla’s ballet “El Sombrero de tres Picos” premiered in Madrid (1917), Sun Yat-sen elected president of the Republic of China (1921), Warren G. Harding’s interior secretary Albert B. Fall leased the Teapot Dome oil reserves to Harry Sinclair, setting in motion the Teapot Dome scandal (1922), Italy invaded Albania (1939), the northern half of East Prussia incorporated into the Russian SFSR (1946), France recognized Syria’s independence (1946), the UN General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden UN Secretary-General (1953), West Germany’s government refused to recognize the DDR/GDR regime (1954), Dwight Eisenhower gave his ‘domino effect’ speech on Communism in Southeast Asia (1954), Spain relinquished its protectorate over Morocco (1956), Josip Broz Tito declared Yugoslavia’s president for life (1963), “Midnight Cowboy,” John Wayne (True Grit) & Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jane Brody) won Academy Awards at the 42nd Academy Awards ceremony (1970), Richard Nixon freed Lt. William Calley from house arrest after his conviction for his role in the My Lai Massacre (1971), Deng Xiaoping fired as vice-premier by the politburo of the Chinese Communist Party (1976), John Poindexter (Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor) found guilty of five counts of lying to Congress & obstruction regarding the Iran-Contra scandal (1990), the Republika Srbska declared its independence from Bosnia-Herzegovina 91992), the murder of Rwanda’s prime minister & acting president Agathe Uwilingiyimana initiated the Rwandan genocide (1994), Alberto Fujimori sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings & kidnappings by security forces as president of Peru (2009), Joyce Banda became president of Malawi (2012), Rwanda commemorated the 25th anniversary of the genocide that killed 800,000 to a million Rwandans (2019), rebel forces began advancing on Tripoli to overthrow Col Muammar al-Gaddafi’s regime in Libya (2019), Australia’s highest court overturned the child sexual abuse conviction of Roman Catholic George Cardinal Pell (2020) & Wisconsin’s Democratic presidential primary went ahead after the Republican state legislature rejected mail-in voting in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) on this day.
 
 
April 8
 
Siddartha Gautama (the Buddha) (563), Pedro I of Portugal (1320), Juan Ponce de León (1460), Claudio Merulo (1533), Philip IV of Spain (1605), Giuseppe Tartini (1692), Christian IX of Denmark (1818), Pancha Carrasco (1826), Edmund Husserl (1859), Albert I of Belgium (1875), Adrian Boult (1889), Mary Pickford [Gladys Smith] (1892), Yip Harburg [Isadore Hochberg] (1896), Sonia Henie (1912), Betty Ford [Elizabeth Bloomer] (1918), Franco Corelli (1923), Leah Schloßberg Rabin (1928), Jacques Brel (1929), Walter Berry (1929), Dorothy Tutin (1930), Seymour Hersh (1937), Kofi Annan (1938), Tom DeLay (1947) & Patricia Arquette (1968) were born #OnThisDay. Caracalla (217), Jean II of France (1364), Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicholas-Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1794), Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (1848), Elisha Otis (1861), Vaslav Nijinsky (1950), Pablo Picasso (1973), Omar Bradley (1981), Ryan White (1990), Marian Anderson (1993), Claire Trevor (2000), Margaret Thatcher (2013) & Annette Funicello (2013) died on this day. Caracalla assassinated & succeeded as Roman emperor by Marcus Opellius Macrinus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard (217), dedication of Winchester Cathedral (1093), Louis XII of France defeated Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan at the Battle of Novara (1500), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V convened an imperial diet in Augsburg (1530), Congregation Shearith Israel opened in Manhattan — the first synagogue in North America (1730), the Ayutthaya kingdom fell to Burmese invaders (1767), Catherine II of Russia annexed the Crimea (1783), discovery of the Venus de Milo on the island of Milos (1820), Piedmont-Sardinia’s troops defeated an Austrian army at the First Battle of Gioto (1848), John D. Lynde patented the aerosol dispenser (1862), the American Museum of National History opened in Manhattan (1869), Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera “La Gioconda” premiered in Milan (1876), William Ewart Gladstone introduced the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons (1886), Entente Cordiale signed by Britain & France (1904), Aleister Crowley transcribed the first chapter of the Book of the Law (1904), Longacre Square in Manhattan renamed Times Square in honor of the New York Times moving there (1904), H. H. Asquith succeeded Henry Campbell-Bannerman as British prime minister (1908), China’s first elected parliament met for the first time in Beijing (1913), Congress ratified the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution providing for the direct election of senators (1917), Norway approved the vote for women (1916), Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration legislation & Emergency Relief Appropriation Act enacted by Congress (1935), Zog I fled Albania after Italy invaded (1939), Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated a wage/price freeze in the US (1943), the last meeting of the League of Nations (1946), Harry Truman seized US steel mills to avert a strike (1952), Jomo Kenyatta convicted of involvement with the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya & sentenced to seven years (1953), “Lawrence of Arabia,” Anne Bancroft & Gregory Peck won Academy Awards at the 35th Academy Awards ceremony (1963), Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in the face of hate mail & death threats from white supremacists (1974), “The Godfather: Part II,” Ellen Burstyn & Art Carney won Academy Awards at the 47th Academy Awards ceremony (1975), Yitzhak Rabin resigned as Israel’s prime minister (1977), Clint Eastwood elected mayor of Carmel (1986), “Twin Peaks” premiered on ABC (1990), Birendra of Nepal lifted the 30-year ban on political parties (1990), New Democracy won the parliamentary election in Greece (1990), 18-year-old Ryan White died of AIDS (1990), Michael Landon announced he had inoperable pancreatic cancer (1991), grunge artist Kurt Cobain found dead three days after his suicide (1994), the Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement signed by the Sudanese government & two rebel groups ended the war in Darfur (2004), national security advisor Condoleezza Rice testified before the 9/11 Commission (2004), Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama off the coast of Somalia (2009), Günter Grass labelled ‘persona non grata’ by Israeli internal affairs minister Eli Yishai over the poem “What Must Be Said” (2012), Viktor Orbán’s right-wing Fidesz/KDNP alliance won parliamentary elections in Hungary (2018), Allison Mack pled guilty to sex trafficking charges in the sex cult NXIVM trial (2019), seven killed and 2,500 arrested in Khartoum in protests against Omar al-Bashir’s dictatorship (2019), Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic presidential race (2020), Dr. Anthony Fauci thanked American health workers for their sacrifice during the pandemic, acknowledging their more than 3,600 deaths (2021) & Egyptian archaeologists announced the discovery of a lost 3,000-year-old ancient city of Aten near Luxor (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 9
 
Tamerlane (Timur) (1336), Giuditta Pasta (1798), Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806), Charles Baudelaire (1821), Léopold II of Belgium (1835), Paolo Tosti (1847), Helene Lange (1848), Erich Ludendorff (1865), Léon Blum (1872), Sol Hurok (1888), Curly Lambeau (1898), Paul Robeson (1898), J. William Fulbright (1905), Antal Doráti (1906), Hugh Gaitskell (1906), Victor Vasarely (1906), Abraham Ribicoff (1910), Jørn Utzon (1918), Hugh Hefner (1926), Tom Lehrer (1928), Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933), Michael Learned (1939), Dennis Quaid (1954), Joe Scarborough (1963), Marc Jabobs (1963), Doug Ducey (1964), Paulina Porizkova (1965), Jeff Zucker (1965), Cynthia Nixon (1966), Nikole Hannah-Jones (1976), Kristen Stewart 1990), Lil Nas X [Montero Lamar Hill] (1999) & Jackie Evancho (2000) were born #OnThisDay. Emperor Jimmu Tennō (according to legend, the first emperor of Japan) (585 BCE), Edward IV of England (1483), Francis Bacon [Lord Verulam] (1626), Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy (1693), Simon Fraser, 12th Baron Lovat (1747), Jacques Necker (1804), Erastus Corning (1872), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1882), Isabella II of Spain (1904), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1945), Frank Lloyd Wright (1959), Zog I [Ahmed Zogu] of Albania (1961), James F. Byrnes (1972), Andrea Dworkin (2005), Sidney Lumet (2011), Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh (2021) & Ramsey Clark (2021) died on this day. Septimius Severus proclaimed emperor by Roman legions in Illyricum (193), Mongols defeated Poles & Germans at the Battle of Liegnitz (1241), Swiss troops defeated a Habsburg army at the Battle of Näfels (1388), Henry V crowned king of England (1413), Edward V succeeded Edward IV upon his death but the new king of England & his brother Richard disappeared, never to be seen again (1483), Christian III of Denmark joined the Schmalkaldische Union (Smalkaldic League) (1538), first public art exhibition at the Palais-Royale in Paris (1667), Robert La Salle claimed ‘Louisiana’ (the lower Mississippi valley) for France (1682), Robert Jenkins’ ear cut off by the Spanish Guarde Costa, a casus bell for Britain’s war with Spain (1731), John Hancock refused to allow British customs agents to inspect his ship (1768), British ratification of the Treaty of Paris (9.3.1783) ending the American Revolutionary War (1784), the African Methodist Episcopal Church organized in Philadelphia (1816), Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) received his steamboat pilot’s license (1859), Robert E. Lee’s 26,765 Confederates surrendered to Ulysses Grant at Appomattox Court House (1865), Congress enacted a new civil rights law, overriding Andrew Johnson’s veto (1866), the Hudson Bay Company ceded its territory to Canada (1869), Mae West made her Manhattan debut in “Diamond Lil” (1928), Turkey’s parliament enacted a law establishing the separation of church & state (1928), Marian Anderson sang to a crowd of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, d.C. (1939), Nazi German troops invaded Denmark & Norway, Denmark surrendering within six hours (1940), Major Gen. Edward P. King Jr. surrendered at Bataan (against Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s orders & 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos & 12,000 Americans) — the largest contingent of US soldiers ever to surrender — taken captive by the Japanese (1942), end of the Battle of Königsberg in East Prussia (1945), the Congress of Racial Equality’s Journey of Reconciliation — considered the first Freedom Ride — set out from Washington, D.C. (1947), Zionist massacre of Palestinians in Deir Yassin (1948), “West Side Story” (best picture, director & eight more), Sophia Loren (“Two Women”) & Maximilian Schell (“Judgement at Nuremberg”) won Academy Awards at the 34th Academy Awards ceremony & Rita Moreno became the first Latino to win an Oscar (1962), the German Democratic Republic (DDR/GDR) adopted a constitution (1968), Martin Luther King, Jr. buried in Atlanta (1968), Ralph Aberbathy elected to head Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1968), the Chicago Eight plead not guilty to federal conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 democratic National Convention in Chicago (1969), Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner convicted on corruption charges (1973), Peter Bogdanovich’s film “Paper Moon” (1973) premiered in Hollywood (1973), Alan Pakula’s film “All The President’s Men” released (1976), Spain’s 40-year ban on the Communist Party lifted (1977), “The Deer Hunter,” Jon Voight & Jane Fonda won Academy Awards at the 51st Academy Awards ceremony (1979), “Terms of Endearment”, Robert Duvall & Shirley MacLaine won Academy Awards at the 56th Academy Awards ceremony (1984), George Bush imposed economic sanctions on Manuel Noriega’s Panama (1988), Mike Tyson struck a parking attendant when asked to move his car (1989), John Major led the Conservative party to a landslide victory in the British general election (1992), Manuel Noriega found guilty on 8 out of 10 drug & racketeering charges in US federal court (1992), Rock for the Rainforest benefit concert held at Carnegie Hall (1994), Niger’s president Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara assassinated at the airport in Niamey (1999), Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother’s funeral in Westminster Abbey (2002), Baghdad fell to US forces, ending the invasion of Iraq but resulting in widespread looting (2003), Cammilla Parker Bowles wed the Prince of Wales in a private civil ceremony (2005), “Parks & Recreation” debuted on NBC (2009), France’s Senate voted for a same-sex marriage bill (2013), Tammy Duckworth of Illinois became the first US senator to give birth while in office (2018), nine prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters found guilty on public nuisance charges for their part in the 2014 Umbrella Movement (2019), Uganda opposition party National Unity Platform Party headed by Bobi Wine claimed 623 people were abducted & tortured by the government of Yoweri Museveni (2021) & La Soufrière volcano began erupting on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent with a plume of ash 20,000 feet into the sky (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 10
 
James V of Scotland (1512), Hugo de Grotius (1583), William Hazlitt (1778), Hortense de Beauharnais (1783), Matthew C. Perry (1794), James Bowie (1796), William Booth (1829), Ludwig Bösendorfer (1835), Joseph Pulitzer (1847), Frances Perkins (1880), Mohammed Nadir Shah, king of Afghanistan (1880), Clare Booth Luce (1903), Harry Morgan (1915), Max Von Sydow (1929), Hugh Morton, Baron Morton of Shuna (1930), Dolores Huerta (1930), Claude Bolling (1930), Omar Sharif [Michel Dimitri Shalhoub] (1932), David Halberstam (1934), Paul Theroux (1941), Lesley Garrett (1955), Yefim Bronfman (1958) & Rachel Corrie (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Louis the Stammerer, king of the West Franks (879), Gregory XIII [Ugo Boncompagni] (1585), Gabrielle d’Estrée (1599), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1909), Emiliano Zapata (1919), Khalil Gibran (1931), Joseph ‘King’ Oliver (1938), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1955), Evelyn Waugh (1966), Nino Rota [Giovanni Rota Rinaldi] (1979), Natalie Schafer (1991), Chen Yun (1995), Günter Grass (1995), Morarji Desai (1995), Dixie Carter (2010), Lech Kaczyński (2010) & Maria Kaczyńska (2010) died on this day. French troops captured Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan (1500), Venice restricted Jews to living in the ghetto (1516), Prussia defeated Austria at the Battle of Mollwitz in the War of the Austrian Succession (1741), Mount Tambora erupted, killing 71,000 people on Java (1815), Samuel Taylor Coleridge recited “Kubla Khan” to Lord Byron (1816), Delphine LaLaurie’s torture chamber discovered in New Orleans (1834), Horace Greeley began publishing the New York Tribune (1841), Walter Hunt patented the safety pin (1849), Maximilian von Habsburg became emperor of Mexico (1864), Robert E. Lee addressed his Confederate troops for the last time at Appomattox (1865), premiere of “Ein Deutsches Requiem” of Johannes Brahms (1868), Congress increased number of Supreme Court judges from 7 to 9 (1869), José Martí founds the Cuban Revolutionary Party (1869), publication of O. Henry’s second short story collection “The Four Million” including “The Gift of the Magi” (1906), RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton for her maiden (and final) voyage (1912), Castbergian Child Laws adopted in Norway — one of the first laws in the world to protect the welfare of extra-martial children (1915), Emiliano Zapata ambushed & shot dead by Mexican government forces in Morelos (1919), Adolf Hitler demanded “hatred & more hatred” in Berlin (1923), Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad (now Volgograd) (1925), Scribners published “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925), Paul von Hindenburg re-elected president of Germany in a runoff election against Adolf Hitler (1932), Édouard Daladier succeeded Léon Blum as prime minister of France (1938), Adolf Hitler renamed Austria the ‘Ostmark’ & made it a province of the German Third Reich (1938), Vidkun Quisling formed a Nazi puppet government in Norway (1940), the Independent State of Croatia led by Ante Pavelić established as a fascist German puppet state (1941), the Bataan Death March began (1942), Odessa liberated from Nazi German occupation by Soviet troops (1944), Dag Hammarskjöld became the second Secretary-General of the United Nations (1953), Sidney Lumet’s film “12 Angry Men” released (1957), Spain ceded the northern strip of Spanish Sahara to Morocco (1958), “A Man For All Seasons” (best picture), Elizabeth Taylor & Paul Scofield won Academy Awards at the 39th Academy Awards ceremony (1967), “In the Heat of the Night,” Rod Steiger & Katherine Hepburn won Academy Awards at the 40th Academy Awards ceremony (1968), Paul McCartney officially announced the split of The Beatles (1970), Golda Meir resigned as prime minister of Israel (1974), Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign, leaving Mitt Romney the probable Republican nominee (2012), he Council of Europe suspends Russia’s right to vote (2014), Hong Kong pro-democracy political party Demosistō established by Nathan Law, Joshua Wong & Agnes Chow (2016), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg begins testified before Congress about data use & security (2018), first photo of a black hole announced (2019) & the discovery of Homo Luzonensis species was announced (2019) on this day.
 
 
April 11
 
Lucius Septimius Severus (146), João I of Portugal (1357), Friedrich I, Kurfürst von Sachsen (1370), Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March (1374), Marguerite d’Alençon, queen of Navarre (1492), Antoine Coypel (1661), Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682), George Canning (1770), Edward Everett (1794), Charles Evans Hughes 91862), Kasturba Gandhi (1869), Gustav Vigeland (1869), Donna Rachele Mussolini (1890), Dean Acheson (1893), Percy Lavon Julian (1899), Adriano Olivetti (1901), António de Spínola (1910), Oleg Cassini (1913), Alberto Ginastera (1916), Jean-Claude Servan-Schreiber (1918), Hugh Carey (1919), Ethel Skakel Kennedy (1928), Father Abraham [Pierre Kartner] (1935), Richard Berry )1935), Richard Kuklinski (1935), Michael Deaver (1938), Kurt Moll (1938), Louise Lasser (1939), Ellen Goodman (1841) & Dakota Blue Richards (1994) were born #OnThisDay. Llywelyn ab Iorwerth the Great of Wales (1240), Thomas Wyatt the Younger (1554), Joseph Merrick (‘the Elephant Man’) (1890), James Anthony Bailey (1906), Luther Burbank (1926), S.S. Van Dine [pseudonym for William Huntingdon Wright] (1939), Enver Hoxha (1985), Primo Levi (1987), Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (2007), Ahmed Ben Bella (2012), Maria Tallchief (2013) & Jonathan Winters (2013) died on this day. Edward IV of England took London from Henry VI (1471), French forces under Gaston de Foix defeated the Holy League at the Battle of Ravenna in the Italian Wars (1512), John Dudley made Duke of Northumberland by Edward VI (1551), Edward Wrightman was burned at the stake for heresy in Lichfield — the last public burning at the stake in England (1612), William III & Mary II crowned joint sovereigns of England, Scotland & Ireland (1689), the Treaty of Utrecht ending the War of the Spanish Succession (1713), France’s foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand offered to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States (1803), Napoléon abdicated as empereur des français & went into exile on Elba (1814), the 12th century Lewis chess pieces exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland shortly after their rediscovery in a sand bank on the Scottish Isle of Lewis (1831), Hungary became a constitutional monarchy as part of the dual monarchy settlement with Habsburg Austria (1848), the Tokugawa shōgunate abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration in Japan (1868), the Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks founded in New York City (1868), Spelman College founded as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta (1881), the Concertgebouw inaugurated in Amsterdam (1888), Ellis Island in New York harbor designated as an immigration station (1890), William McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war against Spain, launching the Spanish–American War (1898), the Treaty of Paris ended the Spanish-American War, with Spain ceding Puerto Rico to the United States (1899), Tel Aviv established by Jewish settlers in British Mandate Palestine (1909), RMS Titanic left Ireland bound for New York (1912), the cornerstone of Technion laid in Haifa in British Mandate Palestine (1912), an Irish home rule bill introduced in the British parliament (1912), the Emirate of Transjordan created (1921), Chile’s Gen. Carlos Ibáñez named himself president (1927), WLS-AM began radio broadcasts in Chicago (1924), Dorothy Parker resigned as the New Yorker’s drama critic (1931), Hermann Goering became chancellor of Prussia (1933), Coventry bombed by the German Luftwaffe (1941), the Sixth Armored Division of the US Third Army liberated the Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald (1945), Prince Rainier III became Monaco’s sovereign prince (1950), Harry Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of command of US troops in Korea (1951), the US Department of Health, Education & Welfare created (1953), Adolf Eichmann put on trial in Jerusalem for Nazi war crimes (1961), the New York Mets lost their first game (1962), Pope John XXIII published his encyclical “Pacem in Terris” calling for truth, justice, love & freedom (1963), Tom Stoppard’s play “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead” debuted at the Old Vic in London (1967), Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1968 Civil Rights Act into law (1968), the Beatles’ “Let It Be” single hit #1 & stayed #1 for 2 weeks (1970), the Apple I computer created by Steve Wozniak released (1976), Tanzania’s army captured Kampala, forcing Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin to flee into exile in Libya (1979), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began regulating sexual harassment (1980), Brixton race riot in London (1981), “Gandhi”, Ben Kingsley & Meryl Streep won Academy Awards at the 55th Academy Awards ceremony (1983), Communist Party General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko named president of the Soviet Union (1984), “The Last Emperor”, Michael Douglas (“Wall Street”) & Cher (“Moonstruck”) won Academy Awards at the 60th Academy Awards ceremony (1988), Claude-Michel Schönberg & Alain Boublil’s musical “Miss Saigon” opened at the Broadway Theater in Manhattan (1991), an attempted coup d’état failed to overthrow Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez (2002), Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has successfully enriched uranium (2006), two women in Bougainville beheaded for sorcery in Papua New Guinea (2013), Barack Obama & Raúl Castro met in Panama, the first meeting of US & Cuban heads of state since the Cuban Revolution (2015), WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London by police & arrested on failure to appear in court on US extradition charges (2019), Sudan’s dictator Omar al-Bashir overthrown & arrested by the army in Khartoum after 29 years in power (2019), Pope Benedict XVI claimed Catholic sexual abuse was caused in part by the 1960s sexual revolution (2019), 20-year-old Daunte Wright shot & killed at a traffic stop by Brooklyn Center police in Minnesota (2021) & Pedro Castillo won the presidential election in Peru (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 12
 
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1484), Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England (1550), Christian IV of Denmark & Norway (1577), François de Bassompierre (1579), Caffarelli [Gaetano Majorano] (1710), Charles Burney (1726), Henry Clay (1777), Robert Delaunay (1885), R.D. Banerji (1885), Alice ‘Lily’ Pons (1898), Chief Thundercloud [Victor Daniels] (1899), Beverly Cleary (1916), Ann Miller [Johnnie Lucille Collier] (1923), Uwe Kitzinger (1928), Jean-François Paillard (1928), Lakshman Kadirgamar (1932), Tiny Tim [Herbert Khaury] (1932), Montserrat Caballé (1933), Alan Ayckbourn (1939), Herbie Hancock (1940), John Hagee (1940), Jacob Zuma (1942), Charles Ludlam (1943), Lee Jong-wook (1945), David Letterman (1947), Tom Clancy (1947), Joschka Fischer (1948), Scott Turow (1949), David Cassidy (1950), Shannen Doherty (1971), Claire Danes (1979), Tulsi Gabbard (1981), Saoirse Ronan (1994) & David Hogg (2000) were born #OnThisDay. Gnaeus Pompeius the younger (45 BCE), Seneca the Younger (65), Gordian I & Gordian II (238), Claude de Lorraine, duc de Guise (1550), Juana la Loca (Joanna the Mad of Castile) (1555), Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1704), Metastasio (1782), Charles Burney (1814), Charles Messier (1817), William Magear ‘Boss’ Tweed (1878), Clara Barton (1912), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1945), Josephine Baker (1975), Joe Louis (1981), Alan Paton (1988), Abbie Hoffman (1989), Sugar Ray Robinson (1989), George Wald (1997) & Boxcar Willie [Travis Martin] died on this day. Constantinople plundered by Crusaders of the 4th Crusade (1204), François I of France ordered the massacre of the Huguenots of Vaudois (1545), the Union Jack adopted (replaced in 1801 by an updated British flag) (1606), Pope Urban VIII’s chief inquisitor Father Vincenzo Maculani da Firenzuola began the inquisition of Galileo Galilei (1633), Ordinance of Union between England & Scotland approved by the Council of State (1654), the hated Townsend Revenue Acts repealed by the British parliament (1770), Admiral George Rodney’s British fleet defeated the French fleet under the Comte de Grasse off Dominica in the Battle of Les Saintes, precluding a French & Spanish invasion of Jamaica (1782), Philadelphia’s Free African Society founded (1787), Alexander Ypsilantis declared leader of Filiki Eteria, a secret organization to overthrow Ottoman rule over Greece (1820), Carl Maria von Weber’s opera “Oberon” premiered in London (1826), Texas signed a treaty of annexation with the United States (1844), Gustave Flaubert’s novel “Madame Bovary” published in book form (1857), Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, launching the Civil War (1861), African American troops were massacred by Confederate Major Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s men after surrendering the Union garrison at Fort Pillow in Tennessee (1864), North Carolina’s state legislature enacted a law banning the Ku Klux Klan (1869), the British annexed the Transvaal (1877), Henrik Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm” premiered in Oslo (1887), Curt von François, colonial Governor of German South West Africa (now Nambia), initiated the Massacre of Hoornkrans by Schutztruppe soldiers on Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi’s headquarters (1893), Britain & Belgium signed a secret accord on dividing Central Africa (1894), Switzerland enacted a law reorganizing the army into a standing militia (1907), the Canadian Corps took the German-held Vimy Ridge in France (1917), the British parliament enacted a law requiring a minimum wage & a 48-hour work week (1919), Guomindang leader Chiang Kai-shek began a counterrevolution in Shanghai (1927), Spanish voters rejected the monarchy (1931), Edmund Goulding’s film “Grand Hotel” starring Greta Garbo & John Barrymore premiered in Manhattan (1932), Nazi Germany prohibited the publication of ‘non-Aryan’ writers (1935), Italy annexed Albania (1940), Japan killed more than 400 Filipino officers in Bataan (1942), Harry Truman sworn in as president upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1945), Syria gained independence from France (1946), Israel’s Knesset officially designated April 13 as Holocaust Day (1951), Bill Haley & His Comets recorded “Rock Around The Clock” (1954), the US Food & Drug Administration approved Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine (1955), S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s government took office in Ceylon/Sri Lanka (1956), Gen. Douglas MacArthur declined an offer to become baseball commissioner (1961), Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth (on Vostok 1) (1961), Birmingham police used dogs & cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Alabama (1963), Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote ‘letter from a Birmingham jail’ after being jailed for participating in a civil rights campaign with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (1963), Simon & Garfunkel released “Boxer” (1969), France recognized North Vietnam (1973), Sudan adopted a constitution (1973), Swaziland suspended its constitution (1973), the US ambassador to Cambodia & his staff evacuated the US embassy in Phnom Penh (1975), Anne Rice’s debut novel “Interview with a Vampire” published by Knopf (1976), Gyorgy Ligeti’s opera “Le Grand Macabre” premiered in Stockholm (1978), Samuel Doe seized control of Liberia in a coup d’état, ending over 130 years of national democratic presidential succession (1980), the space shuttle Columbia launched from Cape Canaveral, becoming the first reusable manned spacecraft to travel into space (1981), Harold Washington elected Chicago’s first African American mayor (1983), Sonny Bono elected mayor of Palm Springs (California) (1988), H.J. Heinz, Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee Seafood announced they would no longer buy tuna caught in nets that trap dolphins (1990), Greyhound Bus hired new drivers to replace strikers (1990), at the first meeting of the first democratically elected parliament in East Germany, the parliament acknowledged German responsibility for the Holocaust (1990), Rock for the Rainforest benefit concert held at Carnegie Hall (1995), Rock for the Rainforest benefit concert held at Carnegie Hall (1996), Bill Clinton cited for contempt of court for giving “intentionally false statements” in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit (1999), Hillary Clinton announced her second run (2015) on this day.
 
 
 
April 13
 
Catherine de’ Medici (1519), Elisabeth de Valois (1545), Guy Fawkes (1570), Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy (1618), Frederick Lord North (1732), Thomas Jefferson (1743), Louis Philippe II, Duc d’Orléans (1747), Frank Woolworth (1852), Butch Cassidy [Robert LeRoy Parker] (1866), Georg Lukács (1885), René Pleven (1901), Jacques Lacan (1901), Samuel Beckett (1906), Harold Stassen (1907), Eudora Welty (1909), [Harold] Howard Keel (1919), Madalyn Murray O’Hair (1919), Liam Cosgrave (1920), Roberto Calvi (1920), Claude Cheysson (1920), Hans Heincirch Thyssen-Bornemisza (1921), Julius Nyerere (1922), Stanley Donen (1924), Orlando Letelier (1932), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (1933), Lyle Waggoner (1935), Edward Fox (1937), Lanford Wilson (1937), Paul Sorvino (1939), Seamus Haney (1939), Philippe Petit (1949), Christopher Hitchens (1949), Brigitte Macron (1953), Amy Goodman (1957), Bob Casey, Jr. (1960), Garry Kasparov (1963) & Jonathan Brandis (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Jean de la Fontaine (1695), Cécile Chaminade (1944), Ernst Cassirer (1945), Luis Somoza Debayle (1967), Ralph Kirkpatrick (1984), Giorgio Bassani (2000), Muriel Spark (2006), Günter Grass (2015) & Miloš Forman (2018) died on this day. Pope Nicholas II issued a papal bull (“In Nomine Domine”) that ordained the election of future popes by bishops & cardinals rather than appointment by a predecessor (1059), Louis IX of France captured in Egypt as the Seventh Crusade was defeated (1250), Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino’s last masterpiece “The Transfiguration” put on display a week after Raphael’s death (1520), Portuguese Marranos who reverted to Judaism after conversion to Christianity were burned at the stake by order of the pope (1556), Henri IV issued the Edict of Nantes granting Huguenots rights in France (1598), Charles II appointed John Dryden the first poet laureate of England (1668), Georg Friedrich Händel’s oratorio “Messiah” premiered at the New Music Hall in Dublin (1742), the British ship Endeavour captained by James Cook arrived in Matavia Bay (Tahiti) with botanist Joseph Banks on board (1769), the first elephant in the US arrived from India (1796), Napoléon defeated Austria & Sardinia (Piedmont) at the Battle of Millesimo (1796), the British parliament enacted the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1829), Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate forces after 34 hours of bombardment, launching the Civil War (1861), the Society for the Relief of the Ruptured & Crippled incorporated under New York state law (1863), Ethiopia’s Emperor Tewodros II killed himself as British & Indian troops captured Magdala, ending the Abyssinian War (1868), George Westinghouse patented the steam power brake (1869), the Metropolitan Museum opened in Manhattan (1870), the Anti-Semitic League formed in Prussia (1882), indigenous Herero rose up against the German colonial regime in Südwest Afrika (now Namibia) at the Battle of Oviumbo (1904), the Petropavlovsk hit a Japanese mine sailing out of Port Arthur, sinking with 700 Russian sailors aboard during the Russo-Japanese War (1904), the US House of Representatives voted in favor of the direct election of members of the US Senate (1911), British & Gurkha troops opened fire on demonstrators in Amritsar, killing at least 379 unarmed Indians peacefully demonstrating against the British Raj (1919), establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (1919), Helen Hamilton became the first woman appointed US Civil Services Commissioner (1920), Greeks voted for a republic in a plebiscite in Greece (1924), Fitzmaurice-von Hunefeld-Köhl, James Fitzmaurice & Baron Ehrenfried Günther Freiherr von Hünefeld completed the first trans-Atlantic flight from Europe to the US (1928), the Soviet Union & Japan signed a non-aggression pact (1941), Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial (1943), 1,500 French Jews were transported from Drancy to Auschwitz, of whom 91 were believed to have survived (1944), New Zealand established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (1944), the Soviet army occupied Vienna (1945), Adolf Hitler proclaimed from his underground bunker that deliverance was at hand from encroaching Russian troops — but Hitler’s bluff didn’t forestall Berlin’s imminent fall (1945), Hank Aaron’s first game with the Milwaukee Braves (1954), Van Cliburn became the first American to win the Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow (1958), the UN General Assembly condemned South Africa’s apartheid system (1961), 36th Academy Awards: “Tom Jones” (Best Film), Patricia Neal (Hud) and Sidney Poitier (Lilies Of The Field) win; Poitier first Black actor in a leading role to win a competitive Oscar36th Academy Awards: “Tom Jones” (best film), Patricia Neal (Hud) & Sidney Poitier (Lilies Of The Field) won Academy Awards at the 36th Academy Awards ceremony with Poitier the first African American to win the best actor Oscar (1964), Ian Smith became prime minister of Rhodesia (1964), Jacob Javits (R-NY) appointed 16-year-old Lawrence W. Bradford, Jr. the first black US Senate page (1965), “The Girl From Ipanema” & the Beatles won Grammy Awards at the seventh Grammy Awards ceremony (1965), the Apollo 13 crew reported that an oxygen tank exploded 200,000 miles from earth (“Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here”) (1970), the Christian Falange killed 27 Palestinians, & launched the Lebanese civil war (1975), the US & its allies boycotted the summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1980), the Soviet Union officially accepted responsibility for the Katyn Massacre of nearly 5,000 Polish military officers in the Katyn Forest as part of Mikhail Gorbachev’s program of ‘Glasnost’ (1990), the Washington Post’s Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for a story she later admitted was a hoax (1981), Ramiz Alia succeeded Enver Hoxha as Communist Party leader of Albania (1985), Portugal reached an agreement with the People’s Republic of China regarding Macau’s return to China in 1999 (1987), Ciriaco De Mita formed a new government in Italy (1988),Tom Stoppard’s play “Arcadia” premiered in London directed by Trevor Nunn & starring Rufus Sewell, Felicity Kendal & Bill Nighy (1993), Rwanda’s presidential guard chopped 1,200 church members to death with machetes in Kigali (1994), Israel’s target date for complete withdrawal from the illegally occupied Palestinian territories passed without withdrawal (1994), Asteroid 7373 Takei discovered & named for “Star Trek” actor George Takei (1994), Tiger Woods won the Masters Tournament in Augusta for the first time — the first person of Asian or African descent to do so (1997), Rock for the Rainforest benefit concert held at Carnegie Hall (2000), Rock for the Rainforest benefit concert held at Carnegie Hall (2002), Pedro Carmona resigned as interim president of Venezuela one day after taking office (2002), US record producer Phil Spector found guilty of the second-degree murder of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 (2009), the US dropped ‘the Mother of All Bombs’ on an Islamic State tunnel complex with power equal to 11 tons of explosives, killing more than 90 ISIS militants (2017), BTS became the first K-pop band to perform on “Saturday Night Live” (2019), Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden for president, ending the contest for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination (2020), New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared “the worst is over” as the COVID-19 pandemic raged on, surpassing 10,000 deaths statewide (2020) & Hank Azaria apologized for voicing the Indian character Apu on “The Simpsons” for 30 years (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 14
 
Abraham Ortelius (1527, Phili III of Spain & Portugal (1578), Abraham Elsevier (1592), Christiaan Huygens (1629), William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721), William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland (1738), Adolphe Thiers (1797), Charles Hallé (1819), Pyotr Stolypin (1862), Anne Sullivan [Johanna Macy] (1866), Cecil Chubb (1876), Arnold J. Toynbee (1889), B.R. [Baba Saheb] (Ambedkar (1891), Barbara Wootton, Baroness Wootton of Abinger (1897), Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902), John Gielgud (1904), Faisal, king of Saudi Arabia (1906), François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier (1907), Thomas Schelling (1921), Rod Steiger (1925), Loretta Lynn (1932), Erich von Däniken (1935), Kenneth Mars (1936), Frank Serpico (1936), Bobby Nichols (1936), Julie Christie (1941), Pete Rose (1941), Brian Forster (1960), Brad Garrett [Gerstenfeld] (1960), Thomas W. Libous (1963), Vebjørn Selbekk (1969) & Adrien Brody (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Richard Neville ‘the Kingmaker’ (16th Earl of Warwick) (1471), James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell (1578), Georg Friedrich Händel (1759), Joseph Lanner (1843), Louis Sullivan (1924), Rachel Carson (1964), Fredric March (1975), Simone de Beauvoir (1986), Burl Ives (1995), Don Ho (2007), Sir Colin Davis (2013), Manfred Jung (2017), Birgitta ‘Bibi’ Andersson (2019) & Bernie Madoff (2021) died on this day. Mark Antony defeated the forces of Decimus Junius Brutus in Mutina at the Battle of Forum Gallorum (43 BCE), Lucius Septimius Severus crowned Roman emperor (193), Miesko I of Poland & his court baptized as part of the Christianization of Poland (966), Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians & killed the Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Barnet during the Wars of the Roses (1471), Prince Federico Cesi used the word ‘telescope’ for the first time (1611), Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language published (1828), Wisconsin Territory formed by Congress (1836), Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in Rue Morgue” — the first detective story — published (1841), Louis Kossuth declared Hungary independent of Habsburg Austria (1849), the first Pony Express rider arrived in San Francisco from St. Joseph (Missouri) (1860), formal Union surrender of Fort Sumter to Confederate forces (1861), US Secretary of State William H. Seward & his family attacked in his home by Lewis Powell as part of the same conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln (1865), John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. (1865), Léo Delibes’ opera “Lakmé” premiered with the Opéra-Comique at the Salle Favart in Paris (1883), first public showing of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope (moving pictures) (1894), premiere of Gustav Mahler’s (incomplete) 2nd Symphony (1895), J. C. Penney opened his first store (The Golden Rule Store) in Kemmerer (Wyoming) (1902), Theodore Roosevelt denounced ‘muckrakers’ among the US press (term taken from John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”) (1906), RMS Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. & sank overnight (1912), Firestone Tire & Rubber Company’s Stacy G. Carkhuff patented its non-skid tire pattern (1914), Turkey invaded Armenia (1915), the first Volvo car premiered in Gothenburg (1927), Spain became a republic after the overthrow of King Alfonso XIII (1931), the ‘Black Sunday’ Dust Bowl storm struck the Great Plains (1935), Édith Piaf questioned after nightclub owner & her patron Louis Leplée murdered in Paris (1936), John Steinbeck novel “The Grapes of Wrath” published (1939), Allied troops landed in Norway (1940), Gen. Eisenhower became the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (1944), Laika launched to her death aboard Sputnik 2 (1958), Motown, founded by Berry Gordy Jr., incorporated as Motown Record Corporation (1960), first live television broadcast from the Soviet Union (1961), Georges Pompidou became prime minister of France after the resignation of Michel Debré (1962), Gen. Gnassingbé Eyadéma became president of Togo (1967), “Oliver”, Cliff Robertson, Katharine Hepburn & Barbra Streisand won Academy Awards at the 41st Academy Awards ceremony in the first ever tie for best actress (1969), Richard Nixon ended the US blockade of the People’s Republic of China (1971), the US Supreme Court upheld busing as means of achieving racial desegregation (1971), Operation Baby Lift concluded after flying 2,600 Vietnamese orphans to the US (1975), Korean Air Lines plane shot down by Soviets over Russia (1978), “Kramer vs. Kramer,” Dustin Hoffman & Sally Field won Academy Awards at the 52nd Academy Awards ceremony (1980), Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law appropriating $165 billion to save Social Security (1983), Alan Garcia won the presidential election in Peru (1985), Desmond Tutu elected Anglican Archbishop of Capetown (1986), US air strikes hit Libya in retaliation for terrorism sponsored by Muammar al-Gaddafi (1986), Mikhail Gorbachev reached an agreement with the US for withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan (1988), Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh promised to surrender after completion of his Seven Seals manuscript (1994), NATO inadvertently bombed a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees, killing 75 (1999), Venezuela’s p resident Hugo Chávez returned to office two days after being ousted & arrested by the country’s military (2002), the Human Genome Project completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99% (2003), 200,000 demonstrators in Ankara protested the potential candidacy of Turkey’s incumbent prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2007), Eyjafjallajökull began erupting in Iceland (2010), J.K. Rowling launched her ‘Pottermore’ website (2012), Justin Trudeau elected leader of Canada’s Liberal Party (2013), Kevin Hart arrested on drunk driving charges in California (2013), South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg announced his presidential campaign in Indiana (2019), Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden for president (2020) & Joe Biden confirmed his decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 15
 
Leonardo da Vinci (1452), Guru Nanak (1469), Mimar Sinan (1489), Christian V of Denmark & Norway (1646), Domenico Gabrielli (1651), Catherine I of Russia (1684), Henry James (1843), Émile Durkheim (1858), Thomas Hart Benton (1889), Corrie ten Boom (1892), Nikita Khrushchev (1894), John Williams (1903), Kim Il-sung (1912), Richard von Weiszäcker (1920), Harold Washington (1922), Neville Marriner (1924), Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (1930), Elizabeth Montgomery (1933), Roy Clark (1933), Claudia Cardinale (1938), Jeffrey Archer (1940), Dzhokhar Dudayev (1944), Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (1947), Dodi Fayed (1955), Emma Thompson (1959), Philippe, roi des Belges (1960), Danny Pino (1974), Seth Rogen (1982) & Emma Watson (1990) were born #OnThisDay. George Calvert (1632), Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon (1719), Jeanette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1764), Abraham Lincoln (1865), Matthew Arnold (1888), Edward Smith (1912), John Jacob Astor IV (1912), Jean-Paul Sartre (1980), Jean Genet (1986), Hu Yaobang (1989), Greta Garbo (1990), Pol Pot (1998), Byron ‘Whizzer’ White (2002) & Jean-François Paillard (2013) died on this day. Kublai acclaimed Great Khan by a Mongol great council (1250), Christopher Columbus met with Ferdinand & Isabella in Barcelona (1493), Henry VIII of England appointed Thomas Cromwell (1534), Hugo Grotius arrived in France after escaping prison in a book chest (1621), Gustavus Adolphus led his Swedish army to victory over the Holy Roman Emperor’s army under Graf Tilly in the Battle of Rain (1632), Louis XIV’s France declared war on Spain (1689), Karl XII (Charles XII) succeeded Karl XI (Charles XI) as king of Spain (1697), Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St Matthew Passion” premiered in Leipzig (1729), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Serse” (Xerxes) premiered in London (1738), Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language published in London (1755), William Wordsworth & his sister Dorothy saw a “long belt” of daffodils, inspiring the former to pen “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1802), the City of San Francisco incorporated (1850), Emily Dickinson began a lifelong correspondence with author & future literary mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1862), Mobile captured by Union forces (1864), Otto von Bismarck elevated to the rank of Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen (1865), Abraham Lincoln died nine hours after being shot by John Wilkes Booth (1865), the first ‘Impressionist’ exhibition opened in Paris with works by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro & Berthe Morisot (1874), Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) opened in Paris (1900), the RMS Titanic sank with between 1,490 & 1,635 people aboard (1912), Manuel de Falla’s ballet “El Amor Brujo” premiered in Madrid (1915), Georges Clémenceau published secret French-Austrian documents (1918), one killed in Flemish-francophone riots in Louvain (1924), Rand McNally published its first road atlas (1924), Franklin Delano Roosevelt buried on the grounds of his house in Hyde Park (1945), Fidel Castro began a US goodwill tour (1959), John Foster Dulles resigned as US secretary of state (1959), US national debt surpassed $300,000,000,000 (1962), the Chesapeake Bay Bridged opened (then the longest in the world (1964), James Baldwin’s play “The Amen Corner” premiered in Manhattan (1965), “Patton,” George C. Scott & Glenda Jackson won Academy Awards at the 43rd Academy Awards ceremony (1971), Diori Hamani deposed as president of Niger in a military coup d’état (1974), Janet Cooke admitted her Pulitzer award-winning story about an 8-year-old heroin addict was a hoax & the Washington Post relinquished the Pulitzer Prize it won (1981), New York State raised maximum unemployment benefits to $280 per week (1991), billionaire Leona Helmsley sent to prison for tax evasion (1992), Jay Leno’s final appearance as host of “The Tonight Show” (1992), volcanic ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland led to the closure of airspace over most of Europe (2010), 11 US Secret Service agents implicated in a sexual misconduct scandal (2012), Nicolás Maduro narrowly elected president of Venezuela (2013), Aretha Franklin posthumously received the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation honor — the first individual woman to win it since 1930 (2019), the roof & spire of the cathedral of Nôtre Dame de Paris were destroyed in a huge fire (2019), Moon Jae-in led his ruling Democratic Party to victory in a landslide in South Korea in the first general election in the world held during the Corona virus pandemic (2020), India recorded over 200,000 (200,739) daily new cases of COVID-19 for the first time with 1,038 deaths amid a massive second wave (2021) & a court in Abidjan sentenced sentenced former warlord Amadé Ouérémi to a life sentence for massacres by his militia after the 2010 election Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 16
 
Holy Roman Emperor Louis I (778), Jean II ‘le Bon’ of France (1319), Jules Hardouin Mansart (1646), Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755), Ford Madox Brown (1821), Anatole France [Jacques Anatole Thibault] (1844), Wilbur Wright (1867), John Millington Synge (1871), Charlie Chaplin (1889), Federico Mompou (1893), Milton Cross (1897), Guy Burgess (1911), Garth Williams (1912), Merce Cunningham (1919), Peter Ustinov (1921), Kingsley Amis (1922), Leo Tindemans (1922), Henry Mancini (1924), Pope Benedict XVI [Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger] (1927), Bobby Vinton (1935), Margrethe II of Denmark (1940), Margot Adler (1946), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar [Lew Alcindor] (1947), Peter Garrett (1953), Ellen Barkin (1954), Henri, Grand Duc du Luxembourg (1955), Antony Blinken (1962), Selena [Quintanilla-Pérez] (1971), Kelli O’Hara (1976), Claire Foy (1984) & Chance the Rapper [Chancellor J Bennett] (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Marcus Salvius Otho (69), al-Walid II (Umayyad caliph), Holy Roman Emperor Berengar (924), Sikelgaita (1090), Sviatopolk II of Kiev (1113), Filippo Brunelleschi (1446), George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham (1687), Aphra Behn (1689), Jacques Cassini (1756), Francisco Goya (1828), Madame Marie Tussaud (1850), Alexis de Tocqueville (1859), Bernadette of Lourdes [Bernadette Soubirous] (1879), Rosalind Franklin (1958), Jean Alexandre Barré (1967), Edna Ferber (1968), István Kertész (1973), David Lean (1991), Lucille Bremer (1996), Stavros Niarchos (1996) & Kenneth Gilbert (2020) died on this day. Egyptian forces of Thutmose III defeated a large Canaanite coalition under King of Kadesh at the Battle of Megiddo (1457 BCE), Masada fell to Roman troops, ending the Jewish Revolt (73), the Serbian empire proclaimed in Skopje at an Easter assembly — Stephen Uroš IV Dušan crowned emperor (1346), Martin Luther arrived at the Diet of Worms (1521), Albrecht von Wallenstein appointed supreme military commander of the Holy Roman Empire (1632), Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton at Trinity College, Cambridge (1705), troops under the Duke of Cumberland defeated the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart at the Battle of Culloden (1746), Napoléon drove Ottoman Turks across the River Jordan near Acre in the Battle of Mount Tabor (1799), Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera “Le Prophète” premiered in Paris (1849), Abraham Lincoln outlawed business with the Confederacy (1861), slavery abolished in the District of Columbia (1862), US Post Office issued the first books of postage stamps (1900), Vladimir Lenin returned from exile to join the Russian Revolution (1917), the Treaty of Rapallo between Germany’s Weimar Republic & Soviet Union signed normalizing diplomatic relations, with each side renouncing their territorial & financial claims against the other (1922), Soviet troops breached the German front & advanced towards Berlin (1945), Colditz Castle prisoner of war camp liberated by American troops (1945), Arthur Chevrolet’s suicide (1946), Bernard Baruch coined the term ‘Cold War’ (1947), nearly 600 killed when ammonium nitrate caused an explosion aboard the freighter Grandcamp at a pier in Texas City (1947), British royal yacht Britannia launched by Queen Elizabeth II (1953), Walter Cronkite began anchoring the CBS Evening News (1962), Rhodesia’s prime minister Ian Smith broke off diplomatic relations with Britain (1966), NASA launched Apollo 16 from Cape Canaveral (1972), the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh (1975), Alex Haley found his roots in Gambia (1977), Elizabeth II proclaimed Canada’s new constitution (1982), a treaty of accession signed in Athens admitting 10 new member states to the European Union (2003), the Queen Mary 2 began its first transatlantic voyage (2004), 32 killed by Seung-hui Cho in the Virginia Tech massacre (2007), 304 Koreans drowned as the Sewol ferry sunk en eroute from Incheon to Jeju (2014), Theranos founder & CEO Elizabeth Holmes named one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2015 (2015), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 18-article constitutional reform package adopted by referendum in Turkey (2017), Raúl Castro confirmed his resignation as Cuba’s Communist Party leader, ending his family’s six decade leadership of Cuba (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 17
 
Byzantine Emperor Michael IX Palaeologus (1278), Maximilian I, Kurfürst von Bayern (Elector of Bavaria) (1573), John Ford (1586), Alexander Cartwright (1820), John Pierpont Morgan, Sr. (1837), Artur Schnabel (1882), Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen-Finecke] (1885), Thornton Wilder (1897), Alain Poher (1909), Sirimavo Bandaranaike (1916), Bill Clements (1917), William Holden (1918), Harry Reasoner (1923), Graziella Sciutti (1932), Daffy Duck (“Porky’s Duck Hunt”) (1937), Birgitta Jonsdottir (1967), Jennifer Garner (1972) & Victoria Adams Beckham (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I (1711), Benjamin Franklin (1790), Alexander Mackenzie (1892), Yi Sang (1937), Ralph Abernathy (1990), Chaim Herzog (1997), Linda Eastman McCartney (1998), John Paul Getty, Jr. (2003), Kitty Carlisle (2007), Aimé Césaire (2008), Gabriel García Márquez (2014), Doris Roberts (2016), Barbara Bush (2018), Alan García (2019) & Arlene Saunders (2020) died on this day. Geoffrey Chaucer related the “Canterbury Tales” for the first time at the court of Richard II of England (1397), Giovanni Verrazano sailed into what is now New York harbor (1524), Henry VIII ordered Sir Thomas More jailed in the Tower of London (1534), Henry Hudson departed London aboard the Discovery on his fourth & final voyage to discover a northwest passage to the Pacific (1610), Charles VI succeeded Joseph I as Holy Roman Emperor (1711), the first Unitarianism church service in England led by Theophilus Lindsey at the Essex Street Chapel in London (1774), Tambora erupted on Sumbawa in the Indonesian archipelago (1815), Mary Surratt arrested as a conspirator in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (1865), Treaty of Shimonoseki signed ending the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) (1895), seven high chiefs of American Samoa signed the Instrument of Cession (1900), Gen. Sir Edward Allenby led British & Allied troops against Ottoman Turkish forces in the Second Battle of Gaza (1917), Emperor Haile Selassie ended slavery in Ethiopia (1932), Daffy Duck — the Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Tex Avery & Bob Clampett (Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies series) — debuted in “Porky’s Duck Hunt” (1937), Yugoslavia surrendered to Nazi Germany (1941), Benito Mussolini fled from Salò to Milan (1945), US troops landed in central Mindanao during Battle of Mindanao (1945), Syria declared independence from France (1946), 1,400 Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro (1961), “Apartment” (best film), Burt Lancaster & Elizabeth Taylor won Academy Awards at the 33rd Academy Awards (1961), Alexander Dubček forced to resign as first secretary of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party (1969), Sirhan Sirhan convicted of assassinating US Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (1969), the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, establishing their genocidal regime in Cambodia (Kampuchea National Day) (1975), Canada’s Constitution Act (1982), Yvonne Fletcher shot dead by someone inside the Libyan embassy in London (1984), two Los Angeles police officers convicted in federal court of violating Rodney King’s civil rights & sentenced to prison while two others were acquitted (1993), former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark became administrator of the United Nations Development Program — the first woman to lead the UNDP (2009), “Thor” —directed by Kenneth Branagh & starring Chris Hemsworth & Natalie Portman — premiered in Sydney (2011), “Game of Thrones” premiered on HBO (2011), the 8th century St. Cuthbert Gospel — Europe’s oldest intact book — purchased by the British Library for £9 million (2012), same-sex marriage recognized in New Zealand (2013), former FBI director James Comey’s political autobiography “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies & Leadership” published (2018) & Prince Philip’s funeral held at Windsor Castle (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 18
 
Lucrezia Borgia (1480), François de Coligny d’Andelot (1521), Thomas Middleton (1580), Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I (1590), Giacomo Carissimi (1605), Franz von Suppé (1819), Clarence Darrow (1857), Leopold Stokowski (1882), Barbara Hale (1922), Henry Hyde (1924), Günter Meisner (1926), Samuel P. Huntington (1927), George Shirley (1934), Robert Hanssen (1944), Margaret Hassan (1945), Catherine Malfitano (1948), Rick Moranis (1953), Conan O’Brien (1963), Niall Ferguson (1964), Saad Hariri (1970), David Tennant [McDonald] (1971), Kourtney Kardashian (1979) & Princess Haya Bint al-Hamzah of Jordan (2007) were born #OnThisDay. Filippino Lippi (1504), Roscoe Conkling (1888), Gustave Moreau (1898), Ottorino Respighi (1936), Isoroku Yamamoto (1943), Ernie Pyle (1945), Albert Einstein (1955), Thor Heyerdahl (2002), Kenneth Schermerhorn (2005), Dick [Richard Wagstaff] Clark (2012) & Lorraine Warren (2019) died on this day. Pope Julius II laid the cornerstone for St. Peter’s Basilica (1506), Bona Sforza crowned queen consort of Poland (1518), Martin Luther defined Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms (1521), Ottoman Turkey declared war on Habsburg Austria (1663), Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery”: Francis Daniel Pastorius presented the first formal written protest against African-American slavery in the English colonies (Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery) 1688), Paul Revere & William Dawes road from Charlestown to Lexington to warn patriots that the British were coming (1775), George Washington issued a general order announcing cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War (1783), Sir Robert Peel resigned as British prime minister, succeeded by William Lamb, Lord Melbourne (1935), Col. Robert E. Lee turned down an offer to command Union armies in the Civil War (1861), Prussian & Austrian forces defeated Denmark at the Battle of Dybbøl — the decisive battle of the Second Schleswig War (1864), Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in North Carolina (1865), David Livingston buried in Westminster Abbey (1874), “L’Humanité” began publishing under the leadership of Jean Jaurès (1904), 75% of San Francisco destroyed by a massive earthquake that killed thousands (1906), a Los Angeles Times story on the Azusa Street Revival launched Pentecostalism as a worldwide movement (1906), the Fairmont Hotel opened in San Francisco (1907), Edith Wharton named a Chevalière de la Légion d’Honneur for her contribution to France’s war effort in World War I (1916), the People’s Council of Latvia proclaimed the country’s independence (1918), the World’s Fair opened in Chicago (1925), a BBC news announcer announced “there is no news” at 20:45 news bulletin & played music instead (1930), the “Stars & Stripes” military newspaper began publication (1942), Lt. Col. James Doolittle led 16 American B-25 bombers in bombing Tokyo & other Japanese cities (1942), Leonard Bernstein & Jerome Robbins’ ballet “Fancy Free” premiered in Manhattan (1944), the US recognized Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia government (1946), the International Court of Justice opened at The Hague (1946), the Republic of Ireland withdrew from the British Commonwealth (1949), France, West Germany & the Benelux countries formed the European Steel & Coal Community (1951), Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in Egypt & appointed himself prime minister (1954), the first Bandung Conference of African & Asian countries opened (1955), Egypt & Israel agreed to a ceasefire (1956), Grace Kelly wed Prince Rainier of Monaco (1956), a federal court ordered Ezra Pound released from an insane asylum (1958), London Bridge sold to a US oil company to be dismantled & reconstructed in Arizona (1968), Mart Crowley’s “Boys in the Band” premiered in Manhattan (1968), the Widgery Report on ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Northern Ireland is published provoking outrage among the people of Derry who called it the ‘Widgery Whitewash’ (1972), the musical revue “Side by Side by Sondheim” opened at the Music Box in Manhattan (1977), Alex Haley awarded a Pulitzer Prize for “Roots” (1977), the Senate voted to turn the Panama Canal over to Panama at the end of 1999 (1978), Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) granted independence from Britain within the Commonwealth (1980), the Canada Constitution Act superseded the British North America Act (1982), Zimbabwe’s capital Salisbury renamed Harare (1982), Alice Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel “The Color Purple” (1983), 63 people — including 17 Americans & the suicide bomber himself — killed in a car bomb explosion that destroyed the US embassy in Beirut (1983), Chinese students began demonstrating against the People’s Republic of China’s repressive regime (1989), the United States Supreme Court ruled the possession of child pornography criminal even in one’s home (1990), Richard Nixon suffered a stroke, dying four days later (1994), the US Supreme Court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5-4 decision (2007), 16 Nepali guides killed by an avalanche on Mt. Everest (2014) Teresa May announced a ‘snap’ British general election (2017), Nicaraguans demonstrated in Managua against proposed changes to social benefits (2018), a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer killed 18 in Nova Scotia in Canada’s worst mass shooting (2020) on this day.
 
 
April 19
 
Michel le Tellier (1603), Roger Sherman (1721), David Ricardo (1772), Ferdinand I of Austria (1793), Getulio Vargas (1883), Germaine Tailleferre (1892), Eliot Ness (1903), Kim Bok-dong (1926), Dick Sargent [Richard Stanford Cox] (1930), Fernando Botero (1932), Jayne Mansfield [Vera Jane Palmer] (1933), Dudley Moore (1935), Joseph Estrada (1937), Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei (1939), Tim Curry (1946), Murray Perahia (1947), Paloma Picasso (1949), Natalie Dessay (1965), Véronique Gens (1966), Ashley Judd (1968), Mswati III of Swaziland (1968), Kate Hudson (1979), Hayden Christensen (1981) & Maria Sharapova (1987) were born #OnThisDay. Robert II of Scotland (1390), Philipp Melanchthon (1560), Paolo Veronese (1588), Roger Williams (1684), Christina of Sweden (1689), Giovanni Antonio Canal (‘Canaletto’) (1768), George Gordon, Lord Byron (1824), Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (1881), Charles Darwin (1882), Charles Peirce (1914), Charles Scribner II (1930), Konrad Adenauer (1967), Percy Lavon Julian (1975), Daphne du Maurier (1989), David Koren [Vernon Howell] (1993), Octavio Paz (1998), Walter ‘Fritz’ Mondale (2021) & Jim Steinman (2021) died on this day. Chartres surrendered to Henri IV of France (1591), Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction to protect his daughter Maria Theresa’s inheritance (1713), Captain James Cook sighted Australia for the first time (1770), the American Revolution began with the ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ in Lexington (1775), Paul Revere, William Dawes & Samuel Prescott captured by British troops riding from Lexington to Concord, Prescott escaping to warn Concord (1775), John Adams secured the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States & the house he purchased in the Hague became the first American embassy (1782), Thomas Jefferson sold his indentured servant John Freeman to the newly elected president James Madison (1809), George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron died in the Greek war of independence (1824), the Treaty of London recognized Belgium as an independent kingdom & Luxembourg an independent grand duchy (1839), a secessionist mob in Baltimore attacked Massachusetts troops bound for Washington, D.C. — the first blood shed in the Civil War (1861), the first Boston Marathon held (1897), Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) beatified by the Roman Catholic Church (1909), Ottoman Turkey recognized Bulgaria’s independence (1909), the Assemblée Nationale voted for an eight-hour work day in France (1919), Italy’s territorial claims discussed at the Paris peace conference (1919), German Kaiserin Augusta Victoria’s funeral (1921), Mae West sentenced to 10 days in prison & fined $500 on obscenity charges over a Broadway play, launching her Hollywood career (1927), Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced the US departure from the gold standard (1933), the Great Uprising began in Palestine (1936), Bertolt Brecht’s play “Mother Courage and her Children” premiered in Zürich (1941), SS officer Jürgen Stroop ordered the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, provoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943), Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical “Carousel” opened at the Majestic Theatre in Manhattan (1945), the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) TV network debuted (1948), Chiang Kai-shek elected president of the Republic of China (1948), Johnny Cash released the single “Ring Of Fire” written by his future wife June Carter & Merle Kilgore (1963), Charles Manson sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Sharon Tate (1971), Vietnam Veterans Against the War began a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C. (1971), Sierra Leone became a republic (National Day) (1971), Sally Ride named the first American woman astronaut (1982), the violent rape of jogger Trisha Meili in Manhattan’s Central Park became one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s, with the Central Park falsely arrested & imprisoned for the crime (1989), Contra guerrillas, leftist Sandinistas & the incoming government agree to a truce in Nicaragua’s civil war (1990), David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound went up in flames in Waco after federal agents raided the compound in Texas (1993), Rodney King awarded $3,800,000 compensation by Los Angeles County for his beating by the LAPD (1994), Timothy McVeigh sets a truck bomb at Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 & injuring 500 (1995), the Bundestag moved from Bonn to the Reichstag in Berlin, reopened with a new glass dome by architect Norman Foster (1999), Nina Simone awarded an honorary degree by the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (2003), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger elected Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of the papal conclave (2005), Fidel Castro resigned his position of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba after 45 years of holding the title (2011), Fox News confirmed the termination of Bill O’Reilly after allegations of sexual harassment (2017), US Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) became the first parent to bring a baby into the Senate chambers, a day after the Senate votes to allow babies on the chamber’s floor (2018), Britain’s COVID-19 death toll reaches 16,060 (hospitals only) as the Sunday Times criticized Boris Johnson’s government’s response, saying they “sleepwalked into disaster” (2020) & Cuba’s Communist party announced that Miguel Díaz-Canel would replace Raúl Castro as party leader (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 20
 
Napoléon III (Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (1808), Carol I of Romania (1839), Odilon Redon [Bertrand-Jean Redon] (1840), Paul Poiret (1879), Adolf Hitler (1889), Albert Jean Amateau (1889), Joan Miró (1893), Lionel Hampton (1908), Robert F. Wagner, Jr. (1910), Kukrit Pramjoj (1911), John Paul Stevens (1920), Tito Puente (1923), Nina Foch (1924), Pat Roberts (1936) George Takei (1937), Gro Harlem Brundtland (1939), Ryan O’Neal (1941), Edie Sedgwick (1943), John Eliot Gardiner (1943), Michael Brandon (1945), Andrew Tobias (1947), Jessica Lange (1949), Luther Vandross (1951) & Andy Serkis (1964) were born #OnThisDay. Pope Clement V [Bertrand Got] (1314), Zhengde, the 10th Ming emperor of China (1521), Elizabeth Barton [St. Magd van Kent] (1534), George Clinton (1812), Bram Stoker (1912), Christian X of Denmark (1947), Antony Tudor (1987), Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal (1991), Cantinflas [Mario Moreno] (1993), Giuseppe Sinopoli (2001), Dorothy Height (2010), Tom Lester (2020) & Idriss Déby (2021) died on this day. William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” had its first known performance at the Globe Theatre in London (recorded by Simon Forman) (1611), the dethroned James II began a siege of Derry (1689), Georg Friedrich Händel buried in Westminster Abbey in London (1759), representatives meeting in Kingston voted to adopt a state constitution for New York (1777), France declared war on Austria & Prussia, beginning the French Revolutionary Wars (1792), Friedrich von Schiller’s “Wallensteins Tod” premiered in Weimar (1799), Napoléon led French forces to victory over Austria at the Battle of Abensberg in Bavaria (1809), René Caillié became the first non-Muslim to enter Timbuktu, winning a 10,000 franc prize from the Société de Géographie (1828), Wisconsin Territory created (1836), Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” published in “Graham’s Lady’s & Gentleman’s Magazine” (generally considered to be the first detective story) (1841), Gen. Robert E. Lee resigned from the US Army to serve in the Confederate army (1861), Louis Pasteur & Claude Bernard completed the first test of the pasteurization process (1862), Congress enacted the Ku Klux Klan Act (1871), William McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war on Spain (1898), Marie & Pierre Curie isolated the radioactive compound radium chloride (1902), thousands of Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks in the town of Van (1915), Manfred von Richthofen’s final victories as ‘the Red Baron’ before being shot down the following day (1918), the British Mandate for Palestine recognized (1920), the Allies launched Operation Corncob in Italy on Adolf Hitler’s 56th birthday (1945), Frederik IX succeeded Christian X as king of Denmark upon his death (1947), UAW president Walter Reuther shot & wounded at home in Detroit (1948), Enoch Powell made his controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech (1968), Pierre Trudeau sworn in as Canada’s 15th prime minister (1968), Bruno Kreisky became the first socialist chancellor of Austria (1970), Barbra Streisand records “We’ve Only Just Begun” (1971), the US Department of Defense confirmed a rise in ‘fragging’ incidents of the murder of fellow soldiers during the Vietnam War (1971), US Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation (1971), “Annie Hall”, — directed by Woody Allen & starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton, is — released, winning the 1978 Academy Award for best picture the following year (1977), Soviet aircraft forced a Korean Air Lines passenger plan to land in the Soviet Union, killing two & injuring several others (1978), Jimmy Carter attacked by a swamp rabbit which swam up to his fishing boat in Georgia (1979), Fidel Castro announced the opening of Mariel for Cubans to leave & 125,000 Cubans would be transported by boat to the US in the coming days (1980), hundreds of Berbers arrested in the Berber Spring in Algeria (1980), Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law authorizing a $165 billion bailout for Social Security (1983), Vladimir Horowitz performed in Moscow, his first appearance in Russia since 1925 (1986), Uranus passed Neptune (which it does once every 171 years) (1993), Rote Armee Faktion (Red Army Faction) announced its dissolution after 28 years (1998), two teens killed 13 at Columbine High School in Colorado (1999), Danica Patrick became the first woman to win the Indy Japan 300 (2008), the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 & causing a massive oil discharge into the Gulf of Mexico (2010), Elizabeth Kolbert won a Pulitzer Prize for “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” (2015), one police officer killed & two injured in a terrorist attack on a police van on the Champs Élysées, in Paris (2017), Commonwealth countries agreed that Prince Charles would succeed Queen Elizabeth II as head of the Commonwealth (2018), Allison Mack arrested on charges of sex trafficking in relation to sex cult NXIVM in New York (2018), Derek Chauvin convicted of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis (2021), Idriss Déby reported to have been killed on a battlefield fighting rebels near the capital Ndjamena after ruling Chad for three decades (2021) WHO reported a record number of new COVID-19 cases (5.24 million) in one week around the world, a third in India (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 21
 
Ludovico Carracci (1555), John Law (1671), Catherine the Great [Sophia von Anhalt-Zerbst] (1729), Charlotte Brontë (1816), John Muir (1838), Max Weber (1864), Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown (1905), Leonard Warren [Warenoff] (1911), Elizabeth II of England (1926), Charles Grodin (1935), Thomas Kean (1935), Iggy Popp [James Osterberg] (1947), Gary Condit (1948), Patti LuPone (1949), Tony Danza (1951), Andie MacDowell [Rosalie Anderson] (1958), John Cameron Mitchell (1963) & James McAvoy (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Rome founded by Romulus & Remus, according to tradition (753 BCE), Liuvigild, Visigothic king of Hispania and Septimania (586), Anselm, archbishop of Canberbury (1109), Pierre Abélard (1142), Henry VII (1509), Jean Racine (1699), Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] (1910), Manfred von Richthofen [der Rote Baron] (1918), Alessandro Moreschi (1922), John Maynard Keynes (1946), François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier (1971), Princess Deokhye of Korea (1989), Erté (1990), Willi Boskovsky (1991), Dzhokhar Dudayev (1996), Robert Hersant (1996), Jean-François Lyotard (1998), Nina Simone [Eunice Waymon] (2003), Mary McGrory (2004), Charles Colson (2012), Shakuntala Devi (2013) & Prince [Rogers Nelson] (2016) died on this day. Babur defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat (1526), the Maryland Toleration Act (1649), William III & Mary II proclaimed king & queen of England — the only joint sovereigns in its history (1689), British troops rampaged through the Connecticut town of Danbury (1777), Catherine II of Russia issued the ‘Charter of the Nobility’ — increasing further the power of the landed oligarchs (1785), John Adams sworn in as the first vice-president of the United States (1789), Brazilian revolutionary Tiradentes hanged, drawn & quartered in Rio de Janeiro (1792), Napoléon led France to victory over a Piedmontese army at the Battle of Mondovi (1796), Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to identify electromagnetism when he observed a compass needle (1820), Sam Houston led the Texas militia to victory Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto, capturing Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón & winning independence from Mexico in exchange for Gen. Santa Anna (1836), founder of the Bahá’í Faith Bahá’u’lláh entered garden of Rivden near Baghdad (1863), Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train left Washington, D.C. for Springfield (1865), First Lady Lucy Hayes began the tradition of the Easter egg rolling contest on the White House lawn (1878), Woodville Lathan & sons Otway & Gray demonstrated their Panopticon, the first movie projector developed in the US (1895), Congress declared war on Spain, initiating the Spanish-American War (1898), Crete’s elected assembly proclaimed the island’s union with Greece (1905), Manfred von Richthofen (‘der Rote Baron’) shot down & killed over France by Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown (1918), ohio State Penitentiary guards allowed a fire to kill 320 inmates in Columbus (1930), Martin Heidegger elected rector of the University of Freiburg (1933), Greece surrendered to Nazi Germany (1941), Brasilia became the capital of Brazil (1960), Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell & John Timmons publicly identified themselves as gay as part of the ‘Sip-In’ at Julius’ Bar in Manhattan (1966), Konstantinos Kollias became prime minister after a military coup d’état in Greece (1967), Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Allilueva arrived in New York City after defecting to the US (1967), Tony Orlando & Dawn’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” topped the US pop charts & created a cultural phenomenon (1973), Nguyen Van Thieu resigned after 10 years as president of South Vietnam (1975), Rosie Ruiz faked a Boston Marathon win (1980), Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault on live TV & found nothing (1986), thousands of Chinese crowded into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square cheering students demanding greater political freedom (1989), Brazil voted against a restoration of the monarchy (1993), the FBI arrested Timothy McVeigh, charging him with the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), comedian Volodymyr Zelensky won Ukraine’s presidential election in a landslide (2019) & Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.’s office announced it will no longer prosecute prostitution, dismissing 914 open cases, part of growing movement to change approach to prostitution (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 22
 
Muhammad the Prophet (570), Isabella I of Castile (1451), Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre (1518), Giuseppe Torelli (1658), Henry Fielding (1707), Immanuel Kant (1724), Madame de Staël [Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein] (1766), Lewis Powell (Confederate conspirator) (1844), Vladimir Lenin [Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov] (1870), Alexander Kerensky (1881), Ferdinando Nicola Sacco (1891), Vladimir Nabovkov (1899), Robert Oppenheimer (1904), Eddie Albert (1906), Kathleen Ferrier (1912), Yehudi Menuhin (1916), Richard Diebenkorn (1922), Aaron Spelling (1923), Bettie Page (1923), Charlotte Rae (1926), Glen Campbell (1936), Jack Nicholson (1937), Joshua Rifkin (1944), John Waters (1946), Donald Tusk (1957), Sherri Shepherd (1967) & Amber Heard (1986) were born #OnThisDay. Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra (1616), Anne Bonny (1782), Édouard Lalo (1893), Henry Royce (1933), Kathy Kollwitz (1945), Harlan Stone (1946), Will Geer [William Aughe Ghere] (1878), Melville Bell Grosvenor (1982), Earth ‘Fatha’ Hines (1983), Ansel Adams (1984), Mircea Eliade (1986), Emilio G. Segrè (1989), Andries Treurnicht (1993), Cesar Chavez (1993), Richard Nixon (1994), Maggie Kuhn (1995), Erma Bombeck (1996), Pat Tillman (2004), Alida Valli [Baroness Alida von Marckenstein-Frauenberg] (2006), Richie Havens (2013), Erin Moran (2017), Heather Harper (2019) & Shirley Knight (2020) died on this day. Pedro Álvares Cabral became the first European to see Brazil & claimed it for Portugal (1500), Henry VIII succeeded Henry VII as king of England (1509), François I of France declared war on Spain (1521), the first slave revolt in North America at the Spanish settlement of San Miguel de Gualdape (now in South Carolina) (1526), Spain & Portugal divided the eastern hemisphere in the Treaty of Saragossa (1529), Richard Cromwell disbanded England’s parliament (1659), Edward Bishop jailed for proposing flogging as a cure for witchcraft in Salem (1692), Austria & Bavaria signed the Peace Treaty of Füssen ending Bavaria’s participation (on the French side) in the War of the Austrian Succession (1745), Madame du Barry became Louis XV’s ‘maitress-en-titre’ (1769), German Jews emancipated after adoption of the constitution of the Second German Reich by Bavaria (1871), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky completes his ballet “Swan Lake” (1876), the US recognized Léopold II’s État Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State) (1884), the Jewish Daily Forward first published in New York (1897), the Second Battle of Ypres began (1915), German forces fired more than 150 tons of lethan chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions in the Second Battle of Ypres (1915), Adolf Hitler admitted the Nazi war effort was lost (1945), Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) founded in Soviet-controlled East Germany (1946), Sen. Joseph McCarthy began the Senate hearings on alleged Communist infiltration of the US Army & the US State Department, (1954), the 1964 World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows/Corona Park in Queens (1964), first human eye transplant (1969), Bernadette Devlin made a controversial maiden speech in the House of Commons concerning the situation in Northern Ireland (1969), Wisconsin’s Sen. Gaylord Nelson launched the first Earth Day (1970), Barbara Walters joined ABC News as the first female nightly network news anchor in the US (1976), Ingmar Bergman left Sweden over tax issues (1976), Shimon Peres became acting prime minister of Israel (1977), the Oklahoma land rush began (1889), Holocaust Memorial Museum dedicated in Washington, D.C. (1993) 7,000 Tutsi slaughtered by Hutus in the stadium at Kibuye in Rwanda (1994), Peru’s president Alberto Fujimori ordered a commando assault on the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima to free hostages from Tupac Amaru terrorists (1997), Colombian serial killer Luis Garavito [The Beast, Tribilín] apprehended (1999), Pat Tillman killed by ‘friendly fire’ in Afghanistan (2004), “Veep” premiered on HBO (2012), Paris climate change agreement signed in New York (2016), Sudan banned female genital mutation & made it a criminal offense (2020) & India set a world record for daily COVID-19 cases on this day.
 
 
April 23
 
Malcolm IV of Scotland (1141), St. Jeanne, queen of France (1464), Robert Fayrfax (1464), William Shakespeare (1564), J.M.W. Turner (1775), James Buchanan (1791), Stephen Douglas (1813), Max Planck (1858), Gen. Edmund Viscount Allenby (1861), Sergei Prokofiev (1891), Ngaio Marsh (1895), Lester Pearson (1897), Halldór Laxness (1902), Shirley Temple (1928), Halston [Roy Halston Frowick] (1932), Roy Orbison (1937), Victoria Glendinning (1937), David Birney (1939), Lee Majors [Harvey Lee Yeary] (1939), Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (1947), Joyce DeWitt (1949), Michael Moore (1954), Valerie Bertinelli (1960), George Lopez (1961), Timothy McVeigh (1968), Stan Frazier (1968), Aisha bint al-Hussein & Zein bint al-Hussein, princesses of Jordan (1968), John Cena (1977), Kal Penn (1977), John Oliver (1977), Dev Patel (1990), Gigi Hadid [Jelena Noura Hadid] (1995), Chloe Kim (2000) & Prince Louis of Cambridge (2018) were born #OnThisDay. St. George (303), Wihtred, king of Kent (725), Æthelred I, king of Wessex (871), Brian Boru (1014), Æthelred II of England (‘the Unready’) (1016), Alexander I of Scotland (1124), Boris Godunov (1605), William Shakespeare (1616), Jean-Henri d’Anglebert (1691), James Abercrombie (1781), Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1794), William Wordsworth (1850), Rupert Brooke (1915), Ellisabeth Schumann (1952), Sam Ervin (1985), Harold Arlen [Hyman Arluck] (1986), Otto Preminger (1986), Satyajit Ray (1992), Howard Cosell (1995), John Stennis (1995), Konstantinos Karamanlis (1998), James Earl Ray (1998), David Halberstam (2007) & Boris Yeltsin (2007) died on this day. Brian Boru defeated Viking forces at the Battle of Clontarf, bringing the Viking age in Ireland to an end (1014), Ferdinand III of Castile conquered Cáceres (1229), Edward III of England founded the Order of the Garter (1344), Wilhelm IV of Bavaria endorsed the German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot) (1516), William Shakespeare’s play “The Merry Wives of Windsor” first performed for Elizabeth Tudor (1597), Charles II crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey (1661), Anne crowned queen of England in Westminster Abbey (1702), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Il Ré Pastore” (The Shepherd King) premiered in Salzburg (1775), John Paul Jones launched a surprise attack on Whitehaven in the south of England (1778), Fyodor Dostoyevsky & members of the Petrashevsky Circle arrested in St. Petersburg (1849), Robert E. Lee named commander of the Confederate army of northern Virginia (1861), Jefferson Davis wrote “panic has seized the country” of the Confederacy (1865), poet soldier Rupert Brooke died in Greece (1915), Turkey’s Grand National Assembly met in Ankara for the first time with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk denouncing the government of Sultan Mehmed VI & announcing a temporary constitution (1920), the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opened in Stratford-on-Avon (1932), Harry Truman confronted Soviet foreign minister Myacheslav Molotov (1945), Flossenburg concentration camp liberated (1945), Hank Aaron hit the first home run of his professional baseball career (1954), Algiers putsch by French generals in Algeria (1961), Judy Garland re-started her career with a legendary performance at Carnegie Hall (1961), the New York State Theater opened in Manhattan’s Lincoln Center (1964), Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for killing US Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (later commuted to a life sentence) (1969), Columbia University shut down by a student strike (1971), Gerald Ford declared the Vietnam War finished as far as the US was concerned (1975), Coca-Cola introduced New Coke (1985), Chinese students in Beijing announced a boycott of university classes to support the Tiananmen Square protests (1989), former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry released from prison (1992), McDonald’s opened its first fast-food restaurant in China (1993), Eritrea voted to secede from Ethiopia (1993), 42 villagers killed in the Omaria massacre in Algeria (1997), Pope John Paul II met with U.S. Catholic Church leaders at Vatican regarding sexual abuse of minors (2002), Mark Rutte resigned as prime minister of the Netherlands (2012), the Assemblée Nationale voted in favor of legislation recognizing same-sex marriage in France (2013), Loretta Lynch confirmed as US attorney general — the first African American woman appointed to the post — succeeding Eric Holder (2015) Armenia’s president Serzh Sargsyan resigned after 10 years in office after mass protests (2018) & Donald Trump promoted Clorox & UV lights as COVID-19 treatments, prompting rebuke from government officials & disinfectant producers (2020) on this day.

April 24
 
William I, Prince of Orange (1533), Guglielmo Gonzaga (1538), St. Vincent de Paul (1581), Jan Peeters (the Elder) (1624), Cornelis Dusart (1660), Giovanni Battista Martini (1706), Nikolai Bestuzhev (1791), Anthony Trollope (1815), Philippe Pétain (1856), José Prima de Rivera (1903), Willem De Kooning (1904), Robert Penn Warren (1905), William Joyce (‘Lord Ha-Ha’) (1906), Shirley MacLaine (1934), Jill Ireland (1936), John Williams (1941), Barbra Streisand (1942), Richard M. Daley (1942), Valeri Abramovich Voloshin (1942), Jean Paul Gaultier (1952), Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954), John Epperson [Lypsinka] (1955), Cedric the Entertainer (1964), Djimon Hounsou (1964), Kelly Clarkson (1982) & Princess Iman bint Al Hussein of Jordan (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Daniel Defoe (1731), Prince Eugene of Savoy (1736), Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1891), Lucy Maud Montgomery (1942), Willa Cather (1947), William ‘Bud’ Abbott (1974), Wallis Warfield Simpson (Duchess of Windsor) (1986), Oliver Tambo (1993), Estée Lauder (2004), Ezer Weizman (2005) & Christa Ludwig (2021) died on this day. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V defeated the Protestant princes of the Schmalkaldic League at the Battle of Mühlberg (1547), Jean-Paul Marat acquitted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of charges brought by the Girondin in Paris (1793), John Adams signed a bill into law establishing the Library of Congress (1800), Joseph Haydn’s oratorio “Die Jahreszeiten” (The Seasons) (1801), Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, launching the Russo-Turkish War (1877), Eastman Kodak founded by George Eastman (1888), Spain declared war on the United States after rejecting a US ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba (1898), Armenian community leaders arrested in Constantinople (Istanbul) at the beginning of the Armenian Genocide (1915), Easter Rising in Dublin (1916), Ernest Shackleton launched a rescue of the Endurance in Antarctica (1916), beginning of the British Mandate in Palestine (1920), the Nazi party won 36.3% in Prussia in the Reichstag parliamentary election in Germany (1932), Harry Truman was briefed on the Manhattan Project (1945), Jordan formally annexed the West Bank (1950), Elizabeth II knighted Winston Churchill (1953), the Bandung conference of ‘non-aligned’ states concluded in Indonesia (1955), John F. Kennedy accepted ‘sole responsibility’ for the Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961), the Swedish warship Vasa salvaged after having been sunk in 1628 (1961), the US Army issued General Orders No. 100 to regulate Union treatment of Confederate civilians & prisoners of war (1963), Donald Reid Cabral led a military coup d’état in the Dominican Republic (1965), Gen. William Westmoreland said in a news conference about the Vietnam War that the enemy had “gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily” (1967), Columbia University’s administration building taken over by student protesters (1968), Mauritius became a member state of the United Nations (1968), Marshall Lin Biao named Mao Zedong’s designated successor as the sole vice chairman of the Communist Party of China (1969), Gambia became a republic within the Commonwealth (1970), Georgia designated Ray Charles’ rendition of “Georgia On My Mind” (written by Hoagy Carmichael) as official state song (1979), eight killed in three helicopters that crashed in Iran in a failed US mission to rescue 52 American hostages being held hostage in the US embassy in Tehran (1980), 150 of Ayatollah Khomeini followers assaulted a student dormitory in West Germany (1982), Jane Fonda released her first workout video (1982), German monetary & economic union on July 1 agreed to by the FRG & GDR governments (1990), an IRA car bomb in London killed a photojournalist & wounded 44 others in Bishopsgate (1993), Farm Aid VI concert in Ames (1993), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger inaugurated as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church as Pope Benedict XVI (2005), Gyanendra of Nepal gave into the demands of protesters & restored the parliament that he dissolved in 2002 (2006), Iceland announced that Norway would shoulder the defense of Iceland during peacetime (2007), Armenia commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide (2015) & Joe Biden became the first US President to officially recognize the killing of Armenians in the Ottoman empire as ‘genocide’ (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 25
 
Louis IX (St. Louis) of France (1214), Edward II of England (1284), Roger de Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (1287), Oliver Cromwell (1599), Gaston, Duc d’Orléans (1608), Edward Viscount Grey (1862), Guglielmo Marconi (1874), Mary [Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary], Princess Royal & Countess of Harewood (1897), Edward R. [Egbert Roscoe] Murrow (1908), Ella Fitzgerald (1917), Astrid Varnay (1918), Al Pacino (1940), Bertrand Tavernier (1941), Björn Ulvaeus (1945), Dominique Strauss-Kahn (1949), Haider al-Abadi (1952), Dinesh D’Souza (1961), Hank Azaria (1964), Renée Zellweger (1969) & Gedhun Choekyi Nyima (11th Panchen Lama) (1989) were born #OnThisDay. St. Mark (the first pope of Alexandria & the founder of Christianity in Africa) (68), Diane de Poitiers (1566), Torquato Tasso (1595), Chongzhen, last Ming emperor of China (1644), Anders Celsius (1744), Carol Reed (1976), Ginger Rogers (1995), Jane Jacobs (2006) & Bea Arthur (2009) died on this day. Martin Waldseemüller became the first to use the name ‘America’ on his world map “Universalis Cosmographia” (1507), Albrecht von Wallenstein led the Holy Roman Emperor’s army to victory over a Danish army under Ernst von Mansfeld at the Battle of Dessau Bridge (1626), the Chongzhen Ming emperor of China hanged himself from a tree as Manchus captured Beijing (1644), parliament voted to restore the monarchy in England (1660), thimble patent granted (1684), French & Spanish forces defeated the British & Portuguese at the Battle of Almansa (1707), Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” — considered the first novel in English — published (1719), Elizabeth (Elizaveta Petrovna) crowned herself empress of Russia in Dormition Cathedral in Moscow (1742), highwayman Nicolas Pelletier became the first person executed by the guillotine in France (1792), Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed “La Marseillaise” in Strasbour (later to become the national anthem of France) (1792), the Thornton Affair provoked the Mexican-American War (1846), ground broken for the Suez Canal in Egypt (1859), Admiral David Farragut’s Union forces captured New Orleans (1862), Sigmund Freud opened his private practice at Rathausstrasse 7 in Vienna (1886), the United States declared a state of war with Spain from April 21 as the Spanish-American War began (1898), the Allied landing on the Gallipoli peninsula began the most disastrous campaign of World War I (1915), Paul von Hindenburg elected president of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1925), Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Turandot” premiered at the Teatro alla Scala di Milano (1926), the United Negro College Fund incorporated (1944), Soviet forces completed their encirclement of Berlin, cutting off all access points west of the German capital (1945), US & Soviet forces met at Torgau on the Elbe (‘Elbe Day’) (1945), Francis Crick & James Watson’s discovery of the double helix structure of DNA published in “Nature” (1953), Bell System announced the creation of the first solar battery made from silicon (1954), the government of Gaston Eyskens fell over Belgium’s Unitary Law (1961), Britain granted internal self-government to Swaziland (1967), West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s aide Günter Guillaume exposed as a Stasi spy for the East German regime (1974), Mário Soares’ Socialist Party won Portugal’s first free election since 1925 following the Carnation Revolution of 1974 (1975), Portugal adopted a new constitution (1976), Yuri Andropov invited American schoolgirl Samantha Smith to the Soviet Union (1983), West Germany’s Bundestag criminalized Holocaust denial (1985), John Demjanjuk (‘Ivan the Terrible’) sentenced to death in Jerusalem (1988), James Richardson was released by Janet Reno after 21 years in prison for the murders of his children following the revelation of prosecutorial misconduct which led to the false conviction (1989), the Hubble Space Telescope launched into orbit around the earth (1990), Boris Yeltsin elected president of Russia (1993), the final piece of the Obelisk of Axum returned to Ethiopia after being stolen by the invading Italian army in 1937 (2005), Bulgaria & Romania signed accession treaties to join the European Union (2005), Boris Yeltsin’s funeral became the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Tsar Alexander III in 1894 (2007), Elijah Wood honored with the Midnight Award by the San Francisco International Film Festival (2009), the Flint water crisis began when Michigan officials switched the city’s water supply (2014), Peter Madsen found guilty of the murder of journalist Kim Wall & sentenced to life imprisonment (2018), Microsoft became the third US firm to be listed with a market worth of $1 trillion, after Apple & Amazon (2019), “Nomadland” won Academy Awards for best film, director (Chloé Zhao) & lead actress (Frances McDormand) Anthony Hopkins won for best actor at the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 26
 
Antonius Marcus Aurelius (121), Marie de’ Medici (1573), Pedro II of Portugal (1648), Marie Louise d’Orléans, queen & consort to Charles II of Spain (1662), David Hume (1711), John James Audubon (1785), Ludwig Uhland (1787), Eugène Delacroix (1798), Alfred Krupp (1812), Frederick Law Olmsted (1822), Mikhail Fokine (1880), Ma Rainey [Gertrude Pridgett] 1886), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889), Rudolf Hess (1894), Douglas Sirk (1897), Bernard Malamud (1914), Wilfrid Howard Mellers (1914), I.M. Pei (1917), Carol Burnett (1933), Giorgio Moroder (1940), Peter Schaufuss (1950), Joan Chen [Chen Chong] (1961), Jet Li [Li Lianjie] (1963), Kevin James (1965), Melania [Knauss] Trump (1970), Channing Tatum (1980) & Jessica Lynch (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Robert Campin (1444), Giuliani de’ Medici (1478), Charles Sax (1865), John Wilkes Booth (1865), Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1910), Edmund Husserl (1938), ‘Gypsy’ Rose Lee [Hovick] (1970), Celia Johnson (1982), William ‘Count’ Basie (1984), Broderick Crawford (1986), Lucille Ball (1989), Mason Adams (2005), Jack Valenti (2007), Jayne Meadows (2015) & Jonathan Demme (2017) died on this day. Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) climbed Mont Ventoux (1336), Pazzi conspirators attacked Lorenzo de’ Medici & killed Giuliano de’ Medici in Florence (1478), Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn (1514), William Shakespeare baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon (1564), Jews expelled from Brazil (1654), Louis XVIII landed at Calais, returning to France from exile in England (1814), Russia declared war on Ottoman Turkey to support Greece’s independence (1828), Frédéric Chopin’s Grande Polonaise Brillante premiered in Paris (1835), Confederate Gen. J.E. Johnston surrendered to Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in North Carolina, ending the Civil War (1865), Sun Yat-Sen called for an uprising against Yuan Shikai’s regime in China (1913), Italy secretly signed the Treaty of London with Britain, France and Russia, bringing Italy into World War I on the Allied side (1915), Edna Ferber won a Pulitzer Prize for “So Big” (1925), Diego Rivera resigned from the Mexican Communist Party (1925), Germany & Russia signed a non-aggression pact (1926), Nazi Germany banned Jewish students from schools (1933), the Nazi German Luftwaffe destroyed the Basque town of Guernica in Spain (1937), Maréchal Philippe Pétain arrested for treason in France (1945), Nazi Germany won its last victory at the Battle of Bautzen (1945), Transjordan officially renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (1949), Jonas Salk began mass trials of his polio vaccine (1954), Akira Kurosawa’s film “The Seven Samurai” released (1954), Charles de Gaulle suppressed the French paratroopers’ revolt in Algeria (1961), Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Company” directed by Hal Prince opened at the Alvin Theater in Manhattan (1970), Studio 54 opened in Manhattan (1977), Argentine troops surrendered to British forces in the Falklands/ Malvinas (1982), Ronald Reagan visited China (1984), Maria Shriver married Arnold Schwarzenegger (1986), NBC announced that Conan O’Brien would replace David Letterman on “Late Night” (1993), Dr. Nomaza Paintin became the first black South African to vote in a multi-racial democratic election in South Africa (1994), Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor found guilty of war crimes in Sierra Leone (2012), Nursultan Nazarbayev ‘re-elected’ ‘president’ of Kazakhstan with 97.7% of the vote (2015), Bill Cosby found guilty of sexual assault in Pennsylvania (2018), “no religion” topped the survey of American religious identity for the first time at 23.1%, edging out Catholics 23.0% & evangelicals 22.5% in the long-running General Social Survey (2019) & the US Census results showed its population growth was second slowest in recorded history at 331,449,281 with only a 7.4% increase on 2010 (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 27
 
Mumtaz Mahal (1593), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759), Samuel Morse (1791), Friedrich von Flotow (1812), Herbert Spencer (1820), Ulysses S. Grant (1822), Otto I of Bavaria (1848), Arthur Burns (1904), Jack Klugman (1922), Coretta Scott King (1927), Sheila Scott (1927), Connie Kay (1927), Joe Moakley (1927), Igor Oistrakh (1931), Roelof ‘Pik’ Botha (1932), Casey Kasem (1932), Anouk Aimée (1932), Gian-Carlo Rota (1932), Sandy Dennis (1937), Judith Blegen (1941), John Shrapnel (1942), Cuba Gooding, Sr. (1944), August Wilson (1945), Larry Elder (1952), Sheena Easton [Orr] (1959), Russell T. Davies (1963), Willem-Alexander, king of the Netherlands (1967), Cory Booker (1969), Jenna Coleman (1986), William Moseley (1987) & Lizzo [Melissa Jefferson] (1988) were born #OnThisDay. Philippe le Hardi (Philip the Bold), Duc de Bourgogne (1404), Ferdinand Magellan (1521), Feodor III, tsar of Russia (1682), Zebulon Pike (1813), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1882), Alexander Scriabin (1915), Hart Crane (1932), Antonio Gramsci (1937), Edward R. Murrow (1965), Kwame Nkrumah (1972), Olivier Messiaen (1992), Carlos Castaneda (1998), Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (2002), Mstislav Rostropovich (2007), Suzanne Crough (2015) & Lynn Harrell (2020) died on this day. Edward I of England defeated a Scottish army at the Battle of Dunbar (1296), Pope Julius II excommunicated the Republic of Venice (1509), Ferdinand Magellan was killed on Mactan Island in the Philippines (1521), re-founding of the city of Bogotá in New Granada (Colombia) by Nikolaus Federmann and Sebastián de Belalcázar (1539), the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines at Cebu City (1565), Charles I of England fled Oxford (1646), John Milton — blind & impoverished — sold the copyright of “Paradise Lost” for £10 (1667), Friedrich August I (‘the Strong’) became king of Saxony (1694), Georg Friedrich Händel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks” premiered in London’s Green Park (1749), the British parliament enacted the Tea Act, which would provoke the Boston Tea Party (1773), William Eaton led US Marines & Arab mercenaries to Tripoli to depose Yusuf Karamanli during the First Barbary War, inspiring the line “to the shores of Tripoli” (1805), Ludwig van Beethoven composed a piece “Für Elise” (1810), Zebulon Pike killed in battle during the War of 1812 (1813), architects Charles Barry’s wife Sarah Barry laid the foundation stone for the new Palace of Westminster in London (1840), Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the Civil War (1861), West Virginia seceded from Virginia (1861), Cornell university chartered in Ithaca (1865), the steamboat Sultana exploded in the Mississippi River, killing more than 1,700 of the 2,427 passengers in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history (1865), Charles Gounod’s opera “Romeo et Juliette” premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique (1867), Jules Massenet’s opera “Le Roi de Lahore” (The King of Lahore) premiered at the Palais Garnier in Paris (1877), Rutherford B. Hayes removes Federal troops from Louisiana, ending Reconstruction (1877), Ulysses Grant’s Tomb dedicated in Manhattan (1897), Chris Watson’s Australian Labor Party formed the first Labor government in the world (1904), Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hami II overthrown (1909), Mustafa Kemal (‘Atatürk’) led an Ottoman Turkish counteroffensive against Allied troops (1915), Heinrich Himmler ordered the construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz (1940), Witold Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz after having voluntarily been imprisoned there to gain information about the Holocaust (1943), Italian partisans captured Benito Mussolini at Dongo on Lake Como (1945), the second Austrian republic established (1945), the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter newspaper ceased publication (1945), South Africa enacted the Group Areas Act segregating the races (1950), Mao Zedong resigned as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party after the disastrous failure of the Great Leap Forward (1959), Syngman Rhee resigned after 12 years as president/dictator of the Republic of Korea (1960), Togo declared its independence from France (1960), Sierra Leone declared its independence from Britain (1961), John Hinckley went on trial for his attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (1982), the US Justice Department barred Austria’s Bundeskanzler Kurt Waldheim from entering the US because of his collaboration with Nazi Germany (1987), Chinese students took over Tiananmen Square in Beijing to protest the People’s Republic of China’s authoritarian regime *(1989), Betty Boothroyd became the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history (1992), Brandon Lee’s death on the set of “The Crow” declared the result of negligence by North Carolina district attorney Jerry Spivey (1993), Richard Nixon buried on the grounds of his presidential library in Yorba Linda (1994), Andrew Cunanan began his killing spree (1997), Barack Obama publicly released his birth certificate (2011), “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” late-night talk & news show fronted by John Oliver premiered on HBO (2014), Kim Jong-in & Joon Jae-in met in a historic Korean summit (2018), ABBA announced they recorded new songs for the first time since 1982 (2018), Pope Francis donates $500,000 for migrants stranded in Mexico trying to reach the US (2019), 3 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide (2020), the US Defense Department declassified & released videos of unidentified ‘aerial phenomena’ from 2004 to 2015 (2020) & Brazil’s Senate ordered an official inquiry into Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic (2021) on this day.
 
 
April 28
 
Edward IV of England (1442), Yi-Sun-shin (1545), James Monroe (1758), Nikita Panin (1770), Lionel Barrymore (1878), António de Oliveira Salazar (1889), Maurice Thorez (1900), Kurt Gödel (1906), Tony ‘Big Tuna’ Accardo (1906), Pierre Boileau (1906), Oskar Schindler (1908), Ferruccio Lamborghini (1916), Nan Merriman (1920), Rowland Evans (1921), Kenneth Kaunda (1924), Blossom Dearie (1924), [Nelle] Harper Lee (1926), Saddam Hussein (1937), Ann-Margret (1941), Alice Waters (1944), Jay Leno (1950), Elena Kagan (1960), Helen Taylor [Windsor] (daughter of Prince Edward) (1964), Penélope Cruz (1974) & Jonathan Scott (Property Brothers) (1978) were born #OnThisDay. St. Hugh, 6th abbot of Cluny (1109), Conrad of Montferrat, king of Jerusalem (1192), Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland (1498), Mary Read (1721), Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1754), Samuel Cunard (1865), Gavrilo Princip (1918), Fuʾād I [Aḥmad Fuʾād Pasha], king of Egypt (1936), Benito Mussolini (1945), Clara Petacci (1945), Aurora Quezon (1949), Ed Begley (1970), Francis Bacon (1992), William Colby (1996), János Starker (2013) & Conrad Burns (2016) died on this day. Conrad of Montferrat (Conrad I), king of Jerusalem, assassinated by the Hashhashin in Tyre two days after his election (1192), Philip II of France expelled King John ‘Lackland’ of England from France (1202), Buddhist monk Nichiren founded Nichiren Buddhism, propounding ‘nam myoho renge kyo’ as the essence of Buddhism (1253), establishment of the Pontifical & Royal University of Santo Tomas (the Catholic University of the Philippines), the oldest existing university in Asia and largest Catholic university in the world (1611), Virginia Governor John Harvey accused of treason & removed from office (1635), Captain James Cook’s ship Endeavour landed at Botany Bay in Australia (1770), Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on HMS Bounty against its captain William Bligh in the South Pacific (1789), James Monroe proclaimed the naval disarmament of the Great Lakes & Lake Champlain (1818), France abolished slavery in its colonies (1848), the first veterinary college in the US incorporated in Boston (1855), Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera “L’Africaine” premiered in Paris (1865), France sent troops to. Tunisia (1881), Billy the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County jail in New Mexico (1881), Thor Heyerdahl & the crew of the Kon-Tiki sailed from Peru to Polynesia (1847), former Philippine First Lady Aurora Quezon assassinated while en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband along with her daughter & 10 others (1949), Mohammad Mosaddegh elected prime minister of Iran by the Majlis (parliament) (1951), the last French troops left Vietnam (1956), “My Name is Barbra” — Barbra Streisand’s first television special — premiered on CBS (1965), Lyndon Johnson sent 22,000 troops to the Dominican Republic to forestall an uprising against the US-installed military dictatorship (1965), Richard Helms replaced Marshall S. Carter as deputy director of the CIA (1965), Luciano Pavarotti made his debut at the Teatro alla Scala di Milan in Franco Zeffirelli’s production of “La Bohème” with Mirella Freni (1965), “The Sound of Music,” Julie Christie & Lee Marvin won Academy Awards at the 38th Academy Awards ceremony (1966), Muhammad Ali refused induction into the US Army (1967), Charles de Gaulle resigned as president of France (1969), Richard Nixon authorized US military intervention in Cambodia (1970), Andreas Baader & other members of terrorist group the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang) sentenced to life after a trial lasting nearly 2 years in Stuttgart (1977), the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure signed (1977), Afghanistan’s president Sardar Mohammed Daoud overthrown & murdered in a coup d’état led by pro-Soviet rebels (1978), Cyrus Vance resigned as Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state (1980), the Soviet TV news program Vremya announced a nuclear accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station two days after the event (1986), Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus & Tim Rice’s musical “Chess” opened at the Imperial Theater in Manhattan (1988), Aloha Airlines flight attendant killed when the roof of a Boeing 737 roof tore off in flight (1988), Carlo Ciampi formed a new government with the former Italian Communist Party (1993), CIA agent Aldrich Ames & his wife Rosario pled guilty to spying for the Soviet Union & Russia (1994), Martin Bryant shot & killed 35 in Port Arthur in Australia’s worst massacre in the 20th century (1996), Shrek the sheep shorn of 27 kg (60 lb) in New Zealand (2004), Craig Ferguson announced he would leave “The Late Late Show” at the end of 2014 (2014), 140 skeletons from the Chimú civilisation uncovered by archaeologists in Peru in what was the world’s largest child sacrifice in recorded history (2018), the “Game of Thrones: The Long Night” episode debuted with the longest battle ever screened (nearly 80 mins), surpassing “The Lord of the Rings” Battle of Helm’s Deep (44 mins) (2019), the US confirmed over one million cases of COVID-19 & death toll of 58,365 surpassed that of US soldiers killed in Vietnam War (2020) on this day.
 
 
April 29
 
Taliesin (534), James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde (1665), James Brooke, first rajah of Sarawak (1803), Alexander II of Russia (1818), Anatoly Liadov (1855), Lorado Taft (1860), William Randolph Hearst (1863), Constantine Cavafy (1863), Thomas Beecham (1879), Malcom Sargent (1895), Edward ‘Duke’ Ellington (1899), Hirohito, 124th emperor of Japan (1901), Celeste Holm (1917), Rod McKuen (1933), Willie Nelson (1933), Mark Eyskens [Marc Maria Frans, Viscount Eyskens] (1933), Zubin Mehta (1936), Bernie Madoff (1938), Ian Kershaw (1943), Debbie Stabenow (1950), Jerome ‘Jerry’ Seinfeld (1954), Gino Quilico (1955), Leslie Jordan (1955), Daniel Day-Lewis (1957), Michelle Pfeiffer (1958), Eve Plumb (1958), Andre Agassi (1970), Uma Thurman (1970) & Sofía, Infanta of Spain (2007) were born #OnThisDay. St. Catherine of Siena (1380), Constantine Cavafy (1933), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1951), Ntare V of Burundi (1972), Alfred Hitchcock (1980), Mike Royko (1997), John Kenneth Galbraith (2006), Denis Goldberg (2020) & Shiyiwe Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu (queen of the Zulu nation) 2021) died on this day. Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) arrived to lift the siege of Orléans (1429), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ended the privileges of the city of Ghent (1540), Sweden & Denmark signed a defense treaty against the Holy Roman Empire’s troops led by Albrecht von Wallenstein (1628), Francis Drake sailed into Cadiz harbor & sank the Spanish fleet, thereby “singeing the King of Spain’s Beard” & delaying the Spanish Armada by a year (1587), the 18-day-long Battle of Zhovti Vody in Ukraine led to Poland’s King Casimir’s defeat by Cossacks (1648), Ming China occupied Taiwan (1661), Louis XIV’s France invaded the Netherlands (1672), the English & Scottish parliaments voted for the Act of Union creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain as of May 1 (1707), the first edition of Peter Roget’s Thesaurus published in London (1852), the Pennsylvania state legislature chartered the Ashmun Institute — the first US college founded to educate African Americans (1854), Maryland’s House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union (1861), New Orleans fell to Union forces in the Civil War (1862), 230 Maori warriors defeated 1,700 British troops at the Battle of Gate Pā (Pukehinahina) — the worst British defeat in the New Zealand Wars (1864), Werner von Siemens tested the ‘Elektromote’ (forerunner of the trolleybus) in Berlin (1882), Congress extended the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibiting immigration of Chinese laborers from territories to the mainland to preclude Chinese immigration from the Philippines (1902), Irish republicans surrendered in Dublin, ending the Easter Rising (1916), the Whitestone Bridge opened connecting the New York boroughs of the Bronx & Queens (1939), Haakon VII & the Norwegian government fled to exile in Britain (1940), Jews ordered to wear a yellow Star of David in the Netherlands & Vichy France (1942), Dietrich Bonhoeffer arrested by the Gestapo for his criticism of the Nazi regime (1943), Noël Coward’s play “Present Laughter” premiered in London (1943), the German army in Italy unconditionally surrendered to Allied troops (1945), Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun just hours before their deaths by suicide (1945), Venice & Mestre liberated by the Allies (1945), the US 7th Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberated 31,601 people from the Dachau Nazi concentration camp in Bavaria (1945), conscientious objector Desmond Doss saved approximately 75 wounded soldiers in the Battle of Okinawa at Hacksaw Ridge (later depicted in the Oscar-winning film “Hacksaw Ridge”) (1945), 28 Japanese leaders indicted as war criminals in Tokyo (1946), Malta becomes 18th member of Council of Europe (1965), Aretha Franklin released her single “Respect” (written by Otis Redding) which became the 1967 Billboard Song of the Year (1967), US & South Vietnamese troops expanded the Vietnam War to Cambodia (1970), Richard Nixon announced that he would release the Watergate tapes (1974), Ethiopia nationalized all land (1975), the US began the evacuation of US citizens from Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind (1975), Charles McMahon & Darwin Judge became the last two United States servicemen killed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1975), Harold Washington sworn in as Chicago’s first African American mayor (1983), acquittal of Los Angeles Police Department officers on charges of excessive force in the beating of Rodney King sparked massive riots in the city (1992), Dick Cheney & George W. Bush testified before the 9/11 Commission in a closed, unrecorded hearing in the Oval Office (2004), the World War II Memorial opened in Washington, D.C. (2004), the last Oldsmobiled rolled off the assembly line at the Lansing Car Assembly plant in Michigan, ending 106 years of production (2004), New Zealand’s first civil union (2005), Prince William married Catherine Elizabeth ‘Kate’ Middleton (2011), “The Simpsons” surpassed the 635-episode count of “Gunsmoke” — the highest number of episodes of any series on TV (2018), Indonesia announced plans to relocate the national capital from the slowly sinking city of Jakarta (2019), Sports Illustrated featured a Muslim model (Halima Aden) in a burkini for the first time in their swimsuit edition (2019), Brazil’s official COVID-19 death toll passed 400,000 — with daily fatalities at 3,000 — down from 4,000 (2021), the world’s longest pedestrian bridge at 516 metres (1,700 feet) opened inside northern Portugal’s Arouca Geopark (2021) on this day.
 
 
 
April 30
 
Philip III of France (1245), Casimir III of France (1309), Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (1651), Mary II of England, Scotland & Ireland (1662), Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777), Kaspar Hauser (1812), George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll & secretary of state for India (1823), Franz Lehár (1870), Alice B. Toklas (1877), Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893), Eve Arden [Eunice Quedens] (1908), Juliana, queen of the Netherlands (1909), Cloris Leachman (1926), Gary Collins (1938), Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (1939), Jill Clayburgh (1944), Bob Livingston (1943), Carl XVI Gustaf (1946), António Guterres (1949), Jane Campion (1954), Stephen Harper (1959), Kirsten Dunst (1982), Gal Gadot (1985) & Jacob Blake (1991) were born #OnThisDay. Lucan (65), Galerius Valerius MAximinus [Daia] (313), Amalaswintha, queen of the Ostrogoths (535), Meister Eckhard (1328), Sigismund III Vasa, king of Poland, grand duke of Lithuania & king of Sweden (1632), John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1792), Édouard Manet (1883), Bessie Coleman (1926), A.E. Housman (1936), Beatrice Potter Webb (1943), Paul Poiret (1944), Adolf Hitler (1945), Eva Braun (1945), Alben Barkley (1956), Ntare V, king of Burundi (1972), Agnes Moorehead (1974), George Balanchine (1983), Muddy Waters [McKinley Morganfield] (1983), Sergio Leone (1989), Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (2002), Tom Poston (2007) & Daniel Berrigan (2016) died on this day. Roman Emperor Galerius issued an Edict of Toleration ending persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire (311), Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad landed at Gibraltar to begin the invasion & conquest of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus) (711), French chamberlain Enguerrand de Marigny hanged on the public gallows at Montfaucon after being convicted of sorcery (1315), Ferdinand & Isabella commissioned Christopher Columbus to sail for Spain (1492), Henry VIII & François I signed the Treaty of Westminster committing England & France to join forces against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in the War of the League of Cognac (1527), Jean Ribault & the first French colonists in North America arrived in Florida (1562), Charles VI expelled Jews from France (1563), the spire of Beauvais cathedral in France — then the tallest monument in the world — collapsed (1573), George Washington inaugurated as the first president of the United States of America (1789), Robert Livingston & James Monroe signed the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in Paris, doubling the size of the USA for $15 million (1803), Charles Dickens’ “A Tale Of Two Cities” first published in literary periodical “All the Year Round” in weekly installments until Nov. 26 (1859), Robert E. Lee led Confederate troops to victory over the Union army led by Joseph Hooker at the Battle of Chancellorsville at which Stonewall Jackson was fatally wounded (1863), New York became the first state to charge a hunting license fee (1864), 144 killed in the Camp Grant Massacre of Apaches in Arizona Territory (1871), British physicist J.J. Thomson announced his discovery of electrons (1897), Congress enacted the ‘Hawaiian Organic Act’ making Hawaii a US territory (1900), Claude Debussy’s only completed opera “Pelléas et Mélisande” premiered in Paris (1902), the ice cream cone — invented by Ernest A. Hamwi — made its first appearance at the St. Louis World’s Fair (1904), Portugal gave women the vote (1911), Germany became the first country in the world to adopt daylight saving time (1916), the end of British military conscription until World War II (1920), the first federal prison for women opened in West Virginia (1927), Austria adopted a fascist constitution (1934), 90% of Filipino men vote to give Filipino women the right to vote in the Philippines (1937), the World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows/Corona Park in Queens (1939), the Soviet Red Army began its assault on the Reichstag in Berlin (1945), the Soviet army liberated Ravensbruck concentration camp (1945), Adolf Hitler & Eva Braun’s suicide in his bunker in Berlin (1945), the charter of the Organization of American States signed in Bogota (1948), Mr. Potato Head first advertisted on television (1952), Ostankino Tower in Moscow became the highest free-standing structure in the world at 540 meters when it was completed (1967), Richard Nixon announced the resignation of H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman & other top aides (1973), Richard Nixon handed over partial transcripts of the Watergate tapes (1974), North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon (1975), Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo begin protesting in Buenos Aires over the forced disappearances of thousands under the military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina (1977), Juliana abdicated as queen of the Netherlands, succeeded by Beatrix Milhelmina Armgard (1980), World Wide Web (WWW) launched in the public domain by CERN scientist Tim Berners-Lee (1989), 208th & final episode of “The Cosby Show” on NBC (1992), a deranged German stabbed tennis star Monica Seles in Hamburg (1993), 42 million watched Ellen DeGeneres publicly declare she was gay on the ABC sitcom “Ellen” (1997), the Mitchell Report on Israel/Palestine published (2001), CBS broadcast photos of US torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes” (2004), the skeletal remains of Alexei Nikolaevich & one of his sisters found in Ekaterinburg confirmed by Russian scientists (2008), seven killed & 17 injured in an attack on the Dutch royal family (2009), British combat operations in Iraq formally ended (2009), Willem-Alexander became the first king of the Netherlands in 123 years following the abdication of his mother Beatrix (2013), Bernie Sanders announced his presidential candidacy (2015), Akihito announced his abdication as emperor of Japan (2019), Donald Trump claimed COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan (2020) on this day.
 
 
May 1
 
Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph I (1218), Magnus VI Lagabuter, king of Norway (1238), Joseph Addison (1672), Kamehameha I of Hawaii (1738), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764), Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769), Mother [Mary Harris] Jones (1830), [Robert] Lawson Tait (1845), Calamity Jane [Martha Jane Canary] (1852), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881), Francis Curzon, 5th Earl Howe (1884), Leo Sowerby (1895), Kate Smith (1907), Glen Ford (1916), Danielle Darrieux (1917), Jack Paar (1918), Art Fleming [Fazzin] (1924), Richard Riordan (1930), Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (1934), Judy Collins (1939), Max Robinson (1939), Joanna Lumley (1946), Dann Florek (1950), Marilyn Milian (1961), Sarah Armstrong-Jones (1964) & Tim McGraw (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Albrecht I von Habsburg (1308), Thomas à Kempis (1471), John Dryden (1700), David Livingstone (1873), Ludwig Büchner (1899), Antonín Dvořák (1904), Joseph Goebbels (1945), Yi Un, last crown prince of Korea (1970), Aram Khachaturian (1978), Sally Kirkland (1989), Eldridge Cleaver (1998) & Olympia Dukakis (2021) died on this day. Diocletian & Maximian retired as Roman emperors (305), England recognized Scotland as an independent state in the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton (1328), Christopher Columbus proposed his plan to search for a western route to India to Isabella of Castille (1486), the Acts of Union united England & Scotland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain (1707), Species Plantarum by Carolus Linnaeus published (1753), Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s “School for Scandal” premiered in London (1777), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart conducted the premiere of “Le Nozze di Figaro” in Vienna (1786), the British ‘Penny Black’ — the world’s first adhesive postage stamp — issued (1840), Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition opened in the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park (1851), the first part of Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm’s German dictionary published (1852), the Hospital for the Ruptured & Crippled first opens its doors in New York City — the oldest orthopaedic hospital in the United States (1863), Major Gen. Benjamin Butler’s Union forces occupied New Orleans (1862), 29,000 injured or killed in the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia (1863), the Confederate Congress passed a resolution about killing African American soldiers (1863), the Folies Bergère opens in Paris (1869), Emperor Franz Joseph opened 5th World’s Exposition in Vienna (1873), US Admiral George Dewey ordered “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley” as US forces destroyed the Spanish Pacific fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay (1898), Edward VII of England visited Paris (1903), China’s first republican president Yuan Shikai assumed absolute power (1914), the International Congress of Women meeting in the Hague adopted resolutions on peace & women’s suffrage (1915), “L’Ordine Nuovo” Italian socialist weekly newspaper established in Turin by Antonio Gramsci, Angelo Tasca & Palmiro Togliatti (1919), Adolf Hitler & Ernst Röhm called upon Nazis to break up May Day demonstrations (1923), Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie began their first joint venture (later merge into Mercedes-Benz) (1924), Cyprus became a British crown colony (1925), the Ford Motor Company became one of the first companies in the US to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers (1926), the planet Pluto officially named by 11 year-old Venetia Burney (1930), the Empire State Building opened in Manhattan (1931), Kate Smith began her association with CBS, which would continue until 1945 (1931), the Philippine legislature accepted the US proposal for independence (1934), Emperor Haile Selassie fled Ethiopia as Italy invaded (1936), Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Neutrality Act into law (1937), Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 (1939), Orson Welles’ film “Citizen Kane” premiered in Manhattan (1941), General Mills introduced CheeriOats (renamed Cheerios in 1945) (1941), Admiral Karl Doenitz formed a new German government in the wake of Adolf Hitler’s suicide (1945), the Paris Peace Conference concluded that the islands of the Dodecanese should be returned to Greece by Italy (1946), North Korea proclaimed itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (1948), Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical “South Pacific” won a Pulitzer Prize (1950), Babe Didrikson Zaharias won the Peach Blossom LPGA Tournament — her last golf tournament championship before dying of colon cancer (1955), Linda Lawson crowned ‘Miss-Cue’ in the Atomic Pageant after the Operation Cue test was repeatedly delayed by high winds (1955), Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed Law Day as an alternative to May Day (1958), Soviets shot down Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk, provoking a crisis for the Eisenhower administration (1960), Fidel Castro announced that there would be no more elections in Cuba (1961), Harper Lee won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1961), Tanganyika granted full internal self-government by Britain (1961), Indonesia took control of Irian Jaya (western New Guinea) from the Netherlands (1963), Gloria Steinem’s exposé “A Bunny’s Tale” published in “Show” magazine (1963), Anastasio Somoza Debayle became president of Nicaragua (1967), 43 Unification church couples wed in New York City (1969), Amtrak began operation (1971), Cesar Chavez began a 24-day hunger strike in opposition to an Arizona law restricting farm workers’ ability to organize (1972), Ernest Nathan Morial inaugurated as the first African American mayor of New Orleans (1978), Elton John performed in Israel for the first time (1979), the Russian news agency Tass reported the Chernobyl nuclear power plant mishap (1986), Charles Kuralt retired from CBS (1994), Tony Blair led the Labour Party to a landslide victory over the Conservative Party in the British general election (1997), Tasmania became the last state in Australia to decriminalize homosexuality (1997), Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared the existence of a ‘state of rebellion’ in the Philippines after thousands of supporters of her arrested predecessor Joseph Estrada stormed the presidential palace at height of EDSA III rebellion (2000), Ridley Scott’s film “Gladiator” premiered in Los Angeles (2000), George W. Bush declared ‘mission accomplished’ in Iraq aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (2003), Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia & Slovenia joined the European Union — celebrated at the residence of the Irish President in Dublin (2004), the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) provoked the Los Angeles May Day mêlée (2007), Christopher Hitchens’ bestseller “God is Not Great” published (2007), the London Agreement on translation of European patents entered into force in 14 of the 34 contracting states to the European Patent Convention (2008), same-sex marriage recognized in Sweden (2009), Pope Benedict XVI beatified Pope John Paul II (2011), Chinese authorities labeled the British cartoon “Peppa Pig” subversive & removed it from the Douyin video website (2018), Naruhito succeeded Akihito after his abdication as emperor of Japan (2019), Justin Trudeau announced Canada’s ban on 1,500 types of assault-style weapons in response to a mass shooting in Nova Scotia (2020), tweets by Elon Musk saying Tesla’s share price was too high wiped $14 billion off the carmaker’s value (2020), armed protesters swarmed the state capitol in Lansing as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reinstated a state of emergency in Michigan (2020) on this day.
 
 
 
May 2
 
Zhu Di — the Yongle emperor of Ming China (1360), Alessandro Scarlatti (1660), Vicente Martín y Soler (1754), Novalis [Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg] (1772), Abraham Gesner (1797), Elijah McCoy (1844), Theodor Herzl (1860), (Frederick) Tyrone Power, Sr. (1869), James F. Byrnes (1879), Hedda Hopper [Elda Furry] (1885), Manfred von Richthofen (The Red Baron) (1892), Lorenz Hart (1895), Benjamin Spock (1903), Axel Springer (1912), Satyajit Ray (1921), A.M. Rosenthal (1922), Gérard D. Levesque (1926), Faisal II of Iraq (1935), Michael Rabin (1936), Engelbert Humperdinck [Arnold George Dorsey] (1936), Bianca Jagger [Blanca Pérez-Mora Macías] (1945), Lesley Gore [Goldstein] (1946), David Suchet (1946), Philippe Herreweghe (1947), Christine Baranski (1952), Valery Gergiev (1953), Donatella Versace (1955), Stephen Daldry (1960), Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson (1972), Garðar Thór Cortes (1974), David Beckham (1975) & Princess Charlotte of Cambridge (2015) were born #OnThisDay. Leonardo da Vinci (1519), Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester (1711), Alfred de Musset (1857), Eliza Courtney (1859), Giacomo Meyerbeer (1864), Martin Bormann (1945), Joseph McCarthy (1957), Nancy Astor (1964), Franz von Papen (1969), J. Edgar Hoover (1972), Lee Salk (1992), Wilbur Mills (1992), Julio Gallo (1993), Michael Hordern (1995), Paulo Freire (1997), Oliver Reed (1999), Louis Rukeyser (2006), Jack Kemp (2009), Lynn Redgrave (2010), Osama bin Laden (2011), Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (2014), Maya Plisetskaya (2015) & Jacques d’Amboise (2021) died on this day. John Cabot’s expedition set sail from Bristol (1497), Anne Boleyn arrested & taken to the Tower of London (1536), Philip II named Albrecht of Austria guardian of Netherlands (1595), France & Spain signed the Peace of Vervins (1598), the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the War of Devolution, French-Spanish war in The Netherlands (1668), Charles II conferred a royal charter on the Hudson’s Bay Company (1670), Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa authorized the Haugwitzschen state reforms (1749), a Spanish uprising against French occupation began in Madrid (1808), Tsar Nicholas I banned the public sale of serfs in Russia (1833), Stonewall Jackson was wounded by his own men in the midst of the Confederate victory over Union troops at the Battle of Chancellorsville (1863), Andrew Johnson offered a $100,000 reward for capture of Jefferson Davis (1865), the Folies Trévise (later the cabaret hall Folies Bergère) opened as an opera house in Paris (1869), the État Indépendent du Congo (Congo Free State) formed by Leopold II of Belgium (1885), Gioachino Rossini’s corpse transferred to Santa Croce in Florence (1887), Abyssinian Emperor Menelik II & Italy signed the Treaty of Wichale (1889), Oklahoma Territory created (1890), Nicholas II dismissed Sergei Count Witte as Russia’s prime minister & replaced him with the reactionary Ivan Goremykin (1906), French troops occupy Fès in Morocco (1911), Patrick Mahon’s murder of Emily Kaye in Sussex led to the use of rubber gloves a standard practice in British crime investigations (1924), 14-year-old Billie Holiday ^ her mother were arrested on prostitution charges in a raid on a brother in Harlem (1929), Pearl S. Buck won a Pulitzer Prize for “The Good Earth” (1932), Adolf Hitler banned trade unions in Germany (1933), the Inverness Courier reported a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster in April (1933), Sergei Prokofiev’s musical “Peter & the Wolf” premiered in Moscow (1936), Ella Fitzgerald recorded “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” with Chick Webb & His Orchestra (1938), Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” won a Pulitzer Prize (1938), a million German soldiers surrendered to the Allies in Italy & Austria (1945), Berlin surrendered to the Soviet Red Army (1945), Yugoslav troops occupied Trieste (1945), Tay Garnett’s film “The Postman Always Rings Twice” released (1946), Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” won a Pulitzer Prize (1949), Eugene O’Neill’s play “Moon for the Misbegotten” premiered at the Bijou Theatre in Manhattan (1957), Dick Clark testified in Congressional hearings on the Payola scandal (1960), more than a thousand African American schoolchildren participated in the Children’s March against segregation in Birmingham as part of the Children’s Crusade in Alabama (1963), Spiro Agnew disbarred (1974), the British submarine Conqueror sank the General Belgrano, killing more than 350 Argentinians aboard — the most casualties from any incident during the Falklands/Malvinas War (1983), Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Sunday in the Park with George” won a Pulitzer Prize for drama (1984), South Africa & African National Congress opened talks to end apartheid (1990), the Serbian army seized Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic (1992), Dr. Jack Kevorkian acquitted in assisted suicide cases (1994), police arrested transgendered sex worker Atisone Seiuli with Eddie Murphy (1997), “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” released (1997), Mireya Moscoso became the first woman to be elected president of Panama (1999), Osama bin Laden assassinated by US forces in Abbottabad (2011), pastel version of “The Scream” by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch sold at auction for $119,922,500 (2012), Rhode Island became the 10th US state to recognize same-sex marriage (2013), Kanye West widely criticized for saying “slavery is a choice” in a TMZ interview (2018), the Basque separatist group Eta announced it would disband after 50 years of operations (2018), the discovery of a butchered rhinoceros on Luzon prompted scientists to re-date the earliest hominids in the Philippines to 709,000 years ago (2018), the “Plos One” journal published research about plants communicating through their roots & soil (2018), Iowa enacted a law establishing fetal heartbeat as the standard for viability with regard to abortion (2018), Facebook banned Alex Jones (InfoWars), Milo Yiannopoulos (Breitbart), Louis Farrakhan (Nation of Islam), Paul Nehlen & Laura Loomer for hate speech (2019), a clean-up on Mt Everest removed three metric tons (6,613 pounds) of rubbish & four bodies in just two weeks (2019) on this day.
 
 
May 3
 
Byzantine emperor Constantine III (612), Cecily Neville (1415), Margaret of York (1446), Niccolò Machiavelli (1469), Élisabeth, princesse de France (1764), Charles XV of Sweden & Norway (1826), Richard D’Oyly Carte (1844), Jacob Riis (1849), Bernhard von Bülow (1849), François Coty (1874), Marcel Dupré (1886), Beulah Bondi (1889), Golda Meir [Mabovitch] (1898), (Harry Lillis) ‘Bing’ Crosby (1903), Mary Astor (1906), Léopold Simoneau (1916), Pete Seeger (1919), Marina Svetlova (1922), James Brown (1933), Frankie Valli [Francesco Stephen Castelluccio] (1934), David Koch (1940), Ron Wyden (1949), David Vitter (1961), Princess Haya bint Hussein of Jordan (1974) & Dulé Hill (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Kongo’s king Nkuwu Nzinga baptized by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I (1491), Ferdinand I succeeded his brother Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor (1558), Sweden, Poland, Brandenburg & Austria signed the Peace of Oliva (1660), Connecticut granted a royal charter (1662), the Third of May uprising in Spain (1808), George Gordon, Lord Byron swam the Hellespont (modern day Dardanelles) (1810), Austrian forces defeated the army of Napoléon’s brother Joachim of Naples at the Battle of Tolentino (1815), the May Uprising began in Dresden — the last of the Revolutions of 1848 in Germany (1849), Charles XV crowned king of Sweden (1860), the Second Battle of Fredericksburg (1863), the Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island (1867), John McCrae wrote the poem “In Flanders Fields” (1915), Irish nationalists Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh & Thomas Clarke executed by firing squad following their involvement in the Easter Rising (1916), Prussia banned anti-fascism (1929), the Front Populaire won parliamentary elections in France (1936), Margaret Mitchell won a Pulitzer Prize for “Gone With The Wind” (1937), the Nazi concentration camp opened at Flossenburg (1938), the Vatican recognized Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in Spain (1938), Upton Sinclair won a Pulitzer Prize for “Dragon’s Teeth” (1943), the International Military Tribunals for the Far East began hearing the case against 28 Japanese military & government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1946), Japan’s postwar constitution banned its right to make war & stripped the emperor of power (1947), the first broadcast of the CBS Evening News — the longest running network news show in the US (1948), the the Festival of Britain opened at the new Royal Festival Hall in London (1951), the Senate Armed Services & Foreign Relations Committees began their hearings into Harry Truman’s dismissal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1951), Charles Lindbergh & John Patrick won Pulitzer Prizes (1954), the US Supreme Court expanded civil rights in Hernandez vs. Texas (1954), the Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam (1960), the first US Army ground combat unit in the Vietnam War left Okinawa for Vietnam (1965), “All Things Considered” premiered on 112 National Public Radio stations as NPR’s first program (1971), Erich Honecker succeeded Walter Ulbricht as East German Communist Party leader (1971), the Sears Tower completed in Chicago (1973), Saul Bellow won a Pulitzer Prize for “Humboldt’s Gift” (1976), 13-year-old Cari Lightner was killed by a drunk driver, prompting her mother to found Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) (1980), the Conference of US Catholic Bishops condemned nuclear weapons (1983), 356th & final episode of CBS second longest running series TV show “Dallas” (second only to “Gunsmoke”) (1991), the Declaration of Windhoek (on press freedom) signed by African journalists (1991), Exxon executive Sidney Reso died in a storage vault in New Jersey four days after being abducted (1992), “Spider Man” with Tobey Maguire premiered (2002) & three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared in Portugal (2007) on this day.
 
 
 
May 4
 
Kangxi emperor of Qing China (1654), Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655), Horace Mann (1796), Alice Liddell (1852), Francis Spellman (archbishop & cardinal) (1889), Archibald McIndoe (1900), Umm Kulthum [Ibrahim] (1904), Lincoln Kirstein (1907), Jane Jacobs (1916), Kakuei Tanaka (1918), Hosni Mubarak (1928), Audrey Hepburn (1929), Roberta Peters (1930), Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931), Amoz Oz (1939), George Will (1941), Richard Brodsky (1946), Pia Zadora [Schipani] (1954), Keith Haring (1958), Randy Travis (1959), Laci Peterson (1975) & Lance Bass (1979) were born #OnThisDay. Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson (1436), Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales (1471), Edmund Beaufort, 4th Duke of Somerset (1471), Claudio Merulo (1604), Kanō Jigorō (1938), Georges Enesco (1955), Osbert Sitwell (1969), four Kent State University students (1970), Moe Howard [Moses Horowitz] (1975), Jospi Broz Tito (1980), Dom De Luise (2009) & William J. Baumol (2017) died on this day. Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury (1471), Henry VIII had five Carthusian monks from the London Charterhouse monastery hanged, drawn & quartered at Tyburn (1535), Peter Minuit became director-general of New Netherlands (1626), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Tolomeo, Re di Egitto” premiered in London (1728), Rhode Island declared independence from Great Britain (1776), the American Academy of Arts & Science founded in Boston (1878), the Bourbon Restoration in France (1814), Ferdinand VII signed the Decree of the 4th of May re-establishing absolutism in Spain (1814), Chicago police killed several people in Haymarket Square after a bomb was thrown at them (1886), Italy ended its Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary & Germany (1915), Ned Daly, Willie Pearse, Michael O’Hanrahan and Joseph Plunkett executed by British authorities following the Easter Rising in Dublin (1916), Chinese students demonstrated against the Allies’ plan to give the Shandong peninsula to Japan (1919), Nazis, socialists & police battled in the streets of Vienna (1923), German forces in Denmark, Norway & the Netherlands surrender unconditionally to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Luneburg Heath (1945), German forces in Bavaria surrender unconditionally to US commander Jacob L. Devers (1945), the International Court of Justice convicted Nazi SS officer in the Netherlands Hans Rauter of crimes against humanity (executed 24 March 1949) (1948), Ernest Hemingway won a Pulitzer Prize for “The Old Man & The Sea” (1953), Perry Como & Ella Fitzgerald won the first Grammy Awards (1959), François Truffaut’s film “The 400 Blows” — starring Jean-Pierre Léaud — released (1959), the first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C. to participate in civil rights activism in the South (1961), British MP Harry Cohen’s “May the Fourth be with you” joke spawned a cottage industry of “Star Wars” memes (1994) a ceremony marked the beginning of the second attempt to build the Panama Canal (1905), 28 Ohio National Guardsmen fired on students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four students at Kent State University (1970), Lina Wertmüller’s film “Seven Beauties” released (1975), US Catholic bishops rescinded automatic excommunications for divorced & remarried Catholics (1977), Margaret Thatcher became the first woman elected British prime minister (1979), Yitzhak Rabin & Yasser Arafat signed an agreement in Cairo following the Oslo Accords of 1993 (1994),’Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years (1998), Ken Livingstone became the first elected mayor of Greater London (2000), the Milwaukee Art Museum addition — the first Santiago Calatrava-designed structure in the United States — opened to the public (2001), Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador gave a historic apology to the Mayan people for abuses against them in the five centuries since the Spanish conquest (2021) on this day.
 
 
 
May 5
 
Afonso III of Portugal (1210), Philippe Quinault (1635), Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II (1747), Louis Christophe François Hachette (1800), Søren Kierkegaard (1813), Karl Marx (1818), Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Agustina de Palafox y Kirkpatrick, a.k.a., Eugénie de Montijo, empress of France (1826), Nellie Bly [Elizabeth Cochran Seaman] (1865), Hans Pfitzner (1869), Sylvia Pankhurst (1882), James Beard (1903), Tyrone Power (1914), Georgios Papadopoulos (1919), Richard Wollheim (1923), Leo Ryan (1925), Ann B. Davis (1926), Charles Rosen (1927), Patricia ‘Pat’ Carroll (1927), Sid O’Linn (1927), Michael Murphy (1938), Stanley Cowell (1941), Tammy Wynette [Virginia Pugh] (1942), Michael Palin (1943), John Rhys-Davies (1944), Richard E. Grant (1957), Naomi Klein (1970), Henry Cavill (1983), Adele [Adele Laurie Blue Adkins] (1988), Chris Brown (1989) & Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg (1990) were born #OnThisDay. Roman Emperor Galerius (311), Alfonso V of León (1028), Friedrich III (Frederick the Wise) (1525), Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (1705), Napoléon Bonaparte (1821), Bret Harte (1902), Carlos Saavedra Lamas (1959), Ludwig Erhard (1977), Michael Shaara (1988), Irving Howe (1993) & Walter Sisulu (2003) died on this day. Kublai Khan became ruler of the Mongol empire (1260), Charles I surrended in Scotland (1646), Russia & Prussia signed the Treaty of St. Petersburg ending the Seven Years’ War (1762), George Washington appointed Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben Inspector General of the Continental Army (1778), Louis XVI convened France’s États-Généraux (Estates-General) at Versailles, meeting for the first time since 1614 (1789), the first published poem of John Keats appeared in “The Examiner” (1816), Napoléon Bonaparte died on St. Helena (1821), the American Medical Association was founded in Philadelphia (1847), Confederate troops abandoned Alexandria (1861), the Mexican army defeated Napoléon III’s French troops in the Battle of Puebla (Cinco de Mayo) (1862), Union & Confederate troops met in the Battle of the Wilderness (1864), the British & Foreign Society for Improving the Embossed Literature of the Blind adopted Braille as best format for blind people (1870), Sitting Bull led a band of followers out of Montana & into Canada to avoid the US Army, returning to the US in 1881 (1877), anti-Jewish rioting in Kyiv (Ukraine) (1881), seven killed in the Bay View Tragedy in Milwaukee (1886), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted as guest conductor at the opening of Music Hall (Carnegie Hall) in Manhattan (1891), the Panic of 1893 on the New York Stock Exchange (1893), the Soviet Communist Party’s Pravda newspaper began publication (1912), Eugene Bullard earned his pilot’s license from Aéro-Club de France & became the first African-American military pilot (French Air Service) (1917), the delegation from Italy — led by Vittorio Orlando & Sidney Sonnino — returned to the Versailles peace conference in Paris after leaving abruptly 11 days earlier (1919), Woodrow Wilson made the Communist Labor Party illegal in the United States (1920), Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti charged with murder in Massachusetts (1920), Coco Chanel introduced Chanel No. 5 perfume (1921), John Scopes arrested for teaching evolution in Tennessee (1925), Afrikaans established as an official language in South Africa (1925), Sinclair Lewis refused a Pulitzer Prize for “Arrowsmith” (1926), Italian troops occupied Addis Ababa (1936), a Norwegian government-in-exile formed in London (1940), Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa (1941), Mohandas Gandhi released from prison (1944), the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria liberated by US forces from the 41st Reconnaissance Squadron (1945), the Netherlands & Denmark liberated from Nazi occupation (1945), Germany’s post-Hitler leader Admiral Karl Dönitz ordered all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases (1945), Robert Penn Warren won a Pulitzer Prize for “All the King’s Men” (1947), Bhumibol Adulyadej crowned King Rama IX of Thailand in Bangkok (1950), the “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” (also known as “Vitameatavegamin”) episode of “I Love Lucy” aired, garnering 68% of US television viewers (1952), Gen. Alfredo Stroessner led a military coup état in Paraguay, overthrowing the government of Federico Chávez (1954), the occupation of West Germany ended as the Allies recognized the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany (1955), Alan Shepard, Jr. was launched into space aboard the Freedom 7, becoming the first American in space 1961), “Cien Años de Soledad” (One Hundred Years of Solitude) of Gabriel Garcia Márquez published (1967), Michael Shaara won a Pulitzer Prize for his historical novel “Killer Angels” (1975), Voyager 1 passed Jupiter (1979), the siege of the Iranian embassy in London ended as police & special forces stormed the building (1980), Konstantinos Karamanlis elected president of Greece (1980), Congress began hearings on the Iran-Contra Affair (1987), Jacques Chirac won re-election as president of France, defeating Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National (2002), Tony Blair led the Labour Party to its third consecutive British general election victory (2005), Anna Wintour made a Dame Commander of the British Empire by Elizabeth II (2017), Childish Gambino [Donald Glover] released the music video to new single “This is America” (2018), Vajiralongkorn crowned king of Thailand in Bangkok (2019), publication of an article providing evidence of Africa’s earliest burial (of a three-year-old boy in a cave in Kenya) 78,000 years ago (2021) & Apartheid Israel’s move to evict a Palestinian family from their house in Sheikh Jarrah provoked an uprising in illegally occupied East Jerusalem (2021) on this day.
 
 
 
 
May 6
 
Holy Roman Emperor Henry II (973), Sejong the Great, fourth king of Joseon Korea (1397), Maximilien Robespierre (1758), Robert Peary (1856), Sigmund Freud (1856), Amadeo Giannini (1870), José Ortega y Gasset (1883), Rudolph Valentino (1895), Max Ophüls (1902), William ‘Bill’ Quinn (1912), Orson Welles (1915), Theodore H. White (1915), Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, first president of the United Arab Emirates (1918), Robert Poujade (1928), Willie Mays (1931), Richard Shelby (1934), Herbie Cox (1939), Ghena Dimitrova (1941), Andreas Baader (1943), Bob Seger (1945), Martha Nussbaum (1947), Samuel Doe (1951), Tony Blair (1953), Tom Bergeron (1955), George Clooney (1961), Frans Timmermans (1961), Alessandra Ferri (1963) & Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor (2019) were born #OnThisDay. Dieric Bouts (1475), Catharine I of Russia [Marta Samuilovna] (1727), Alexander von Humboldt (1859), Henry David Thoreau (1862), Edward VII of England (1910), (Lyman) L. Frank Baum (1919), Maurice Maeterlinck (1949), Maria Montessori (1952), William J. Casey (1987), Marlene Dietrich (1992) & Giulio Andreotti (2013) died on this day. Alfred the Great & his West Saxon army defeated the Viking army of Guthrum (878), the Ghent Altarpiece (“L’Agneau Mystique”) by Hubert & Jan van Eyck is consecrated at St Bravo’s Cathedral (1432), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s troops sacked Rome (1527), Mughal emperor Babur defeated Afghans & Bengals at the Battle of Gogra (1529), Henry VIII ordered an English Bible placed in every church in England (1541), Peter Minuit effected what he (mis)understood as the purchase of Manhattan from the Leni Lenape (1626), Louis XIV of France moved his court to Versailles (1682), Frederick the Great led his Prussian army to victory over Austrian forces in the Battle of Prague (1757), Toussaint L’Ouverture led the Haitian revolt against France (1794), the ‘Penny Black’ — the world’s first adhesive postage stamp — went into circulation in Britain (1840), Union & Confederate forces engaged in the Battle of the Wilderness (1864), Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman advanced toward Atlanta (1864), Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), Epping Forest dedicated by Queen Victoria (1882), Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) in Paris opened with the recently completed Eiffel Tower serving as the entrance arch (1889), Tsar Nicolas II of Russia claimed the right to legislate by decree & restricts the power of the Duma (Russian parliament) (1906), George V succeeded Edward VII as king upon his death (1910), George V & Queen Mary celebrated their silver jubilee (1935), the Hindenburg exploded over New Jersey, killing 35 on board & one on the ground (1937)
 
 
 
May 7
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
May 10
 
Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1536), Jean-Marie Leclair l’Aîné (the elder) (1697), Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727), Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760), John Wilkes Booth (1838), Thomas Lipton (1850), Léon Bakst (1866), Gustav Stresemann (1878), Karl Barth (1886), Alfred Jodl (1890), Ariel Durant (1898), Fred Astaire [Frederick Austerlitz] (1899), David O. Selznick (1902), Anatole Litvak (1902), Carl Albert (1908), Denis Thatcher (1915), Milton Babbitt (1916), Ella Grasso (1919), Nancy Walker (1922), Ettore Scola (1931), Barbara Taylor Bradford (1933), Judith Jamison (1943), Mark David Chapman (1955), Sid Vicious [John Simon Ritchie] (1957), Rick Santorum (1958), Bono [Paul Hewson] (1960) & Kenan Thompson (1978) were born #OnThisDay. Katherine Swynford (1403), Johan Banér (1641), Gustaf Horn (1657), Jean de La Bruyère (1696), Louis XV (1774), Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Élisabeth, princesse de France (1794), Comte de Rochambeau (1807), Paul Revere (1818), Katsushika Hokusai (1849), Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson (1863), Henry Morton Stanley (1904), Joan Crawford [Lucille Le Sueur] (1977), John Wayne Gacy (1994), A.M. Rosenthal (2006) & Leyla Gencer (2008) died on this day. Jews in England imprisoned on charges of coining (1278), Scottish nobles recognized the authority of Edward I of England (1291), Temür Khan declared emperor of Yuan China (1294), Jews expelled from Bern (Switzerland) (1427), Christopher Columbus stumbled on the Cayman Islands (1503), Jacques Cartier reached Newfoundland (1534), John Knox led a Protestant uprising against Scotland’s regent Marie de Guise (1559), Jamaica captured by the British (1655), John Wilkes imprisoned for criticizing George III, provoking riots in London (1768), Louis XVI succeeded Louis XV as king of France (1774), Napoléon led his French troops to victory over Austria at the Battle of Lodi (1796), the Barbary pirates of Tripoli declared war on the United States, launching the First Barbary War (1801), Henry Addington resigned as British prime minister, replaced by William Pitt the Younger (1804), the National Gallery in London opened to the public in its temporary home in a townhouse on Pall Mall (1824), New York banks failed in the Panic of 1837 (1837), Astor Place Riot in Manhattan (1849), Sepoy soldiers in Meerut began the great Indian Mutiny against the British East India Company (1857), Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (1864), Confederate president Jefferson Davis captured by Union troops in Georgia (1865), the photo of the Golden Spike completing the transcontinental railroad was taken excluding Chinese laborers (1869), Victoria Woodhull won the Euqal Rights Party’s presidential nomination, the first woman to be nominated for president of the United States (1872), Rutherford B. Hayes had the first telephone installed in the White House (1877), the first appendectomy performed in North America by Abraham Groves in Canada (1883), the Imperial Institute opened in London (1893), the Duma met for the first time in Russia (1906), Victor Emmanuel of Italy & Ludwig Forrer of Switzerland opened the Simplon tunnel between the two countries (1906), Paul Dukas’ opera “Ariane et Barbe Bleue” premiered in Paris (1907), the first Mother’s Day observed in Philadelphia (1908), the British House of Commons enacted political reform through three new statute laws (1910), Canadian physician Cluny MacPherson presented his gas mask invention to the British War Office (1915), Luigi Pirandello’s “Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore” premiered (1921), J. Edgar Hoover appointed head of the FBI (1924), Paraguay declared war on Bolivia (1933),
 
 
 
May 11
 
Christian I von Anhalt-Bernburg (1568), Victoire de France (daughter of Louis XV) (1733), Chang & Eng Bunker (1811), Harriet Quimby (1875), Irving Berlin [Israel Beilin] (1888), Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (1891), Margaret Rutherford (1892), Martha Graham (1894), William Grant Still (1895), Salvador Dalí (1904), Valentino [Garavani] (1932), Louis Farrakhan (1933), James Jeffords (1934), Mike Lupica (1952), Natasha Richardson (1963), Nina Stemme [Thöldte] (1963), Gunilla Carlsson (1963) & Cory Monteith (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Matteo Ricci (1610), Jules Hardouin Mansart (1708), William Pitt the Elder (1778), Spencer Perceval (1812), John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1960), Alvar Aalto (1976), Bob Marley (1981), Kim Philby (1988), Douglas Adams (2001) & Jerry Stiller (2020) died on this day. Constantine re-named Byzantium ‘Constantinople’ & made it the new capital of the Roman Empire (330), “The Diamond Sutra” — the world’s oldest surviving & dated printed book — printed in Chinese & made into a scroll (868), Matilda of Flanders — wife of William the Conqueror — crowned queen of England in Westminster Abbey (1068), Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and 100,000 crusaders departed Regensburg for the Third Crusade (1189), 54 members of the Knights Templar burned at the stake in France for being heretics (1310), Christopher Columbus set out on his fourth & last trip to ‘the Indies’ (1502), peasants besieged Frankenburg estate in Upper Austria (1625), Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam (1647), Battle of Fontenoy (Doornik) in the War of the Austrian Succession (1745), Pennsylvania Hospital founded by Dr. Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia (1751), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck gave a lecture outlining his theories of evolution at the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris (1800), British prime minister Spencer Perceval assassinated by John Bellingham at 49 (1812), the waltz introduced into ballrooms in England (1812), William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland & William Wentworth led an expedition westwards from Sydney, opening inland Australia up for continued expansion throughout the 19th century (1813), the HMS Beagle launched (1820), Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart mortally wounded in the Battle of Yellow Tavern in Virginia (1864), the Treaty of London drafted granting Luxembourg full independence & confirming its neutrality (1867), Russia’s future tsar Nicholas II survived an assassination attempt in Japan (the Otsu Affair) (1891), Tel Aviv became the first all-Jewish municipality in British Mandate Palestine (1921), Weimar Germany agreed to Allied occupation of the Ruhr Valley in lieu of reparations (1921), Robert Frost awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry (1924), Louis B. Mayer formed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (1927), Fritz Lang’s film “M” premiered in Berlin (1931), William Faulkner’s collections of short stories “Go Down, Moses” published (1942), the US Army recaptured the Aleutian island of Attu (1943), the Haganah seized Safed & Haifa (1948), Luigi Einaudi elected president of the Italian Republic (1948), Siam renamed Thailand (1949), Eugene Ionesco’s first play “La Cantatrice Chauve” (The Bald Soprano) premieres in Paris (1950), 1953 Winston Churchill criticized US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’ domino theory (1953), Israel attacked the Gaza Strip (1955), Israeli soldiers captured Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires (1960), Antonio Segni electe president of the Italian Republic (1962), “Puff (The Magic Dragon)” by Peter, Paul & Mary hit #2 (1963)
 
 
May 12
 
Gustav Vasa, king of Sweden (1496), Cosimo de Medici (1590), Louis Hennepin (1626), Friedrich Augustus (Frederick Augustus the Strong) of Saxony & Poland (1670), Louis Philippe, duc d’Orléans (1725), Edward Lear (1812), Florence Nightingale (1820), Gabriel Dante Rossetti (1828), Jules Massenet (1842), Gabriel Fauré (1845), Henry Cabot Lodge (1850), Anatoly Lyadov (1855), Katharine Hepburn (1907), Archibald Cox (1912), Howard K. Smith (1914), Mary Kay Ash (1914), Andries Antonie Rieu (1917), Julius Rosenberg (1918), Joseph Beuys (1921), Lorenzo ‘Yogi’ Berra (1925), Burt Bacharach (1928), Tom Snyder (1936), Frank Stella (1936), George Carlin (1937), Gerry Studds (1937), Beryl Burton (1937), Ron Ziegler (1939), Christian Brando (1958), Emilio Estevez (1962), Vanessa Williams (1963), Jared Polis (1975), Rishi Sunak (1980), Rami Malek (1981) & Madeleine McCann (2003) were born #OnThisDay. J.E.B. Stuart (1864), [Friedrich] Bedřich Smetana (1884), Eugène Ysaÿe (1931), Józef Piłsudski (1935), Prince Aly [Ali Salman Aga] Khan (1960), Robert Reed (1992) & Erik Erikson (1994) died on this day. English barons compelled King John to sign Magna Carta (1215), Mughal emperor Shah Jahan commissioned construction of the Red Fort in what is now Delhi (1638), uprising against Philip IV of Spain (1640), Maria Theresa crowned queen of Bohemia in Prague (1733), American Gen. Benjamin Lincoln surrendered Charleston to the British (1780), British & Americans exchanged ratified copies of the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War (1784), William Wilberforce made his first speech in the House of Commons calling for the abolition of the British slave trade (1789), Napoléon’s French troops entered Venice (1797), the first major battle of the Greek War of Independence against Ottoman Turkish rule took place in Valtetsi (1821), Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “L’Elisir d’Amore” premiered at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan (1832), Oscar II crowned king of Sweden (1873), Frederick Middleton defeated Louis Riel & the Métis at the Battle of Batoche (1885), Gen. Józef Piłsudski returned to power in Poland after coup d’état against the Witos regime (1926), Benito Mussolini announced the end of women’s suffrage in Italy a speech to the Italian Senate (1928), Charles Lindbergh’s kidnapped baby found dead in New Jersey (1932), George VI crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey (1937), 1938 Arthur Honegger & Paul Claudel’s oratorio “Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher” (Joan of Arc at the Stake) premiered in Basel (1938), Nazi Germany’s Blitzkrieg in France began with the crossing of the Meuse (1940), Martin Bormann succeeded Rudolf Hess as Adolf Hitler’s deputy (1941), the Tate Modern opened in London (2000), 59 Democrats went into hiding to keep Republicans in the Texas state legislature from pushing through a redistricting plan (2003), Michel Temer became Brazil’s interim president after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff (2016), Russia’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 reach 232,000 — the second highest in the world — a day after Vladimir Putin eased the country’s lockdown (2020), & the first images published of the supermassive blackhole Sagittarius A* that lies at the heart of the Milky Way captured by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (2022) on this day.
 
 
Hugh of Cluny (1024), Maria of Brabant, wife of Philip III & queen of France (1265), Marquis of Pombal (1699), Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa (17170, Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquis of Rockingham (1730), Alphonse Daudet (1840), Arthur Sullivan (1842), Georges Braque (1882), Witold Pilecki (1901), Daphne du Maurier (1907), Joe Louis (1914), Beatrice Arthur (1922), Clive Barnes (1927), Édouard Molinaro (1928), Mike Gravel (1930), Jim Jones (1931), Giuliano Amato (1938), Harvey Keitel (1939), Bruce Chatwin (1940), Richie Valens [Valenzuela] (1941), Armistead Maupin (1944), Tim Pigott-Smith (1946), Jane Glover (1949), Zoë Wanamaker (1949), Stevie Wonder [Stevland Hardaway Morris] (1950), John Kasich (1952), Carrie Lam (1957), Dennis Rodman (1961), Stephen Colbert (1964), Scott Morrison (1968), Carl Philip, prince of Sweden (1979), Lena Dunham (1986) & Robert Pattinson (1986) were born #OnThisDay. John Nash (1835), Cyrus McCormick (1884), Fridtjof Nansen (1930), Gary Cooper (1961), Meg Greenfield (1999), R.K. Narayan (2001), Dr. Joyce Brothers (2013), Margot Kidder (2018) & Doris Day (2019) died on this day. Scottish Protestants led by James Stewart, Earl of Moray & regent of Scotland defeated Mary Queen of Scots at the Battle of Langside (1568), Henri III of France fled Paris after it was taken over by Henri, duc de Guise & the Catholic League (1588), John Smith led English colonists to establish a settlement at Jamestown — the first permanent English settlement in North America (1607), Cardinal Richelieu created the table knife (1637), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s first opera “Apollo et Hyacinthus” (written when he was 11 years old) premiered in Salzburg (1767), Vienna’s university library opened (1777), the Republic of Ecuador founded (1830), the US Congress voted for war with Mexico (1846), Queen Victoria announced British neutrality in the US Civil War (1861), British prime minister Lord Salisbury offered the Heligoland islands to Germany in Exchange for Zanzibar, Uganda & Equatoria (1890), several Arab states broke off diplomatic relations with West Germany after it established diplomatic relations with Israel (1965), upwards of a million French workers and others marched in a massive demonstration in Paris calling on Charles de Gaulle to resign as president of France (1968), race riots in Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur (‘May 13 Incident’) (1969), Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family were sentenced to death in absentia by the new Islamic Republic of Iran (1979), Mehmet Ali Ağca critically injured Pope John Paul II in an assassination attempt (1981), Indonesian Chinese shops in Jakarta looted in race riots (1998), Carlo Azeglio Ciampi elected 10th president of the Italian Republic (1999), Silvio Berlusconi led his right-wing ‘House of Freedoms’ coalition to victory in Italy’s general election (2001), 33 million watched the final episode of “Frasier” on NBC (2004), the Andijan Massacre in Uzbekistan (2005), Rock for the Rainforest benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan (2010), Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty in the ‘Varsity Blues’ college admissions scandal (2019), the diary of Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt’s last days discovered and displayed for the 400th anniversary of his execution (2019), Sudan’s former president Omar al-Bashir charged in the deaths of protesters (2019) and Israeli airstrikes killed 103 Palestinians in Gaza (including 207 children) on this day.
 
 
 
May 14
 
Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV of Bohemia (1316), Marguerite de Valois, queen of France (1553), Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy & king of Sardinia (1666), Thomas Gainsborough (baptized) (1727), Kurt Eisner (1867), Magnus Hirschfeld (1868), Otto Klemperer (1885), Sidney Bechet (1897), Mohammed Ayub Khan (1907), Franjo Tuđman (1922), Siân Phillips (1934), Bobby Darin [Walden Robert Cassotto] (1936), Francesca Annis (1944), George Lucas (1944), Jill Stein (1950), David Byrne (1952), Norodom Sihamoni, king of Cambodia (1953), Raphael Saadiq (1966), Cate Blanchett (1969), Sofia Coppola (1971) & Mark Zuckerberg (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Henri IV of France (1610), Louis XIII of France (1643), Fanny Cäcilia Mendelssohn Hensel (1847), Carl Schurz (1906), August Strindberg (1912), Henry John Heinz (1919), David Belasco (1931), Magnus Hirschfeld (1935), Gen. Edmund Viscount Allenby (1936), Emma Goldman (1940), Sidney Bechet (1959), Frances Perkins (1965), (Mary) ‘Billie’ Burke (1970), Rita Hayworth [Margarita Cansino] (1987), Jiang Qing [Madame Mao Zedong] (1991), Shintaro Abe (1991), William Randolph Hearst, Jr. (1993), Vera Chapman (1996), Harry Blackstone, Jr. (1997), Frank Sinatra (1998), Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1998), Wendy Hiller (2003), Robert Stack (2003), William Jackson [Pepper LaBeija] (2003), [Riley B.] B.B. King (2015), Tom Wolfe (2018), (Thomas) ‘Tim’ Conway (2019), Grumpy Cat [Tardar Sauce] (2019) & Phyllis George (2020) died on this day. Charles VIII crowned king of France (1483), Louis XII led the French to victory over the Venetians at the Battle of Agnadello (1509), Henri IV of France assassinated by the fanatical Catholic priest François Ravaillac in Paris (1610), Louis XIV became king of France at the age of four (1643), Britain & the Netherlands declared war on France & Spain (1702), Swedish troops under King Charles XII occupied Warsaw (1702), English country doctor Edward Jenner administered his revolutionary cowpox-based vaccine for smallpox Gloucestershire (1796), Friedrich von Schiller’s “Macbeth” premiered in Weimar (1800), Meriwether Lewis & William Clark’s expedition commissioned by Thomas Jefferson set out from St. Louis for Pacific Coast (1804), Paraguay gained independence from Spain (National Day) (1811), Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture “Hebrides” premiered in London (1832), the “Illustrated London News” — the world’s first illustrated weekly newspaper — begins publication (1842), US patent granted for Vaseline (1878), Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) signed a treaty with Britain (1897), Enrico Caruso made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden opposite Nellie Melba in Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto” in London (1902), Sweden adopted universal suffrage for elections to its lower house & proportional representation for both houses (1907), Benito Mussolini’s fascists obtained 29 parliamentary seats in Italian elections (1921), Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs Dalloway” published by Hogarth Press (1925), Michael Curtiz & William Keighley’s film “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), world premiere of Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” with Andre Kostelanetz conducting the Cincinnati Symphony in Ohio (1942),
 
May 15
 
Claudio Monteverdi (1567), Clemens von Metternich (1773), Pierre Curie (1859), Richard J. Daley (1902), James Mason (1909), Paul Samuelson (1915), Enrico Berlinguer (1922), Richard Avedon (1923), Peter Shaffer (1926), Jasper Johns (1930), Anna Maria Alberghetti (1936), Madeleine Albright (1937), Paul Rudd (1940), Roger Ailes (1940) & Brian Eno (1948) were born #OnThisDay. Emily Dickinson (1886), Edward Hopper (1967), June Carter Cash (2003) & Jerry Falwell (2007) died on this day. Abd-al-Rahman I became emir of Cordoba (756), Anne Boleyn was executed (1536), the War of the Spanish Succession began (1701), the Royal Italian Opera opened in London’s Covent Garden (1858), the Salon des Refusés opened in Paris (1863), Mickey Mouse made his first appearance in the silent film “Plane Crazy” (1928), the Moscow Metro opened (1935), the British Mandate over Palestine ended (1948), Vincente Minelli’s film “Gigi” premiered in NYC (1958), Peter, Paul & Mary won their first Grammy for “If I Had a Hammer” (1963) & Edith Cresson became the first woman prime minister of France (1991) on this day.
 
 
May 16
 
Ferdinand of Austria, Cardinal-Infante (1609), Friedrich Rückert (1788), William H. Seward (1801), Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804), David Edward Hughes (1831), H.H. Holmes [Herman Webster Mudgett] (1861), Richard Tauber [Denemy] (1891), Henry Fonda (1905), Margret Rey (1906), Studs Terkel (1912), Woody Herman (1913), (Wladziu) Liberace (1919), Adrienne Rich (1929), John Conyers (1929), Claude Morin (1929), Lowell Weicker (1931), Philippe de Montebello (1936), Aldrich Ames (1941), Dan Coats (1943), Danny Trejo (1944), Christian Lacroix (1951), Pierce Brosnan (1953), Debra Winger (1955), Olga Korbut (1955), Janet Jackson (1966), Tucker Carlson (1969) & Tori Spelling (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Charles Perrault (1703), Django Reinhardt (1953), Clemens Krauss (1954), Eliot Ness (1957), a. Philip Randolph (1979), Margaret Hamilton (1985), Jim Henson (1990), Sammy Davis, Jr. (1990), Wilfrid Howard Mellers (2008), Edward Hardwicke (2011), Bob Hawke (2019) & I.M. Pei (2019). Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, crowned the first emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204), Henry III of England laid the foundation stone for a lady chapel as part of the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey in London (1220), Florence became a republic (1527), Sir Thomas More resigned as Henry VIII’s lord chancellor of England (1532), Mary, Queen of Scots fled Scotland, crossing the border into England (1568), Johannes Kepler conceived at 4:37 a.m. by his own calculations (1571), François-Marie Arouet (a.k.a., Voltaire) imprisoned in the Bastille (1717), Samuel Johnson met James Boswell — who would become his biographer — for the first time in London (1763), Denmark abolished the slave trade (1792), Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln for president at their convention in Chicago (1860), the US Senate failed by one vote to convict Andrew Johnson & remove him as president in the first impeachment trial in US history (1868), political crisis in France (1877), Antonín Dvořák’s “Slavonic Dances” premiered (1879), Congress enacted the Sedition Act of 1918 (1918), Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) canonized (1920), “Wings”, Emil Jannings & Janet Gaynor won Academy Awards at the first Academy Awards ceremony (1929), SS General Jürgen Stroop ordered the burning of the Warsaw Ghetto, ending a month of Jewish resistance (1943), Irving Berlin, Dorothy & Herbert Fields’ musical “Annie Get Your Gun” starring Ethel Merman opened at the Imperial Theater in Manhattan (1946), Billie Holiday arrested for possession of narcotics (1947), Chaim Weizmann elected the first president of the state of Israel (1948), Israel issued its first postage stamps (1948), Egyptian troops entered the Gaza Strip (1948), Baudouin visited the Belgian Congo (1955), US-Soviet talks collapsed in the wake of the shooting down of the U-2 spy plane over russia (1960), the Campbell Soup Company introduced SpaghettiOs under its Franco-American brand (1965), Stokely Carmichael named chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1966), the May 16 Notification released justifying Mao Zedong’s launch of the Cultural Revolution (1967), workers mounted a general strike in France (1968), Benjamin Britten’s opera “Owen Wingrave” premiered in London (1971), “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes hit #1, retaining the top spot on the charts for the next 9 weeks (1981), Chinese American architect I. M. Pei awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in New York (1983), the discovery of the Ozone Hole announced in the journal “Nature” (1985), Tony Scott’s film “Top Gun” premiered (1986), Mikhail Gorbachev met with Deng Xiaoping in Beijing to end the 30-year rift between their countries (1989), Eugene Stoner met Mikhail Kalashnikov in Washington, D.C. (1990), Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address a joint session of Congress (1991), Day of Mourning in Bykivinia forest to commemorate the execution of over 100,000 Ukrainian civilians by Bolsheviks (2004), Alex Salmond elected first minister of Scotland (2007), Nicolas Sarkozy elected president of the Fifth French Republic (2007), Manmohan Singh led the United Progressive Alliance to victory in the general election in India, increasing the UPA government’s majority in parliament (2009), Bill Gates regained his position as the world’s richest man with $72.7 billion after losing the position in 2008 (2013), Barbara Walters retired from ABC News & “The View” (2014), New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his presidential candidacy (2019), DNA research published in “Current Biology” showed that bedbugs are 115 million years old & outlived the dinosaurs (2019), JC Penney filed for bankruptcy (2020) & Israeli air strikes killed 42 people in its pursuit of genocide in the Gaza Strip (2021) on this day.
 
 
May 17
 
Edmund, Earl of Rutland (1443), Albert, first duke of Prussia (1490), Edward Jenner (1749), Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George IV & queen of England (1768), Erik Satie (1866), Alfonso XIII of Spain (1886), Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife (1891), Jean Gabin (1904), Zinka Milanov (1906), Maureen O’Sullivan (1911), Archibald Cox (1912), (Märta) Birgit Nilsson (1918), David Ogilvy, Earl of Airlie (1926), Dennis Hopper (1936), Bill Paxton (1955), Bob Saget (1956), Enya [Eithne Ní Bhraonáin] (1961) & Craig Ferguson (1962) were born #OnThisDay. Sandro Botticelli (1510), Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (1521), George Boleyn, 2nd Viscount Rochford (1536), Catherine I of Russia (1727), John Jay (1829), Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1838), John Deere (1886), Charles Brooke, 2nd White Rajah of Sarawak (1868-1917) (1917), Paul Dukas (1935), Selwyn Lloyd (1978), Gunnar Myrdal (1987), Lawrence Welk (1992), Donna Summer [LaDonna Gaines] (2012) & Jorge Rafael Videla (2013) died on this day. George Boleyn, 4th Viscount Rochford beheaded (1536), Anne of Denmark crowned queen of Scotland (1590), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III defeated Elector Maximiilan I of Bavaria (1648), Jouis Joliet & Jacques Marquette began exploring Mississippi (1673), Antonio Vivaldi’s first opera “Ottone in Villa” premiered at the Teatro delle Grazie in Vicenza (1713), Friedrich der Große von Preußen (Frederick the Great) led Prussian troops to victory over Austria at the Battle of Chotusitz (1742), Britain declared war on France in the Seven Years’ War (1756), the Continental Congress banned trade with Canada during the American Revolution (1775), Napoléon’s France annexed the Papal States (1809), Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden & Norway’s new constitution was approved by a constituent assembly at Eidsvoll (1814), six of George Gordon’s friends burnt Lord Byron’s diaries (1824), Frederick Douglass appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C. (1881), Alaska became a US territory (1884), Pietro Mascagni’s opera “Cavalleria Rusticana” (Rustic Chivalry) premiered in Rome at the Teatro Costanzi (1890), John Philip Holland launched the first long-distance submarine (1897), the foundation stone for the Victoria & Albert Museum laid in London (1899), Boxers killed 60 Chinese Christians & burned three villages near Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion (1900), “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum with illustrations by William Wallace Denslow published in Chicago (1900), Maurice Ravel’s song cycle “Shéhérazade” premiered with Jeanne Hatto at the Salle Nouveau Théâtre in Paris (1904), Switzerland’s Simplon tunnel opened to rail traffic (1906), Vidkun Quisling & Johan Bernhard Hjort founded Norway’s fascist Nasjonal Samling party (1933), Nazi German troops occupied Brussels & began the invasion of France (1940), Howard Hughes crashed into Lake Mead while test flying his Sikorsky S-43, killing CAA inspector Ceco Cline & Richard Felt (1943), Harry Truman seized the railroads to delay a strike (1946), the Soviet Union recognized the state of Israel (1948), the British government recognized the new Republic of Ireland (1949), the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education to overturn its 1896 ‘separate but equal’ Plessy vs. Ferguson decision (1954), Thor Heyerdahl & his crew set sail on the Ra II from Morocco to cross the Atlantic Ocean (1970), the Senate Watergate committee began its public hearings (1973), “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Jack Albertson & Michael Learned won Emmy Awards at the 28th Emmy Awards ceremony (1976), Menachem Begin led the Likud party to victory in parliamentary elections in Israel (1977), Prince Charles called the proposed addition to London’s National Gallery a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend” (1984), “Cheers” star Kelsey Grammer sentenced to jail for 30 days for DWI (1990), Massachusetts issued the first marriage licenses to same-sex couples (2004),Narendra Modi led the fascist Hindu Nationalist Party (BJP) to a landslide election victory in India (2014), Gina Haspel confirmed as the first female director of the CIA by the US Senate (2018), Michigan State University ordered to pay $500 million in claims to 300 survivors of sexual abuse involving Larry Nassar in the largest sexual abuse case in sports history (2018), Taiwan’s parliament voted to legalize same-sex marriage, becoming the first Asian country to recognize marriage equality (2019), Benjamin Netanyahu & Benny Gantz formed a new government in Israel after 510 days (2020) on this day.
 
May 18
 
 
 
 
May 19
 
Giovanni della Robbia (1469), Isabella d’Este, Marchesa di Mantova (Marquise of Mantua) (1474), Charlotte von Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762), Johns Hopkins (1795), Roland Napoléon Bonaparte (1858), Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (1860), Nellie Melba [Helen Mitchell] (1861), Nancy Astor (1879), Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881), Mohammed Mosaddeq (1882), Ho Chi Minh (1890), Florence Chadwick (1918), David McLean [Eugene Joseph Huth] (1922), Malcolm X [Little], Pol Pot (1925), Guy Provost (1925), Lorraine Hansberry (1930), David Hartman (1935), Moisés da Costa Amaral (1938), Nancy Kwan (1939), Jane Brody (1941), Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. (1941), Nora Ephron (1941), Pete Townshend (1945), Ashraf Gani (1949), Joey Ramone [Jeffrey Hyman] (1951) & Nicole Brown Simpson (1959) were born #OnThisDay. Alcuin of York (804), Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (988), Stephen, Comte de Blois (1102), Anne Boleyn (1536), Juan Bautista de Toledo (1567), Button Gwinnett (1777), James Boswell (1795), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1864), William Ewart Gladstone (1898), T.E. Lawrence [Lawrence of Arabia] (1935), Booth Tarkington (1946), Charles Ives (1954), Ronald Colman (1958), Ogden Nash (1971), John Betjeman (1984), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1994), Tony Randall [Leonard Rosenberg] (2004), Garret FitzGerald (2011), Morley Safer (2016) & Alix Dobkin (2021) died on this day. Nôtre Dame de Paris consecrated by Henri Cardinal de Château-Marçay & Maurice de Sully (1182), Georg von Sachsen-Meissen sold Friesland for 100,000 golden guilders to Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria (1515), public unveiling of Titian’s masterpiece “Assumption of the Virgin” over the altar of the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice (1518), Anne Boleyn executed by Henry VIII (1536), Elizabeth Tudor ordered the arrest of Mary, Queen of Scots (1568), Miguel Lopez de Lagazpi founded Manila in the Philippines (1571), Philip II launched the Spanish Armada against Elizabeth Tudor’s England (1588), Cardinal Richelieu directed France’s declaration of war on Spain (1635), the French army defeated the Spanish army at the Battle of Rocroi (Allersheim) (1643), George II granted the Ohio Company a charter to settle the Ohio Valley (1749), the Order of the Legion d’Honneur founded in France (1802), Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner spoke out against slavery (1856), Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show opened in Oamaha (1883), the Ringling Brothers circus premiered (1884), Germany took possession of Cameroon & Togoland (1885), Camille Saint-Saëns conducted the premiere of his 3rd Symphony in C at St. James Hall in London (1886), Oscar Wilde released from Reading Gaol (1897), Maurice Ravel’s opera “L’Heure Espagnole” premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris (1911), Mustafa Kemal Atatürk landed at Samsun on the Black Sea coast, beginning the Turkish War of Independence (1919), Pope Pius XI canonized John Cardinal Fisher & Sir Thomas More (1935), Berlin declared ‘Judenrein’ (1943), 240 Roma (Gypsies) transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork in the Netherlands (1944), Harold Pinter’s play “Birthday Party” premiered in London (1958), Patricia Harris became the first African American woman appointed a US ambassador (to Luxembourg) (1965), Valéry Giscard d’Estaing elected president of the Fifth French Republic (1974), Sophia Loren jailed in Naples for tax evasion (1982), Stephen Spielberg’s film “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” premiered (1997), Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko” premiered at the Cannes film festival (2007), Sri Lanka’s government announced its victory over the Tamil Tigers after a 25-year civil war (2009), “Glee” premiered on Fox TV (2009), historic first handshake between Prince Charles & Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams at the National University of Ireland in Galway (2015), Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in Windsor Castle (2018), Elizabeth II created Prince Harry & Meghan Markle Duke & Duchess of Sussex (2018), the BBC investigation finds Martin Bashir’s 1995 interview with the Princess of Wales was secured through ‘deceitful behavior’ (2021) on this day.
 
 
May 20
 
Henry Percy [Harry Hotspur] (1364), Pietro Bembo (1470), Jacob Jordaens (1593), Andreas Schlüter (1660), William Bradford 1663), William Thornton (1759), Honoré de Balzac (1799), John Stuart Mill (1806), Sigrid Undset (1882), Faisal I of Iraq (1883), Beniamino Gigli (1890), James Stewart (1908), Bill Hewlett (1913), Moshe Dayan (1915), José Mujica (1935), María Luisa Ozaita (1939), Cher [Cherilyn Sarkisian] (1946), Tony Goldwyn (1960), Dan Abrams (1966) & Doug the Pug (2011) were born #OnThisDay. Lorenzo de’ Medici (1503), Christopher Columbus (1506), Catarina Sforza, duchess of Forlí (1509), Marquis de Lafayette (1834), Clara Schumann (1896), Hector Guimard (1942), Max Beerbohm (1956), Walter Winchell (1972), Dame Barbara Hepworth (1975), Gilda Radner (1989), Jean-Pierre Rampal (2000), Stephen Jay Gould (2002), Hamilton Jordan (2008) & Robin Gibb (2012) died on this day. First Council of Nicaea (325), Second Battle of Lincoln (1217), shoes made for both right & left feet (1310), Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut, becoming the first European to reach India by sea (1498), William Shakespeare’s Sonnets first published in London by publisher Thomas Thorpe (1609), Magdeburg destroyed by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II’s army under Johann Graf Tilly (1631), England’s parliament enacted the Act of Grace pardoning the followers of James II (1690), Charles X became king of France (1825), Otto named the first king of post-Ottoman Greece (1835), York Minster badly damaged by fire (1840), the cornerstone of the University of Washington laid in Seattle (1861), Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality in the Civil War (1861), North Carolina became the 11th & last state to secede from the Union (1861), Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law to provide cheap land for the settlement of the American West (80 million acres by 1900) (1862), the British parliament rejected John Stuart Mills’ proposal for women’s suffrage (1867), Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone for the Royal Albert Hall of Arts & Sciences (1867), Republicans meeting in Chicago nominated Ulysses Grant for president (1868), capital punishment abolished in the Netherlands (1870), Levi Strauss & Jacob Davis patented the first blue jeans with copper rivets (1873), Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” (Gengangere) premiered in Chicago (1882), British House of Commons began debate on the Congo Free State (1903), nine kings gathered for Edward VII’s funeral (1910), Charles Lindbergh flew out of New York to Paris (1927), Saudi Arabia became independent through the Treaty of Jeddah (1927), Amelia Earhart left Newfoundland, becoming the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic (1932), Engelbert Dolfuss became chancellor of Austria (1932), Nazi Germany’s army broke through to the English Channel at Abbéville (1940), Nazi Germany began its airborne invasion of Crete (1941), Sukarno appointed president of Indonesia (1963), US troops captured ‘Hamburger Hill’ (Hill 937) after 10 days of battle (1969), the Quebecois rejected separation from Canada by 59.5% (1980), CBS News fired Connie Chung (1995), the US Supreme Court handed down Romer v. Evans, the first LGBT rights victory in the court’s history (1996), Frank Sinatra buried (1998), Mary Kay Letourneau married her former student Vili Fualaau (2005), the Church of Scotland voted to allow openly gay men & women to be ordained (2013), David Letterman’s last “Late Show” segment (2015) & Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela won re-election amidst charges of vote rigging (2018) on this day.
 
 
1
 
Aurelia Cotta (mother of Julius Caesar) (120 BCE), Albrecht Dürer (1471), Philip II of Spain (1527), Alexander Pope (1688), Lucien Bonaparte (1775), Elizabeth Fry (1780), Henri Rousseau (1844), Armand Hammer (1898), Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller (1904), Edward Lockspeiser (1905), Guy de Rothschild (1909), Harold Robbins (1916), Raymond Burr (1917), Andrei Sakharov (1921), Malcolm Fraser (1930), Maurice André (1933), Heinz Holliger (1939), Mary Robinson (1944), Richard Hatch (1945), Rosalind Plowright (1949), Al Franken (1951), Mr. T [Lawrence Tureaud] (1952), Judge Reinhold (1957) & Jeffrey Dahmer (1960) were born #OnThisDay. Henry VI of England (1471), Christian I of Denmark (1481), Pandolfo Petrucci (1512), Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk (1524), Hernando de Soto (1542), Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée de Beaumont, Chevalier d’Éon (1810), Franz von Suppé (1895), Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1929), John Henry Mackay (1933), Jane Addams (1935), Ida Kamińska (1980), Kenneth Clark (1983), Rajiv Gandhi (1991), Les Aspin (1995), Barbara Cartland (2000) & Sir John Gielgud (2000) died on this day. Pope Gregory V crowned his cousin Otto III as Holy Roman Emperor in Peter’s Basilica in Rome (996), Kublai Khan launched his second invasion of Japan (1281), Charles VI of France signed the Treaty of Troyes with Henry V of England making Henry heir to the throne of France upon Charles VI’s death (1420), Jan Sobieski elected king of Poland (1674), Catherine I of Russia created the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky (1725), Napoléon suffered his first defeat in 10 years at the hands of Archuke Charles at the Battle of Aspern-Essling (1809), Frederic Mistral, Joseph Roumanille & five other Provençal poets founded the literary & cultural association Félibrige (1854), Lawrence captured & sacked by pro-slavery forces in Kansas (1856), Richmond designated the capital of the Confederacy (1861), thousands of Circassians forced into exile as Russia ended the Russian-Circassian War — the Circassian Day of Mourning (1864), 17,000 killed by the French army in its attack on the Paris Commune (1871), the American Red Cross founded by Clara Barton (1881), Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera “I Pagliacci” premiered in Milan (1892), 22-year-old French anarchist Émile Henry executed by guillotine, declaring “Courage, camarades! Vive l’anarchie!” (1894), Louis Botha became the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa (1910), French troops entered Fez in Morocco to quell anti-European agitation (1911), the US House of Representatives voted in favor of a constitutional amendment allowing women to vote (1918), Mexico’s president Venustiano Carranza is executed by army generals after fleeing an armed rebellion in Mexico (1920), Amelia Earhart became the first woman to complete a transatlantic solo flight (1932), Sada Abe arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover’s severed genitals in her hand, creating one of Japan’s most notorious scandals (1936), Paul Reynaud formed a new government in France (1940), Heinrich Himmler captured (1945), Guy Mollet’s government resigned in France (1957), Leontyne Price became the first African American to sing in a leading role at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in “Aida” (1960), Robert F. Kennedy’s murderer Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment (1969), White Night riots broke out in San Francisco after Dan White was given a lenient sentence for assassinating Mayor George Moscone and the openly gay elected official Harvey Milk (1971), François Mitterrand elected the first (nominally) socialist president of France (1981) on this day.
 
 
May 22
 
Louis de Buade de Frontenac (1622), Richard Wagner (1813), Mary Cassatt (1844), Arthur Conan Doyle (1859), Laurence Olivier (1907), Hergé (Georges Prosper Remi) (1907), Harry Ritz [Joachim] (1907), Anatol Rapoport (1911), Charles Aznavour [Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian] (1924), T. Boone Pickens (1928), Harvey Milk (1930), Michael Sarrazin (1940), Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a., the ‘Unabomber’ (1942), Bernie Taupin (1950), Lisa Murkowski (1957), Naomi Campbell (1970) & Novak Đoković [Djokovic] (1987) were born #OnThisDay. Constantine the Great (337), Israel ben Eliezer (1760), Martha Custis Washington (1802), Victor Hugo (1885), Langston Hughes (1967), Margaret Rutherford (1972), Mieczyslaw Horoszowski (1993) & Dina Merrill (2017) died on this day. Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia at the Battle of the Granicus (334 BCE), the Jews of Brussels massacred & expelled (1370), the Wars of the Roses began with the Battle of St. Albans (1455), Christian IV of Denmark & Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II signed the Peace of Lübeck (1629), the foundation stone laid for the Würzburger Residenz (completed in 1744) (1720), Napoleon issued a statement in support of the Judaization of Jerusalem (1799), former US vice-president Aaron Burr tried (but acquitted) on treason charges in Richmond (1807), U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina assaulted Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the floor of the Senate (1856), Ulysses Grant began the siege of Vicksburg (1865), the Associated Press organized as a non-profit news cooperative (1900), Battle of Verdun (1916), Adolf Hitler & Benito Mussolini’s ‘Pact of Steel’ (1939), the “Vier Letzte Lieder” of Richard Strauß premiered in London (1950), LBJ’s ‘Great Society’ speech (1964) & Joe Clark succeeded Pierre Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister (1979) on this day.
 
 
May 23
 
Philip I of France (1052), Song emperor Qinzong (1100), Carolus Linnaeus (1707), Ambrose Burnside (1824), Helmuth von Moltke (1848), Douglas Fairbanks (1883), Pär Lagerkvist (1891), Jean Françaix (1916), Max Abramovitz (1908), Artie Shaw [Arthur Arshawsky] (1910), Betty Garrett (1919), Alicia de Larrocha (1923), Nigel Davenport (1928), Rosemary Clooney (1928), Alan García (1949), Martin McGuinness (1950), William Barr (1950), Anatoly Karpov (1951), Drew Carey (1958) & Ken Jennings (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Holy Roman Emperor Henry V (1125), Girolamo Savonarola (1498), William Kidd (1701), Kit Carson (1868), Leopold von Ranke (1886), Henrik Ibsen (1906), Ranavalona III of Madagascar (1917), Clyde Barrow & Bonnie Parker (1934), John D. Rockefeller (1937), Heinrich Himmler (1945), Wilhelm Kempff (1991), Lloyd Bentsen (2006), Roh Moo-hyun (2009), John Nash (2015), Anne Meara (2015) & Roger Moore (2017) died on this day. Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) captured at Compiegne & sold to the English (1430), Dutch declared independence from Spain (1568), Tycho Brahe given Hveen Island to build Uraniborg Observatory (1576), Matthias von Habsburg became king of Bohemia (1611), the Second Defenestration of Prague (1618), Charles II sailed from Scheveningen to England (1660) Captain William Kidd hanged in London (1701), the Duke of Marlborough led allied forces to victory over Louis XIV’s France at the Battle of Ramillies (1706), Benjamin Franklink announced his invention of bifocals (1785), Simón Bolívar proclaimed ‘El Libertarod’ upon entering Mérida (1813), Associated Press News Service formed in New York (1900), Wisconsin enacted a law creating the first direct primary election in the United States (1203), US troops captured Filipino rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo (1901), New York Public Library dedicated by William Howard Taft (1911), Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary (1915), “Shuffle Along” — the first major African American hit musical — premiered on Broadway (1921), Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow gunned down (1934), George VI’s cousin Louis Louis Mountbatten survived the German sinking of the British destroyer HMS Kelly but was ultimately assassinated by an IRA bomb in 1979 (1941), Admiral Karl Dönitz & other top Nazi leaders arrested by the Allies, who formally dissolve the Third Reich (1945), Heinrich Himmler’s suicide (1945), William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’) arrested (1945), Federal Republic of Germany created (1949), Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward (1958) Israel announced the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina (1960), a tsunami hit Hawaii, killing 61 people in Hilo (1960), the US Supreme Court refused to hear the appeals of convicted Watergate conspirators H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman & John Mitchell (1977), “All That Jazz” directed by Bob Fosse & “Kagemusha” directed by Akira Kurosawa jointly awarded the Palme d’Or at the 33rd Cannes Film Festival (1980) Ronald Reagan awarded Jimmy Stewart the Presidential Medal of Freedom & promoted him to Major General on the Retired List (1985), George H.W. Bush orders Coast Guard to intercept boats with Haitian refugees (1992), the Good Friday Agreement approved by 75% in a referendum in Northern Ireland (1998), Russia & China vetoed the UN Security Council resolution that would have established an International Criminal Court for war crimes in Syria (2014), 62% of voter voted to legalize same-sex marriage in Ireland (2015), Donald Trump met with Pope Francis in the Vatican (2017), Hamburg became the first city to ban diesel cars on some roads (2018), Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide re-election victory over the opposition Congress Party in India (2019), 50 children rescued from an international paedophile ring on the dark web in Thailand, Australia & the US by Interpol under Operation Blackwrist with the main organizer sentenced to 146 years (2019), the Clotilda — the last slave ship to bring slaves to the US from Africa, sunk in 1860 — found in the Mobile River in Alabama (2019) & Aleksandr Lukoshenko accused of ‘state-sponsored hijacking’ after diverting a commercial Ryanair flight to Minsk to arrest Belarus dissident journalist Roman Protasevich (2021) on this day.
 
 
 
May 24
 
Julius Caesar Germanicus (15 BCE), John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale (1616), Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686), Jean-Paul Marat (1743), Oliver Cromwell (1753), Abraham Geiger (1810), Queen Victoria (1819), Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven (1854), Arthur Wing Pinero (1855), Benjamin Cardozo (1870), an Christiaan Smuts (1870), Samuel Newhouse, Sr. (1895), Wilbur Mills (1909), Barbara West (1911), Theodore Hesburgh (1917), Jane Byrne (1933), Thomas ‘Tommy’ Chong (1938), Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) (1941), Patti LaBelle (Holte) (1944), Priscilla Presley (1945), Jim Broadbent (1949), Roseanne Cash (1955), Kristin Scott Thomas (1960), John C. Reilly (1965) & Jacob Rees-Mogg (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Taejo (Yi Seong-gye), king of Korea (1408), Nicolaus Copernicus (1543), Robert Cecil 1st Earl of Salisbury (1612), William Lloyd Garrison (1879), John Foster Dulles (1959), Edward ‘Duke’ Ellington (1974), Hermione Gingold (1987), Harold Wilson (1995), Dick Martin (Thomas Richard) (2008), Anneliese Rothenberger (2010) & Stormé DeLarverie (2014) died on this day. Malcolm IV became king of Scots (1153), the Fifth Crusade left Acre for Egypt (1218), Magnus Ladulås crowned king of Sweden in Uppsala Cathedral (1276), Aldersgate Day — John Wesley’s conversion, launching the Methodist movement (1738), Louis Mandrin sentenced to be broken on the wheel (1755), John Hancock unanimously elected president of the Continental Congress (1775), Irish rebellion against British rule (1798), Simón Bolívar won the independence of Ecuador from Spain at the Battle of Pichincha (1822), “Mary Had A Little Lamb” by Sarah Josepha Hale first published by Boston firm Marsh, Capen & Lyon (1830), first telegraph message tapped out by Samuel Morse (1844), escaped slave Anthony Burns arrested by US marshals in Boston under the Fugitive Slave Act (1856), Union Major Gen. Benjamin Butler declared slaves ‘contraband of war’ (1861), Chester Alan Arthur & Grover Cleveland opened the Brooklyn Bridge (1883), Dr. Josef Mengele became the ‘Angel of Death’ as the Auschwitz concentration camp’s new doctor (1943), Iceland voted to sever ties with Denmark (1944) & Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister to visit Israel (1986) on this day.
 
 
May 25
 
Jacopo da Pontormo (Carucci) (1494), John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803), Jacob Burckhardt (1818), Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson (1878), Igor Sikorsky (1889), Bennett Cerf (1898), U Nu (1907), Princess Deokhye of Korea (1912), John Weitz (1923), Robert Ludlum (1927), Beverly Sills (Belle Miriam Silverman) (1929), Ian McKellen (1939), Leslie Uggams (1943), Eve Ensler (1953), Larry Hogan (1956), Amy Klobuchar (1960), Mike Myers (1963) & Yahya Jammeh (1965) were born #OnThisDay. Madam C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove) (1919), Gustav Holst (1934), Witold Pilecki (1948), Robert Capa (1954), Rosa Ponselle (Ponzillo) (1981) & George Floyd (2020) died on this day. Martin Luther & his followers outlawed by the Edict of Worms (1521), Charles II of England landed at Dover (1660), Samuel Taylor Coleridge poems (including “Kubla Khan”) published by John Murray in London (1816), American Unitarian Association founded (1825), Gilbert & Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” premiered in London (1878), gas lamp at the Palais Garnier (Opéra de Paris) caught fire, killing 200 (1887), Oscar Wilde sentenced to two years’ prison for gross indecency (1895), Republic of Formosa formed (1895), José Porfirio Diaz overthrown in a revolution in Mexico (1911), Irish Home Rule bill passed the British House of Commons (1914), 105,000 killed in the Second Battle of Ypres (1915), Abdullah & Transjordan recognized by Britain (1923), Jordan independent from Britain (1946), Witold Pilecki executed by Communist police in Warsaw (1948), Organization for African Unity formed by Chad, Mauritania & Zambia (1963) & Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd (2020) on this day.
 
 
 
May 26
 
Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici) (1478) Dirck Janszoon Sweelinck (1591), Philippe de Champaigne (1602), John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough (1650), Queen Mary (May von Teck, queen consort to George V of England) (1867), Isadora Duncan (1877), Al Jolson (Asa Yeolson) (1886), Estes Kefauver (1903), John Wayne (Marion Robert Morrison) (1907), Laurance Rockefeller (1910), Peter Cushing (1913), Peggy Lee (Norma Delores Egstrom) (1920), Miles Davis (1926), Jack Kevorkian (‘Dr. Death’) (1928), Teresa Stratas (1938), Stephanie ‘Stevie’ Nicks (1948), Hank Williams, Jr. (1949), Pam Grier (1949), Jeremy Corbyn (1949), Sally Ride (1951), Michael Portillo (1953), Helena Bonham Carter (1966) & Lauryn Hill (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Samuel Pepys (1703), Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1904), Victor Herbert (1924), Martin Heidegger (1976), George Ball (1994), Fritz Freleng (1995), Eddie Albert (2005), Sydney Pollack (2008), Art Linkletter (2010) & Zbigniew Brzezinski (2017) died on this day. Mystic Massacre in the first Pequot War (1637), Kaspar Hauser discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg (1828), Dred Scott & family freed three months after US courts ruled against his owner Henry Taylor Blow (1857), Andrew Johnson’s conviction fails in the Senate by one vote (1868), Nicholas II’s coronation in Moscow (1896), Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” published (1897), Germany’s Reichstag enacted legislation organizing Alsace & Lorraine as an autonomous state with a legislature (1911), Vladimir Lenin suffered a stroke (1922), Calvin Coolidge signed an immigration bill into law (further) restricting immigration to the US (1924), Anthony Eden led the Conservative Party to victory in the British general election (1955), San Francisco’s Union Square designated a state historical landmark (1958) & “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” released by EMI (1967) on this day.
 
 
 
May 27
 
Ibn Khaldūn (1332), Elisabeth Charlotte ‘Liselotte’ of the Palatinate, duchess of Orleans (1652), Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794), Julia Ward Howe (1819), Wild Bill Hickok (1837), Georges Rouault (1871), Dashiell Hammett (1894), Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894), Conrad Elvehjem (1901), Rachel Carson (1907), Hubert Humphrey (1911), Teddy Kollek (1911), John Cheever (1912), Christopher Lee (1922), Henry Kissinger (1923), Lee Meriwether (1935), Louis Gossett, Jr. (1936), Christopher Dodd (1944), Pauline Hanson (1954) & Joseph Fiennes (1970) were born #OnThisDay. Ludovico Sforza (1508), Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1541), John Calvin (1564), François de Coligny d’Andelot (1569), François Ravaillac (1610), Marguerite de Valois (1615), Marquise de Montespan (1707), Niccolo Paganini (1850) & Jawaharlal Nehru (1964) died on this day. England’s parliament enacted the Habaeus Corpus Act (1679), Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg (1703), Euston Station’s Great Hall opened (1849), Alexander III crowned tsar in Moscow (1883), Chinese gold miners were slaughtered in the Hells Canyon Massacre (1887), Japan destroyed half of Russia’s fleet in the Battle of Tsushima (1905), the Golden Gate Bridge opened (1937), Dunkirk evacuation began (1940), Jean-Paul Sartre’s play “Huis Clos” premiered in Paris (1944), European Defense Community formed (1952), Jomo Kenyatta elected first prime minister of Kenya (1963), the Sex Pistols released their song “God Save the Queen” (1977), Gwangju massacre of Koreans participating in a popular uprising against the military dictatorship (1980), the Mafia bombed the Uffizi in Florence, killing six (1993), Christopher Reeve paralyzed after a horse riding accident (1995), Slobodan Milošević indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1999), & DreamWorks’ film “Madagascar” released (2005) on this day.
 
 
 
May 28
 
Jean Sans Peur (John the Fearless), Duke of Burgundy (1371), George I of England (1660), Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738), William Pitt the Younger (1759), Edvard Beneš (1884), Ian Fleming (1908), Barry Commoner (1917), Gyorgy Ligeti (1923), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925), Martha Vickers (1925), Bulent Ecevit (1925), Edward Seaga (1930), Stephen Birmingham (1931), Betty Shabazz (1940), Maeve Binchy (1940), Gladys Knight (1944), Rudy Giuliani (1944), Hunter ‘Patch’ Adams (1945), Steve King (1949), Marco Rubio (1971) & Prince Louis de Bourbon (2010) were born #OnThisDay. Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich (1672), Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan (1707), Noah Webster (1843), Anne Brontë (1849), John, 1st Earl Russell (1878), US troops scored their first victory in World War I in an Allied offensive at Cantigny (1918), Unity Mitford (1948), Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor) (1972), Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (1973), Marta Scott (2003), Gary Coleman (2010), Maya Angelou (2014) & Harambe (2016) died on this day. The Spanish Armada sailed from Lisbon (1588), Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law (1830), Paris Commune crushed (1871), John Muir co-founded the Sierra Club (1892), Édouard & André Michelin incorporated the Michelin tyre company (1889), Neville Chamberlain became British prime minister (1937), Volkswagen founded (1937), King Leopold III surrendered Belgium to Nazi Germany (1940), last trip of the Orient Express (1961), Amnesty International’s first campaign launched (1961), Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formed in Jerusalem (1964), US troops abandoned Ap Bia Mountain (a.k.a., ‘Hamburger Hill’) (1969), George Soros founded the Soros Foundation (1984), Mathias Rust landed in Moscow’s Red Square (1987), Addis Ababa fell to Ethiopian rebels of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), ending 17 years of Marxist rule (1991), Bill Clinton’s cronies Jim Guy Tucker, James McDougal & Susan McDougal convicted of fraud (1996) & Phil Hartman was murdered by his wife (1998) on this day.
 
 
 
 
May 29
 
Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier (Grand Mademoiselle) (1627), Charles II of England (1630), Patrick Henry (1736), Isaac Albéniz (1860), G.K. Chesterton (1874), Oswald Spengler (1880), Josef von Sternberg (1894), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897), Bob (Leslie Townes) Hope (1903), Desmond Shawe-Taylor (1907), Tenzing Norgay (1914), Karl Münchinger (1915), John F. Kennedy (1917), Bishop Gene Robinson (1947), Danny Elfman (1953), John Hinckley, Jr. (1955), LaToya Jackson (1956), Annette Bening (1958), Rupert Everett (1959), Melissa Etheridge (1961), Melanie Brown (1975) & Laverne Cox (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Bartolomeu Dias (1500), Joséphine de Beauharnais (1814), Sojourner Truth addressed the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention (1851), Winfield Scott (1866), Baha’u’llah (1892), William Schwenck Gilbert (1911), Josef Suk (1935), John Barrymore (1942), May Whitty (1948), Fanny Brice (1951), Mary Pickford (1979), Romy Schneider (1982), Erich Honecker (1994), Margaret Chase Smith (1995), Barry Goldwater (1998), Archibald Cox (2004), Karlheinz Böhm (2014) & Manuel Noriega (2017) died on this day. Sassanid Persian army defeated by Roman Emperor Julian at the Battle of Ctesiphon (363), Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa defeated by the Lombard League at the Battle of Legnano (1176), end of the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (1453), Admiral Yi Sun-shin introduced the turtle ship in the Battle of Sacheon (1592), Charles II returned from exile to become king of England (1660), Peter the Great became tsar of Russia (1727), Patrick Henry’s speech against the Stamp Act (1765), Wisconsin became the 30th state (1848), Abraham Lincoln said “You can fool some of the people…” (1849), Maximilian arrived at Veracruz to start his reign as emperor of Mexico (1864), Switzerland’s constitution goes into effect (1874), “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune” premiered by the Ballets Russes in Paris (1912), “Le Sacre du Printemps” ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris (1913), Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” recorded by Bing Crosby (1942), Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay reach the summit of Mount Everest (1953), “Twilight Zone: The Movie” director John Landis found innocent of involuntary manslaughter in death of actor Vic Morrow and 2 child actors during filming (1987), Goddess of Democracy constructed in Tiananmen Square (1989), Boris Yeltsin elected president of the Russian Federation (1990), “Roseanne” cancelled by ABC (2018), gender identity disorder removed from the list of mental illnesses kept by the World Health Organization (2019) on this day.
 
 
 
May 30
 
Alexander Nevsky (1220), Peter Carl Fabergé (1846), Giovanni Gentile (1875), Riccardo Zandonai (1883), Howard Hawks (1896), Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) (1902), Benny Goodman (1909), George London (1920), Christine Jorgensen (1926), Gustav Leonhardt (1928), Keir Dullea (1936), Bertrand Delanoë (1950) & Idina Menzel (1971) were born #OnThisDay. Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) (1431), Charles IX of France (1574), Christopher Marlowe (1593), Peter Paul Rubens (1640), Alexander Pope (1744), François Boucher (1770), Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1778), Wilbur Wright (1912), Georg von Trapp (1947), Boris Pasternak (1960), Rafael Trujillo (1961), Claude Rains (1967), Marcel Dupré (1971), Zinka Milanov (1989), Claude Pepper (1989), Giorgio Tozzi (2011), Joseph (Beau) Biden III (2015) & Thad Cochran (2019) died on this day. Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) burnt at the stake (1431), Margaret of Anjou crowned queen consort of England (1445), Hernando de Soto’s expedition landed in Florida (1539), Henri III succeeded Charles IX as king of France (1574), Christopher Marlowe killed in a tavern brawl (1593), Kansas-Nebraska Act repealing the Missouri Compromise (1854), Bedrich Smetana’s opera “Die Verkaufte Braut” (The Bartered Bride) premiered in Prague (1866), the first major Memorial Day observance held at Arlington National Cemetery as ‘Decoration Day’ (1868), the Treaty of London ended the First Balkan War (1913), Salzburg voted to join Germany (1921), Lincoln Memorial dedicated (1922), Fred Korematsu arrested for resisting the internment of Japanese Americans (1942), Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” premiered (1962), Republic of Biafra declared in Nigeria (1967), Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” published in Buenos Aires (1967), Mariner 9 departed for Mars (1971), Mikhail Gorbachev met with George Bush in Washington, D.C. (1990), Betty Shabazz set on fire by 12-year-old grandson (1997), “Finding Nemo” released (2003), Narendra Modi sworn in for a second term as India’s prime minister (2019) & R. Kelly was charged with 11 new counts of sexual abuse & assault in Chicago (2019) on this day.
 
 
 
May 31
 
Margaret Beaufort (1443), Manuel I of Portugal (1469), Feodor I of Russia (1557), Marin Marais (1656), Walt Whitman (1819), Big Ben rang for the first time (1859), Norman Vincent Peale (1898), Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson (1912), Alfred Deller (1912), Alida Valli (Baroness Alida von Marckenstein-Frauenberg) (1921), Prince Rainier III of Monaco (1923), Patricia Roberts Harris (1924), Clint Eastwood (1930), Shirley Verrett (1931), Peter Yarrow (1938), Terry Waite (1939), Joe Namath (1943), Sharon Gless (1943), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945), Viktor Orbán (1963), Brooke Shields (1965) & Colin Farrell (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Petronius Maximus (455), Cecily Neville (1495), Tintoretto (1594), Franz Joseph Haydn (1809), Elizabeth Blackwell (1910), Billy Strayhorn (1967) & Martha Mitchell (1976) died on this day. Rameses II became pharaoh of Egypt (1279 BCE), Romans breached the first wall of Jerusalem (70), Samuel Pepys recorded the last entry in his diary (1669), Madison Square Garden opened (1879), French fleet began its siege of Tamatave, Madagascar (1883), Dr. John Harvey Kellogg patented ‘flaked cereal’ (1884), Treaty of Vereeiniging ended the Boer War (1902), Kaiser Wilhelm II arrived in Tangier (1905), Battle of Jutland (1916), Tulsa Race Massacre (1921), Dunkirk evacuated (1940), Crete taken by Nazi Germany (1941), the Luftwaffe bombed Canterbury (1942), Benjamin Netanyahu elected prime minister of Israel (1996), “Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban” released (2004), W. Mark Felt’s family revealed him to have been the ‘Deep Throat’ of Watergate (2005), Israeli military murdered 9 activists on the Mavi Marmara (2010), Psy’s “Gangnam Style” became the first video to reach 2 billion views on YouTube (2014), CNN fired Kathy Griffin over her Trump photo (2017) & Kim Kardashian met with Donald Trump to discuss prison reform (2018) on this day.
 
 
 
 
June 1
 
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563), Christiane Vulpius, wife of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1765), Brigham Young (1801), Mikhail Glinka (1804), Otto of Greece (1815), Carl Bechstein (1826), John Marshall Harlan (1833), Frank Morgan (1890), Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean Mortenson) (1926), Pat Boone (1934), Morgan Freeman (1937), René Auberjonois (1940), Edo de Waart (1941), Carol Neblett (1946), David Berkowitz (Son of Sam) (1953), Heidi Klum (1973), Alanis Morissette (1974), Amy Schumer (1981) & Tom Holland (1996) were born #OnThisDay. Władysław II Jagiełło, king of Lithuania & later also Poland (1434), Tokugawa Ieyasu (1616), James Buchanan (1868), Napoléon IV (1879), Lizzie Borden (1927), Leslie Howard (1943), John Dewey (1952), Adolf Eichmann (1962), Helen Keller (1968), Giuseppe Ungaretti (1970), Reinhold Niebuhr (1971) & Ann B. Davis (2014) died on this day. Genghis Khan’s Mongols captured Beijing (1215), Anne Boleyn crowned queen of England (1533), Battle of Öland (1676), Tennessee admitted as the 16th state (1796), Charles Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal” published (1857), African Slave Trade Treaty concluded between the US & UK (1862), Herbert Hoover caught in the Boxer Rebellion (1900), Franz von Papen appointed Reichskanzler (1932), Nazi ban on Catholic publications in Germany (1941), Crete taken by Nazi German forces (1941), Holocaust deaths made public for the first time (1942), Charles de Gaulle elected prime minister of France (1958), Adolf Eichmann executed in Israel (1962), “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” released by the Beatles (1967), Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” hit #1 on the charts (1968), CNN launched (1980), Connie Chung joined Dan Rather as co-anchor of the CBS Evening News (1993), J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Beren & Lúthien” published posthumously (2017), Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy defeated in a vote of no confidence (2018), Giuseppe Conte sworn in as Italian prime minister (2018) & Rouzan al-Najjar was murdered by Israeli snipers (2018) on this day.
 
 
 
June 5
 
Elena Cornaro Piscopia (1646), Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (1660), Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland & King of Hanover (1771), Pancho Villa [José Doroteo Arango Arámbula] (1878), John Maynard Keynes (1883), Federico Garcia Lorca (1898), Salvatore Ferragamo (1898), Anastasia Nikolaevna (1901), Bill Moyers (1934), Joe Clark (1939), Martha Argerich (1941), Suze Orman (1951), Mark Wahlberg (1971) & Breonna Taylor (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Louis X of France (1316), Lamoral, Count of Egmont (1568), Philips van Montmorency, Count of Horne (1568), Orlando Gibbons (1625), Carl Maria von Weber (1827), Stephen Crane (1900). O. Henry [William Sydney Porter] (1910), Horatio Kitchener (1916), Mel Tormé (1999) & Ronald Reagan (2004) died on this day. Titus & his Roman legions breached the middle wall of Jerusalem (70), Vespri Siciliani (Sicilian Vespers uprising) (1284), Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” first published in serial form (1851), Know-Nothing Party’s first convention (1855), Denmark’s constitution amended to recognize women’s suffrage (1915), Benjamin Britten’s opera “Peter Grimes” premiered in London (1945), British war minister John Profumo’s resignation (1963), Six-Day War began (1967), RFK assassinated (1968), Indira Gandhi ordered an attack on the Golden Temple of Amritsar (1984), Mikhail Gorbachev awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize (1991) & the Guardian began publishing news stories based on Edward Snowden’s leak of NSA documents (2013) on this day.
 
 
 
 
June 6
 
Diego Velázquez (1599), Pierre Corneille (1606), Nathan Hale (1755), Alexander Pushkin (1799), Alexandra Feodorovna (Princess Alix of Hesse) (1872), Thomas Mann (1875), Ninette de Valois (1898), Sukarno (1901), Isaiah Berlin (1909), Peter Carrington, 6th Baron Carrington (1919), Klaus Tennstedt (1926), Tom Ryan (1926), George Deukmejian (1928), Albert II of Belgium (1934), Marian Wright-Edelman (1939), Alexander Cockburn (1941), Holly Near (1949), Harvey Fierstein (1954), Sandra Bernhard (1955), Björn Borg (1956) & Paul Giamatti (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Patrick Henry (1799), Christiane Vulpius (1816), Jeremy Bentham (1832), Friedrich Hölderlin (1843), Count Camillo Benso di Cavour (1861), Yuan Shikai (1916), Gerhard Hauptmann (1946), Carl Jung (1961), Robert F. Kennedy (1968), Randolph Churchill (1968), J. Paul Getty (1976), Jack Haley (1979), Anne Bancroft (2005), Esther Williams (2013), Ronnie Gilbert (2015) & Peter Shaffer (2016) died on this day. Gustav Vasa elected king of Sweden, ending the Union of Kalmar (1523), Queen Christina’s abdication as queen of Sweden (1654), Sweden’s new constitution ending absolute monarchy (1809), YMCA founded by George Williams in London (1844), Paris Métro Line 5 inaugurated (1906), D-Day landing in Normandy (1944), Gaza occupied by Israel on the second day of the Six-Day War (1967), Robert F. Kennedy died from his wounds (1968), Indian troops stormed the Golden Temple of Amritsar (1984), “Sex & the City” premiered on HBO (1998) & Edward Snowden disclosed NSA mass surveillance (2013) on this day.
 
 
 
June 7
 
Alois Hitler (1837), Charlotte of Belgium (Carlotta of Mexico) (1840), Susan Blow (1843), Paul Gauguin (1848), Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868), Imre Nagy (1896), George Szell (1897), Jessica Tandy (1909), Peter Rodino (1909), Dean Martin [Dino Paul Crocetti] (1917), Georges Marchais (1920), Philippe Entremont (1934), Neeme Järvi (1937), Tom Jones [Woodward] (1940), Jaime Laredo (1941), Muammar Gaddafi (1942), Liam Neeson (1952), Prince [Rogers Nelson] (1958), Mike Pence (1959), Roberto Alagna (1963) & Bill Hader (1978) were born #OnThisDay. Robert the Bruce, King of Scots (1329), Louise de La Vallière (1710), Franz Xavier Gruber (1863), Chief Seattle (1866), Edwin Booth (1893), Jean Harlow (1937), Alan Turing (1954), Judy Holliday (1965), Jean Arp (1966), Dorothy Parker (1967), E.M. Forster (1970), [Francis] Max Factor (1996) & Christopher Lee (2015) died on this day. Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520), Pope Clement VII’s surrender to Charles V’s armies (1527), Louis XIV crowned king of France (1654), Great Plague of London (1665), British Museum founded (1753), “Essay on the Principle of Population” by Thomas Malthus published (1798), Abraham Lincoln nominated for re-election by the Republican Party (1864), Mohandas Gandhi’s first act of civil disobedience (1893), Norway dissolved its union with Sweden (1905), Moshe Dayan ordered an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (1967), Sirhan Sirhan indicted for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (1968), West German Chancellor Willy Brandt visited Israel (1872), NBC Nightly News premiered (1976), Anita Bryant’s crusade against the Miami gay rights law (1977), James Byrd, Jr. dragged to death (1998) & Tony Blair led Labour to a second landslide victory in the British general election (2001) on this day.
 
 
June 8
 
Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625), Tommaso Albinoni (1671), Robert Schumann (1810), Frank Lloyd Wright (1867), Byron White (1917), Robert Preston [Meservey] (1918), Suharto (1921), Lyn Nofziger (1924), Barbara Bush (1925), Jerry Stiller (1927), Joan Rivers (1933), Nancy Sinatra (1940), William Calley, Jr. (1943), Emanuel Ax (1949), Tim Berners-Lee (1955), Julianna Margulies (1966), Gabrielle Giffords (1970), Kanye West (1977) & Andrea Casiraghi (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Edward the Black Prince (1376), Louis XVII of France (1795), Thomas Paine (1809), Sarah Kemble Siddons (1831), Andrew Jackson (1845), Abraham Maslow (1970), Sani Abacha (1998), Richard Rorty (2007), Omar Bongo (2009), Paul Cellucci (2013) & Anthony Bourdain (2018) died on this day. Elabagalus became Roman emperor (218), Italy invaded by Attila the Hun (452), death of the Prophet Muhammad (632) Viking sack of St. Cuthbert’s monastery on Lindisfarne Island (793), German Confederation of 39 states (1815), Theodore Roosevelt sent notes to Russia & Japan offering to serve as an intermediary in peace talks (1905), ‘Thailand’ replaced ‘Siam’ (1949), George Orwell’s “1984” published (1949), USS Liberty attacked by Israel (1967), James Earl Ray captured (1968), Kurt Waldheim elected president of Austria (1986) & Theresa May’s snap election cost the Conservative Party its majority in the British House of Commons (2017) on this day.
 
 
 
 
June 9
 
Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (1640), Tsar Feodor II of Russia (1661), Peter the Great [Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov] (1672), George Stephenson (1781), Frederic de Merode (1792), Carl Otto Nicolai (1810), Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836), Carl Nielsen (1865), Cole Porter (1891), Robert McNamara (1916), Eric Hobsbawm (1917), Princess Ragnhild Alexandra of Norway (1930), Donald Duck (1934), Nathanile Rosen (1948), Benny Gantz (1959), Michael J. Fox (1961), Aaron Sorkin (1961, Johnny Depp (1963) & Natalie Portman (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Claudia Octavia (62), Nero (68), St. Columba (597), Jeanne d’Albret (1572), Pauline Bonaparte (1825), James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak (1868), Charles Dickens (1870), Carrie Nation (1911), Victoria Woodhull (1927), Robert Donat (1958), Claudio Arrau (1991) & Adam West (2017) died on this day. Emperor Nero killed himself (68), Duccio’s Maestà altarpiece unveiled in Siena (1310), Jacques Cartier sailed into the mouth of the St. Lawrence River (1534), Book of Common Prayer adopted by the Church of England (1549), Congress of Vienna concluded (1815), Paul Gauguin arrived in Tahiti (1891), Boxers destroyed the race course in Beijing (1900), Donald Duck first appeared in the cartoon “The Wise Little Hen” (1934), Bhumibol Adulyadej succeeded Ananda Mahidol as king of Thailand (1946), Joseph Welch asked Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” (1954), the LDS Mormon church repealed its ban on black men in the priesthood (1978), General Efraín Rios Montt declared himself president of Guatemala (1982), Margaret Thatcher led the Conservative Party to a landslide victory in the British general election (1983), Edward Snowden outed himself as the NSA whistleblower (2013) & Laverne Cox the first transgendered person on the cover of Time magazine (2014) on this day.
 
 
June 12
 
John Roebling (1806), Egon Schiele (1890), Anthony Eden (1897), David Rockefeller (1915), Uta Hagen (1919), George H.W. Bush (1924), Ann Frank (1929), Jim Nabors (1930) & Oliver Knussen (1952) were born #OnThisDay. Medgar Evans (1963), Saul Alinsky (1972), Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1994), Nicole Brown Simpson (1994), Ron Goldman (1994), Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1995), Gregory Peck (2003) & William S. Sessions (2020) died on this day. The Peasants’ Revolt began in England (1381), the Act of Settlement enacted by British parliament (1701), Captain George Vancouver on the site of the future city (1792), France’s colonization of Algeria began at Sidi Ferruch (1830), Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy established (1867), Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed the independence of the Philippines (1898), Anne Frank began keeping a diary (1942), Medgar Evers assassinated (1963), “Cleopatra” premiered (1963), Nelson Mandela jailed (1964), Indira Gandhi convicted of election fraud (1975), Central African Republic ex-emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa sentenced to death (1987), Ronald Reagan’s Berlin speech (1987), Boris Yeltsin elected president of the Russian Federation (1991), O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson & Ron Goldman (1994), the Globe Theatre opened in London (1997), the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando (2016), Otto Warmbier’s return from North Korea (2017) & Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un (2018) on this day.
 
 
June 19
 
James VI of Scotland/James I of England (1566), Blaise Pascal (1623), Alfredo Catalani (1854), Douglas Haig (1861), José Rizal (1861), May Whitty (1865), Wallis Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (1896), Moe Howard (1897), Guy Lombardo (1902), Lou Gehrig (1903), Mildred Natwick (1905), Pauline Kael (1919), Louis Jourdan [Louis Robert Gendre] (1921), Howell Heflin (1921), Nancy Marchand (1928), Aung San Suu Kyi (1945), Tobias Wolff (1945), Radovan Karadžić (1945), Salman Rushdie (1947), Phylicia Rashad (1948), Kathleen Turner (1954), Anne Hidalgo (1959), Boris Johnson (1964), Jean Dujardin (1972) & Hugh Dancy (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Piers Gaveston (1312), François, Duke of Alençon & Anjou (1584), Maximilian von Habsburg, emperor of Mexico (1867), J.M. Barrie (1937), Julius & Ethel Rosenberg (1953), Sam Giancana (1975), William Golding (1993), James Gandolfini (2013) & Ian Holm (2020) died on this day. Louis IX’s decree ordering Jews in France to wear a yellow badge in public (1269), National Assembly abolished titles of nobility in France (1790), Gioachino Rossini’s opera “Il Viaggio a Rheims” premiered (1825), Sir Robert Peel introduced the Metropolitan Police Act (1829), Juneteenth in Texas (1865), Emperor Maximilian of Mexico executed (1867), Republicans nominated William McKinley & Theodore Roosevelt (1900), “Moon Mullins” comic strip (1923), Julius & Ethel Rosenberg executed (1953), Civil Rights Act passed the Senate 73-27 (1964), Edward Heath led Conservatives to victory in the British general election (1970), “Garfield” comic strip (1978), Vincent Chin murdered (1982), Global Seed Vault ceremonial foundation in Spitsbergen (2006) & Felipe VI became king of Spain after the abdication of his father Juan Carlos (2014) on this day.
 
 
 
 
June 8
 
Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625), Tommaso Albinoni (1671), Robert Schumann (1810), Frank Lloyd Wright (1867), Byron White (1917), Robert Preston [Meservey] (1918), Suharto (1921), Lyn Nofziger (1924), Barbara Bush (1925), Jerry Stiller (1927), Joan Rivers (1933), Nancy Sinatra (1940), William Calley, Jr. (1943), Emanuel Ax (1949), Tim Berners-Lee (1955), Julianna Margulies (1966), Gabrielle Giffords (1970), Kanye West (1977) & Andrea Casiraghi (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Edward the Black Prince (1376), Louis XVII of France (1795), Thomas Paine (1809), Sarah Kemble Siddons (1831), Andrew Jackson (1845), Abraham Maslow (1970), Sani Abacha (1998), Richard Rorty (2007), Omar Bongo (2009), Paul Cellucci (2013) & Anthony Bourdain (2018) died on this day. Elabagalus became Roman emperor (218), Italy invaded by Attila the Hun (452), death of the Prophet Muhammad (632) the Viking sack of St. Cuthbert’s monastery on Lindisfarne Island initiated the Viking era (793), the German Confederation was formed out of 39 states (1815), Theodore Roosevelt sent notes to Russia & Japan offering to serve as an intermediary in peace talks (1905), ‘Thailand’ replaced ‘Siam’ (1949), George Orwell’s “1984” published (1949), USS Liberty attacked by Israel (1967), James Earl Ray captured (1968), Kurt Waldheim elected president of Austria (1986) & Theresa May’s snap election cost the Conservative Party its majority in the British House of Commons (2017) on this day.
 
 
 
 
 
June 10
 
Jacques Marquette (1637), James Stuart (‘the Old Pretender’) (1688), Gustave Courbet (1819), John Jacob Astor III (1822), Hattie McDaniel (1895), Frederick Loewe [Friedrich Löwe] (1901), Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911), Saul Bellow (1915), Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh (1921), Judy Garland [Frances Gumm] (1922), Robert Maxwell [Jan Hoch] (1923), Nat Hentoff (1925), Lionel Jeffries (1926), Maurice Sendak (1928), Edward O. Wilson (1929), F. Lee Bailey (1933), Jeff Greenfield (1943), Simon Jenkins (1943), Timothy Va Patten (1959), Eliot Spitzer (1959), Kate Snow (1969), Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal (1971) & Sasha Obama (2001) were born #OnThisDay. Alexander the Great (323 BCE), Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1190), Marie de Guise (1560), François, duc d’Alençon & d’Anjou (1584), Ernest Chausson (1899), Edward Everett Hale (1909), Antoni Gaudi (1926), Frederick Delius (1934), Marcus Garvey (1941), Sigrid Unset (1949), Spencer Tracy (1967), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1982), Hafez al-Assad (2000), John Gotti (2002), Donald Regan (2003), Ray Charles (2004) & Lee Hee-ho (2019) died on this day. Chartres Cathedral destroyed by fire (1194), Battle of Záblatí in the Thirty Years’ War (1619), Bridget Bishop — the first of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials — hanged (1692), Benjamin Franklin flew his kite (1752), Chicago Tribune began publishing (1847), Richard Wagner’s opera “Tristan und Isolde” premiered in Munich (1865), Alcoholics Anonymous founded (1935), Italy declared war on Britain & France (1940), Norway surrendered to Nazi Germany (1940) & the Six-Day War ended with the illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem & the Gaza Strip (1967) on this day.
 
 
June 11
 
Edmund Tudor (1430), Anne Neville (1456), Ben Jonson (1572), John Constable (1776), Richard Strauss (1864), Jeannette Rankin (1880), Jacques Cousteau (1910), Vince Lombardi (1913), Erving Goffman (1922), Queen Fabiola of Belgium (1928), Charles Rangel (1930), Athol Fugard (1932), Gene Wilder (1933), Chad Everett [Raymon Lee Cramton] (1937), Adrienne Barbeau (1945), Henry Cisneros (1947), Hugh Laurie (1959), Mehmet Oz (1960), Sophie Okonedo (1968) & Peter Dinklage (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Marie de Guise (1560), George I of England (1727), Elisabeth Farnese, queen of Spain (1766), Klemens Wenzel von Metternich (1858), Alexander I & Draga of Serbia (1903), Thích Quảng Đức (1963), Six-Day War ended with Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories (1967) Alexander Kerensky (1970), John Wayne [Marion Mitchell Morrison] (1979), Enrico Berlinguer (1984), Karen Ann Quinlan (1985), DeForest Kelley (1999), Timothy McVeigh (2001), David Brinkley (2003), Egon von Fürstenberg (2004), Ghen Dimitrova (2005), Ruby Dee (2014) & Martin Feldstein (2019) died on this day. Henry VIII wed Catherine of Aragon (1509), Cardinal Fleury became prime minister of France (1726), Rutherford B. Hayes nominated for president by the Republican Party (1876), Spain declared war on the United States (1898), Italy declared war on the Allies (1940), the University of Alabama desegregated (1963), Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức’s immolation in Saigon (1963), Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister in 160 years to win a third consecutive term (1987) & “Jurassic Park” set a box office weekend record of $502 million (1993) on this day.
 
 
 
June 18
 
Ottaviano Petrucci (1466), Ignaz Joseph Pleyel (1757), Édouard Daladier (1884), Anastasia Nikolaevna (1901), Jeanette MacDonald (1903), Keye Luke (1904), E.G. Marshall (1914), Tom Wicker (1926), Paul Eddington (1927), Jürgen Habermas (1929), Jay Rockefeller (1937), Paul McCartney (1942), Roger Ebert (1942), Thabo Mbeki (1942), Éva Marton (1948), William Randolph Hearst III (1949), Lech Kaczyński (1949), Jaroslaw Kaczyński (1949), Isabella Rossellini (1952), Idriss Déby (1952), Uday Hussein (1964) & Blake Shelton (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Rogier van der Weyden (1464), Helmuth von Moltke (1916), Robert M. La Follette (1925), Roald Amundsen (1928), Maxim Gorky (1936), Roberto Calvi (1982), Nancy Marchand (2000) & Vera Lynn (2020) died on this day. Henri d’Anjou secretly left Poland (1574), William Penn founded Philadelphia (1682), the US declared war on Britain in the War of 1812 (1812), Battle of Waterloo (1815), Carl Maria von Weber’s opera “Der Freischütz” premiered in Berlin (1821), Dowager Empress Cixi ordered the I-Ho-Chuan (Boxers) to kill all foreigners (1900), Winston Churchill’s ‘finest hour’ speech (1940), Pierre Mendès-France formed a government (1954), Edward Heath led the Conservative Party to victory in the British general election (1970), Juan Carlos abdicated as king of Spain (2014), Emmanuel Macron’s party La République en Marche won a majority in French parliamentary elections (2017) & Donald Trump announced his candidacy for re-election (2019).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
June 19
 
James VI of Scotland/James I of England (1566), Blaise Pascal (1623), Alfredo Catalani (1854), Douglas Haig (1861), José Rizal (1861), May Whitty (1865), Wallis Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (1896), Moe Howard (1897), Guy Lombardo (1902), Lou Gehrig (1903), Mildred Natwick (1905), Pauline Kael (1919), Louis Jourdan [Louis Robert Gendre] (1921), Howell Heflin (1921), Nancy Marchand (1928), Aung San Suu Kyi (1945), Tobias Wolff (1945), Radovan Karadžić (1945), Salman Rushdie (1947), Phylicia Rashad (1948), Kathleen Turner (1954), Anne Hidalgo (1959), Boris Johnson (1964), Jean Dujardin (1972) & Hugh Dancy (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Piers Gaveston (1312), François, Duke of Alençon & Anjou (1584), Maximilian von Habsburg, emperor of Mexico (1867), J.M. Barrie (1937), Julius & Ethel Rosenberg (1953), Sam Giancana (1975), William Golding (1993), James Gandolfini (2013) & Ian Holm (2020) died on this day. Louis IX’s decree ordering Jews in France to wear a yellow badge in public (1269), National Assembly abolished titles of nobility in France (1790), Gioachino Rossini’s opera “Il Viaggio a Rheims” premiered (1825), Sir Robert Peel introduced the Metropolitan Police Act (1829), Juneteenth in Texas (1865), Emperor Maximilian of Mexico executed (1867), Republicans nominated William McKinley & Theodore Roosevelt (1900), Julius & Ethel Rosenberg executed (1953), Civil Rights Act passed the Senate 73-27 (1964), Edward Heath led Conservatives to victory in the British general election (1970), “Garfield” comic strip (1978), Vincent Chin murdered (1982), Global Seed Vault ceremonial foundation in Spitsbergen (2006) & Felipe VI became king of Spain after the abdication of his father Juan Carlos (2014) on this day.
 
 
 
 
June 20
 
Sigismund III Vasa of Poland, Lithuania & Sweden (1566), Salvatore Rosa (1615), Kurt Schwitters (1887), Jean Moulin (1899), Lillian Hellman (1905), Errol Flynn (1909), Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928), Martin Landau (1928), Ronald Hines (1929), Edith (Schlain) Windsor (1929), Olympia Dukakis (1931), Danny Aiello (1933), Stephen Frears (1941), Brian Wilson (1942), Anne Murray (1945), André Watts (1946), Linel Richie (1949), John Goodman (1952), Michael Landon Jr. (1964), Nicole Kidman (1967) & Patrisse Cullors (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Axel von Fersen (1810), Manuel Belgrano (1820) & Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel (1947) died on this day. Ottoman Turkish pirates began raiding Icelandic villages (1627), Black Hole of Calcutta (1756), Oath of the Tennis Court (1789), Louis XVI captured in the ‘Nuit de Varennes’ (1791), Queen Victoria succeeded William IV (1837), West Virginia admitted to statehood (1863), Andrew Johnson announced Alaska purchase (1867), Lizzie Borden acquitted (1893), Baron von Ketteler killed by Boxers in Beijing (1900), German chancellor Philipp Scheidemann resigned in protest against the Treaty of Versailles (1919), Deutsche Mark introduced in West Germany (1948), CIA Act enacted (1949), Georges Pompidou inaugurated as president of France (1969) & the Bundestag voted to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin (1991) on this day.
 
 

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), Margaret Thatcher elevated to the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven (1992), 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

Ladislaus I of Hungary (1040), Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1350), Louis XII of France (1462), Charles IX of France (1550), Charles Stewart Parnell (1846), Emma Goldman (1869), Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872), Helen Keller (1880), Karel Reiner (1910), Rudy Perpich (1928), Ross Perot (1930), Anna Moffo (1932), Bruce Babbitt (1938), Norma Kamali (1945), Vera Wang (1949), Isabelle Adjani (1955), Ted Haggard (1956), Tobey Maguire (1975), Bianca del Rio [Roy Haylock] (1975) & Khloé Kardashian (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Alfonso V (‘the Magnanimous’) of Aragon (1458), Giorgio Vasari (1574), Wenzel Anton Graf Kaunitz (1794), Philippe de Noailles (1794), Claude-Joseph Rougert de lisle (1832), Joseph Smith (1844), A.J. Ayer (1989), Georgios Papadopoulos (1999), Jack Lemmon (2001), George Patton IV (2004) & Shelby Foote (2005) died on this day. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo set sail from the Mexican port of Navidad to explore the west coast of North America on behalf of the Spanish Empire (1542), Peter the Great of Russia defeated Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava (1709), George II led British troops to victory at the Battle of Dettingen (1743), Flora MacDonald helped Bonnie Prince Charlie — disguised as Betty Burke, an Irish maid — evade capture by landing him on the Isle of Skye (1746), Gen. James Wolf began the British siege of Québec (1759), Louis XVI ordered the nobility & clergy of the États-Généraux to meet with the Third Estate — declared by its members to be the Assemblée Nationale of France (1789), James Smithson established the Smithsonian Institution with a bequest in his will (1829), Mormon leader Joseph Smith killed by a mob in Illinois (1844), Samuel Tilden nominated the Democratic presidential candidate (1876), Eleftherios Venizelos took over as prime minister of Greece & severed relations with the Central Powers, aligning Greece with the Allies in World War I (1917), Nazi Germany began using the Enigma cording machine (1940), Cherbourg liberated by the Allies (1944), Harry Truman ordered the US Air Force & Navy into Korea as North Korean troops reached Seoul (1950), CIA-sponsored rebels overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala Jacopo Arbenz in a coup d’état authorized by Dwight Eisenhower (1954), the British Medical Research Council published a report suggesting a direct link between smoking & lung cancer (1957), Ghana imposed a total ban on exports to apartheid South Africa & South West Africa (1961), John Dean told the Watergate committee about Richard Nixon’s ‘enemies list’ (1973), coup d’état in Uruguay led by Juan Maria Bordaberry (1973), Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union (1974), Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (1981), Route 66 was decertified & highway signs were removed (1985), Ibrahim Babangida’s military regime launched the neoliberalization of Nigeria’s economy via deregulation & privatization with the support of the IMF & the World Bank (1986), Gordon Brown became British prime minister (2007), Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook reached 2 billion monthly users (2017), the European Union fined Google a record $2.7 billion for unfair competition practices (2017), US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement (2018) & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th House district (2018) on this day.

June 28

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 27

Ladislaus I of Hungary (1040), Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1350), Louis XII of France (1462), Charles IX of France (1550), Charles Stewart Parnell (1846), Emma Goldman (1869), Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872), Helen Keller (1880), Karel Reiner (1910), Rudy Perpich (1928), Ross Perot (1930), Anna Moffo (1932), Bruce Babbitt (1938), Norma Kamali (1945), Vera Wang (1949), Isabelle Adjani (1955), Ted Haggard (1956), Tobey Maguire (1975), Bianca del Rio [Roy Haylock] (1975) & Khloé Kardashian (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Alfonso V (‘the Magnanimous’) of Aragon (1458), Giorgio Vasari (1574), Wenzel Anton Graf Kaunitz (1794), Philippe de Noailles (1794), Claude-Joseph Rougert de lisle (1832), Joseph Smith (1844), A.J. Ayer (1989), Georgios Papadopoulos (1999), Jack Lemmon (2001), George Patton IV (2004) & Shelby Foote (2005) died on this day. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo set sail from the Mexican port of Navidad to explore the west coast of North America on behalf of the Spanish Empire (1542), Peter the Great of Russia defeated Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava (1709), George II led British troops to victory at the Battle of Dettingen (1743), Flora MacDonald helped Bonnie Prince Charlie — disguised as Betty Burke, an Irish maid — evade capture by landing him on the Isle of Skye (1746), Gen. James Wolf began the British siege of Québec (1759), Louis XVI ordered the nobility & clergy of the États-Généraux to meet with the Third Estate — declared by its members to be the Assemblée Nationale of France (1789), James Smithson established the Smithsonian Institution with a bequest in his will (1829), Mormon leader Joseph Smith killed by a mob in Illinois (1844), Samuel Tilden nominated the Democratic presidential candidate (1876), Eleftherios Venizelos took over as prime minister of Greece & severed relations with the Central Powers, aligning Greece with the Allies in World War I (1917), Nazi Germany began using the Enigma cording machine (1940), Cherbourg liberated by the Allies (1944), Harry Truman ordered the US Air Force & Navy into Korea as North Korean troops reached Seoul (1950), CIA-sponsored rebels overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala Jacopo Arbenz in a coup d’état authorized by Dwight Eisenhower (1954), the British Medical Research Council published a report suggesting a direct link between smoking & lung cancer (1957), Ghana imposed a total ban on exports to apartheid South Africa & South West Africa (1961), John Dean told the Watergate committee about Richard Nixon’s ‘enemies list’ (1973), coup d’état in Uruguay led by Juan Maria Bordaberry (1973), Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union (1974), Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (1981), Route 66 was decertified & highway signs were removed (1985), Ibrahim Babangida’s military regime launched the neoliberalization of Nigeria’s economy via deregulation & privatization with the support of the IMF & the World Bank (1986), Gordon Brown became British prime minister (2007), Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook reached 2 billion monthly users (2017), the European Union fined Google a record $2.7 billion for unfair competition practices (2017), US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement (2018) & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th House district (2018) on this day.

June 28


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), 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), 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

Louis XI of France (1423), Samuel de Champlain (1567), Alessandro Stradella (1643), Robert Adam (1728), John Singleton Copley (1739), Leoš Janáček (1854), George M. Cohan (1878), Franz Kafka (1883), Earl Butz (1909), Ken Russell (1927), Carlos Kleiber (1930), Tom Stoppard (1937), Lamar Alexander (1940), Betty Buckley (1947), Dave Barry (1947), Rob Rensenbrink (1947), Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier (1951), Montel Williams (1956), Tom Cruise (1962), Audra McDonald (1970) & Julian Assange (1971) were born #OnThisDay. Marie de’ Medici (1642), Henrietta ‘Hetty’ Green (1916), André Citroën (1935), Jim Morrison (1971), Andrei Gromyko (1989), Jim Backus (1989), Gaylord Nelson (2005), Andy Griffith (2012), radu Vasile (2013) & Arte Johnson (2019) died on this day. Hugh Capet crowned king of the Franks (987), Saladin’s victory over the Crusaders at the Battle of Horns of Hattin (1187), Louis IX of France captured by Baibar’s Mamluk army at the Battle of Fariskur (1250), Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Quebec (1608), French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin opened his magic theatre in Paris (1845), Battle of Gettysburg (third day) (1863), Leopold II of Belgium ceded the Congo Free State to the Belgian state (1890), Idaho was admitted to the union as the 43rd state (1890), Fridtjov Nansen convened an Intergovernmental Conference on Identity Certificates for Russian Refugees (1822), the US Navy cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger jet (1988) & Mohammed Morsi deposed as president of Egypt in a military coup (2013) on this day.

July 4

Louis-Claude Daquin (1694), Oscar I of Sweden (1799), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807), Stephen Foster (1826), Calvin Coolidge (1872), Rube Goldberg (1883), Gertrude Lawrence (1898), Angela Baddeley (1904), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904), Lionel Trilling (1905), Tokyo Rose [Iva Toguri D’Aquino] (1916), Abigail Van Buren [Pauline Phillips] (1918), Ann Landers [Eppie Lederer] (1918), Leona Helmsley (1920), Eva Marie Saint (1924), Gina Lollabrigida (1927), Neil Simon (1927), George Steinbrenner (1930), Geraldo Rivera [Gerald Michael Riviera] (1943), Michael Milken (1946), Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (1951), Álvaro Uribe Vélez (1952) & Malia Obama (1998) were born #OnThisDay. William Byrd (1623), Thomas Middleton (1627), Samuel Richardson (1761), John Adams (1826), Thomas Jefferson (1826), James Monroe (1831), Marie Curie (1934), Eva Gabor (1995), Jesse Helms (2008) & Otto von Habsburg (2011) died on this day. Battle of Hattin (Tiberias): Saladin’s victory over Crusader Reinoud of Châtillon (1187), US Declaration of Independence (1776), Louisiana Purchase announced by Thomas Jefferson (1803), slavery abolished in New York (1827), Wisconsin Territory formed (1836), Henry David Thoreau moved to Walden Pond (1845), Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” published (1855), Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) created Alice in Wonderland for Alice Liddell (1862), Gen. Robert E. Lee withdrew from Gettysburg (1863), Vicksburg surrendered to Union troops (1863), Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderrland” published (1865), Statue of Liberty unveiled (1884), Republic of Hawaii proclaimed with Sanford B. Dole as president (1894), William Howard Taft installed as first governor-general of the Philippines by Theodore Roosevelt (1901), Mehmed VI became the last Ottoman sultan (1918), Sukarno formed the Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia (PNI), Freedom of Information Act signed into law by LBJ (1966), CARICOM formed (1973), Entebbe hostage rescue mission launched (1976), Drew Barrymore’s attempted suicide (1989) & Donald Trump’s ‘Salute to America’ Fourth of July celebration in Washington, D.C. (2019) on this day.

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 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.

September 29

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) (106 BCE), Margaret, queen consort of Scotland (1240), Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent (1328), Michael Servetus (1511), Miguel de Cervantes (1547), Michale Merisi da Caravaggio (1571), Lord William Russell (1639), Antoine Coyzevox (1640), Adrien-Maurice, duc de Noailles (1678), François Boucher (1703), Nikita Ivanovich Panin (1718), Robert Clive (1725), Horatio Nelson (1758), Elizabeth Gaskell (1810), Andreas Aschenbach (1815), Henry Hobson Richardson (1838), Enrico Fermi (1901), Diana Vreeland (1903), Greer Garson (1904), Gene Autry (1907), Michelangelo Antonioni (1912), Stanley Kramer (1913), Trevor Howard (1913), Lizabeth Scott [Emma Matzo] (1922), John Tower (1925), Paul McCloskey (19270, Colin Dexter (1930), Richard Bonynge (1930), Anita Ekberg (1931), Mihály Csíkszentmihály (1934), Jerry Lee Lewis (1935), Silvio Berlusconi (1936), Larry Linville (1939), Jean-Luc Ponty (1942), Madeline Kahn (1942), Patricia Hodge (1946), Bryant Gumbel (1948), Michelle Bachelet (1951), Sebastian Coe (1956), Andrew Dice Clay (1957), Jill Whelan (1966), Zachary Levi [Pugh] (1980) & Lisette Oropesa (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Lothar I (855), Gustav Vasa (1560), Ferdinand VII of Spain, (1833), Winslow Homer (1910), Rudolf Diesel (1913), Edward Everett Horton (1970), Wystan Hugh (WH) Auden (1973), Henry Ford II (1987), John Heddle Nash (1994), Madalyn Murray O’Hair (199), Roy Lichtenstein (1997), Tom Bradley (1998), Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (2001), Tony Curtis (2010)

(2001), Tony Curtis (2010)

September 30

October 1

Henry III, King of England (1216-72) (1207), Holy Roman Emperor (1711-1740) Charles (Karl) VI (1685), Confederate Brigadier Gen. Robert H. Anderson (1835), Annie Besant (1847), Paul Dukas (1865), William Boeing (1881), Vladimir Horowitz (1903), A.K. Gopalan (1904), Samuel Yorty (1909), Bonnie Parker (1910), Daniel J. Boorstin (1914), Walter Matthau (1920), Jimmy Carter (1924), Tom Bosley (1927), George Peppard (1928), Laurence Harvey [Larushka Skine] (1928). Zhu Rongji (1928), Philippe Noiret (1930), Richard Harris (1930), Julie Andrews (1935), Edward Villella (1936), Stella Stevens [Estella Eggleston] (1936), Geoffrey Whitehead (1939), Peter Blake (1948), André Rieu (1949), Hans Pålsson (1949), Randy Quaid (1950), Duško Tadić (1955), Gina Haspel (1956), Theresa May (1956), Youssou N’dour (1959), Harry Hill (1964) & Brie Larson (1989) were born #OnThisDay. Al-Hakam II, second Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba (961-76), Don Juan of Austria (1578), Pierre Corneille (1684), Mongkut, king of Thailand (1868), Louis Leakey (1972), E.B. White (1985), Sacheverell Sitwell (1988), Petra Kelly (1992), Richard Avedon (2004), Eric Hobsbawm (2012), Samuel I. Newhouse, Jr. (2017), Charles Aznavour (2018) & John Amos (2024) died on this day.

October 2

Richard III of England (1452), Nat Turner (1800), Paul von Hindenburg (1847), Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869), Cordell Hull (1871), Julius ‘Groucho’ Marx (1890), William ‘Bud’ Abbott (1897), Graham Greene (1904), Robert Runcie (1921), Jan (né James) Morris (1926), Clay Felker (1928), Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr. (1935), Johnnie Cochran (1936), Rex Reed (1938), Ton Koopman (1944), Don McLean (1945), Donna Karan (1948), Annie Leibovitz (1949), Sting [Gordon Sumner] (1951), Maria Ressa (1963) & Kelly Ripa (1970) were born #OnThisDay. William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, 5th prime minister of the United Kingdom (1756-57) (1764), Samuel Adams (1803), William Ellery Channing (1842), Max Bruch (1920), Marcel Duchamp (1968), Paavo Nurmi (1973), Rock Hudson (1985), Gene Autry (1998), Nipsey Russell (2005), August Wilson (2005), Brian Friel (2015), Neville Marriner (2016) & Jamal Khashoggi (2018) died on this day. Saladin captured Jerusalem from Crusaders (1187), Jacques Cartier reached the site of the future city of Montréal (1535), Chongzhen — the last Ming emperor of China — succeeded his brother Tianqi (1627), Philippe d’Anjou named Charles II’s successor as king of Spain (1700), Tula sentenced to death for leading a slave uprising in Curaçao (1795), Rome made the capital of a united Italy after the annexation of the Papal States (1870), Mormon leader Brigham Young arrested for bigamy (1871), Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” published by Frederick Warne & Co. in London (1902), German General Lothar von Trotha issued the order to exterminate Herero people of Namibia, the first genocide of the 20th century (1904), Woodrow Wilson partially paralyzed by a stroke (1919), Geneva Conventions approved by the League of Nations (1924), Josephine Baker’s first performance in Paris in La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1925), Benito Mussolini’s Italian army invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) (1935), Warsaw Uprising crushed by the Nazi German army (1944), first strip of “Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz published as “Li’l Folks” (1950), “The Bridge on the River Kwai” — directed by David Lean & starring William Holden & Alec Guinness — released (1957), Guinée’s independence from France (1958) “The Twilight Zone” premiered on CBS (1959), Gatorade invented at the University of Florida (1965), Thurgood Marshall sworn in as the first African American justice of the US Supreme Court (1967), Danes voted to join the European Community (1972), the Texas Revolution began with the Battle of Gonzales (1835), NATO voted to support US military strikes on Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001), summit between Km Jong-il & Ron Moo-hyun (2007), Kim Kardashian robbed of $10 million in jewels in Paris (2016), Jamal Khashoggi murdered & dismembered by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (2018) & Donald Trump tweeted that he & Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19 (2020) on this day.

October 3

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).

October 9

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

Cristoforo Colombo (1451), John Adams (1735), Grigory Potemkin (1739), Angelica Kauffmann, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751), André Chénier (1762), Roscoe Conkling (1829), Alfred Sisley (1830), Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1857), Ezra Pound (1885), Charles Atlas [Angelo Siciliano] (1893), Ruth Gordon (1896), Ruth Hussey (1911), Preston Lockwood [Reginald] (1912), Fred W. Friendly (1915), Louis Malle (1932), Frans Brüggen (1934), Robert Caro (1935), Claude Lelouche (1937), Henry Winkler (1945), Andrea Mitchell (1946), Harry Hamlin (1951), Peter Hoekstra (1953), Diego Maradona (1960) & Ivanka Trump (1981) were born #OnThisDay. William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland (1809), Caroline Schermerhorn Astor (1908), Andrew Bonar Law (1923), Lorado Taft (1936), Emmerich Kálmán (1953), Luigi Einaudi (1961), Donna Rachele Mussolini (1979), Georges Brassens (1981), Craig Russell (1990), William Shea (1991), Steve Allen (2000), Margaret ‘Peggy’ Ryan (2004), Clifford Geertz (2006), Robert Goulet (2007), Claude Lévi-Strauss (2009), Albert ‘Al’ Molinaro (2015) & James ‘Whitey’ Bulger (2018) died on this day. Marīnids invasion of Iberia defeated by Afonso IV of Portugal & Alfonso XI of Castile at the Battle of Rio Salado (Tarifa) (1340), Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, occupied & plundered Liege (1340), the Earl of Warwick defeated Yorkists, restoring Henry VI of England (1470), Isabella of Spain banned violence against Native Americans (1503), Gustavus Adolphus became king of Sweden (1611), Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I signed the Treaty of Ryswick ending the Nine Years’ War (1697), Napoléon Bonaparte admitted to the elite École Militaire in Paris (1784), Jane Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility” published (1811), Treaty of Vienna ending the Second Schleswig War (1864), P. T. Barnum’s circus, “Greatest Show on Earth”, debuted in New York City (1873), October Manifesto by Nicholas II granted civil liberties & established the first Duma (1905), British & Ottoman representatives signed an armistice (1918), Benito Mussolini formed a government in Italy (1922), H. G. Wells “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast narrated by Orson Welles caused mass panic (1938), Clarence Birdseye sold the first frozen peas (1952), Dr. Albert Schweitzer & Gen. George Marshall awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1953), the US Defense Department announced the elimination of all racially segregated regiments (1954), the Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution removing Stalin’s body from Lenin’s tomb in Red Square as part of de-Stalinization efforts (1961), the Bosphorus Bridge opened in Istanbul connecting its European & Asian shores for the first time (1973), Juan Carlos became king of Spain (1975), “Ford to City: Drop Dead” headline in the NY Daily News (1975), Jane Pauley became news co-anchor of “The Today Show” (1976), Richard Arrington, Jr. elected the first African American mayor of Birmingham (1979), Honduras & El Salvador signed a peace treaty ending the Football War (1980), NASA launched Flt Satcom-4 (1980), the first democratic elections held in Argentina after seven years of military rule (1983), Britain & France complete the ‘Chunnel’ tunnel under the English Channel (1990), Québec voted narrowly in a referendum to remain part of Canada (1995), Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona announced his retirement from football on his 37th birthday (1997), the rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) reconsecrated after a 13-year rebuilding project (2005), Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort & associate Rick Gates indicted on fraud charges & advisor George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI (2017), Kevin Spacey issued an apology after actor Anthony Rapp accuses him of inappropriate sexual behavior when he was 14 (2017), Uhuru Kenyatta declared the winner of the presidential election in Kenya with 38% turnout (2017) & a new DNA study of dogs suggested they were human’s first domesticated animal 11,000 years ago at end of the Bronze Age (2020) on this day.

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.

November 29

Zhu Qizhen, Yingzong emperor of Ming China (1935), Christian Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst (1690), Gaetano Donizetti (1797), Gottfried Semper (1803), Louisa May Alcott (1832), Cixi, empress dowager of China (1835), Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856), Busby Berkeley [Enos] (1895), C.S. [Clive Staples] Lewis (1898), Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1908), Billy Strayhorn (1915), Beji Caid Essebsi (1926), Paul Simon (1928), Jacques Chirac (1932), Chuck Mangione (1940), Petra Kelly (1947), Joel Cohen (1954), Howie Mandel (1955), Rahm Emanuel (1959), Don Cheadle (1964), Chadwick Boseman (1976) & Gemma Chan (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Philippe IV of France (1314), Roger de Mortimer, first Earl of March (1330), Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, Marid d’Anjou (1463), Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1530), Friedrich V, Elector Palatine & King of Bohemia (1632), Claudio Monteverdi (1643), Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa (1780), Horace Greeley (1872), Giacomo Puccini (1924), Dorothy Day (1980), Natalie Wood [Natasha Gurdin] (1981), Cary Grant [Archibald Alexander Leach] (1986), Emilio Pucci (1992), George Harrison (2001), Henry Hyde (2007) & Stephen Solarz (2010) died on this day. Philip II devalued Spain’s currency (1596), Zong slave ship crew murdered 142 Africans by tossing them overboard in order to claim insurance money (1781), a Park Theater production in New York City of “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” was the first Italian opera staged in the US (1825), November Uprising against Russian rule in Poland (1830), Punctation of Olmütz (1850), a Colorado militia killed 150 Cheyenne & Arapaho in the Sandcreek Massacre (1864), Thomas Alva Edison demonstrated his hand-cranked photograph for the first time (1877), the UN General Assembly voted on a Palestine partition plan (1947), the Metropolitan Opera televised a production of Verdi’s “Otello,” the first opera performance ever broadcast (1948), Jiang Kai-Shek & Nationalist forces fled China for Taiwan (1949), Dwight Eisenhower went to Korea to assess the progress of the Korean War (1952), Freedom Riders attacked by a mob of white supremacists at a bus station in Mississippi (1961), JFK replaced Allen Dulles with John McCone as director of the CIA after the Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961), LBJ set up the Warren Commission to investigate JFK’s assassination (1963), the US Roman Catholic Church replaced Latin with English (1964), Robert McNamara elected president of the World Bank (1967), Gerald Ford required states to provide free education for disabled students in public schools in the US (1975), UN international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people’ (1978), Rajiv Gandhi resigned as prime minister after the Congress Party’s defeat in elections in India (1989), the UN Security Council approved the US-sponsored resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (1990), celebration of the 600th anniversary of Korea’s founding (1994), Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” released (2010), the UN General Assembly upgraded Palestine’s status from ‘observer’ to ‘observer state’ (2012), NBC fired “Today” host Matt Lauer over sexual misconduct (2017) & K-pop stars Jung Joon-young & Choi Jong-hoon were sentenced to prison for gang-raping unconscious fans & distributing footage of it (2019) on this day.

November 30

St. Gregory of Tours (538), Jean, duc de Berry (1340), Andrea Doria (1466), Andrea Palladio [Andrea di Petro della Gondola] (1508), Sir Philip Sidney (1554), Jonathan Swift (1667), Ludwig Andreas Graf Khevenhüller (1683), Theodor Mommsen (1817), Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835), Sir Winston Churchill (1874), Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874), Marina, princess of Greece & Denmark (1906), Jacques Barzun (1907), Efren Zimbalist Jr. (1918), Shirley Chisholm (1924), Richard Crenna (1926), Robert Guillaume [Williams] (1927), Dick Clark [Richard Wagstaff Clark] (1929), G. Gordon Liddy (1930), Abbie Hoffman (1936), Richard Threlkeld (1937), Ridley Scott (1937), Radu Lupu (1945), Marina Abramović (1946), David Mamet (1947), Christian Bernard (1951), Mandy Patinkin (1952), Mike Espy (1953), Simonetta Stefanelli (1954), Ben Stiller (1965), Kristi Noem (1971), Clay Aiken (1978), Gael García Bernal (1978), Emil Steiner (1978), Kaley Cuoco (1985), Chrissy Teigen (1985) & Magnus Carlsen (1990) were born #OnThisDay. Edmund Ironsides, king of the Saxons (1016), Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1675), Caterina de Bragança, queen of England (1705), Oscar Wilde (1900), Ernst Lubitsch (1947), Wilhelm Furtwängler (1954), Beniamino Gigli (1957), Herbert Manfred ‘Zeppo’ Marx (1979), James Baldwin (1987), Tiny Tim [Herbert Khaury] (1996), Evel Knievel (2007), Peter Hofmann (2010), Jim Nabors (2017) & George H.W. Bush (2018) died on this day. Cnut the Great [Canute], King of Denmark, claimed the English throne after the death of Ēadmund ‘Ironside,’ king of the Saxons (1016), the first German beer purity law (Reinheitsgebot) promulgated in Munich by Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria (1487), Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army captured Charles I of England (1648), Sweden’s Charles XII defeated Russia’s Peter the Great at the Battle of Narva (1700), Captain James Cook launched his third & last voyage to the Pacific (1776), Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany abolished the death penalty, commemorated as Cities for Life Day (1786), Spain ceded the Louisiana Territory to France (1803), the impeachment trial of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase began (1804), Mexico declared war on France (1838), Gen. John Bell Hood’s Confederate Army of Tennessee defeated at the Battle of Franklin (1864), unveiling of a statue of Charles XII of Sweden in Stockholm (1868), Heinrich Schliemann found the gold mask of Agamemnon at Mycenae in Greece (1876), first Folies Bergère revue in Paris (1886), Pike Place Market dedicated in Seattle (1907), the US & Japan affirmed support for an independent China in the Root-Takahira Agreement (1908), the British House of Lords rejected David Lloyd Georg’s ‘People’s Budget,’ prompting him to introduce the Parliament Act limiting the ability of the Lords to block legislation passed by the House of Commons (1909), the Soviet Red Army invaded Finland (1939), Harry Truman declared his readiness to use nuclear weapons in the Korean War (1950), Elizabeth Hodges of Alabama became the first person killed by a meteorite in modern history (1954), Ralph Naders’ “Unsafe at Any Speed” published (1965), Barbados gained independence from Britain (1966), Julie Nixon & David Eisenhower announced their engagement (1967), Sen. Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy for president (1967), the Pakistan Peoples Party founded by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1967), Dahomey renamed the People’s Republic of Benin (1975), Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” released (1979), Ted Koppel began anchoring “Nightline” on ABC (1979), Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller” released (1982), Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” premiered in New Delhi (1982), Raúl Alfonsín won the presidential election in Argentina (1983), Bill Clinton signed the Brady gun control bill into law (1993), Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” premiered in Washington, D.C. (1993) & newly discovered rock art announced found in the Serranía la Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon was dated 12,600 and 11,800 years ago with thousands of paintings of now extinct Ice Age animals (2020).

Dec. 1

Louis VI (‘the Fat’), king of the Franks (1081), Madame Marie Tussaud (1761), Alexandra of Denmark, queen of England (1844), Zhu De (1886), Ernst Toller (1893), Georgy Zhukov (1896), Robert W. Welch, Jr. (1899), Dame Alicia Markova (1910), Mary Martin (1913), Stansfield Turner (1923), Keith Michell (1926), Lou Rawls (1933), Woody Allen (1935), Richard Pryor (1940), Bette Midler (1945), Pablo Escobar (1949), Sebastián Piñera (1949), Sarah Silverman (1970) & Matthew Shepard (1976) were born #OnThisDay. Lorenzo Ghiberti (1455), Pope Leo X [Giovanni de’ Medici] (1521), Tsar Alexander I of Russia (1825), Aleister Crowley (1947), David Ben-Gurion (1973), Anna Roosevelt (1975), James Baldwin (1987), Alvin Ailey (1989), Stéphane Grappelli (1997), Galina Vishnevskaya (2012) & Ken Berry (2018). Portuguese launched the Portuguese War of Restoration to restore Portugal’s independents from Spain (1640), Massachusetts became the first American colony to grant statutory recognition to slavery (1641), Empress Elisabeth ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Russia (1742), the Dominican Republic declared its independence from Spain (1821), Dom Pedro crowned emperor of Brazil (1822), Franz Liszt made his debut as a pianist in Vienna at the age of 11 (1822), a telephone installed in the White House (1878), the Société des Artistes Indépendents’ first exhibition in Paris, including Georges Seurat’s “Bathers at Asnières” (1884), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes in “A Study in Scarlet” (1887), release of the first Western, “The Great Train Robbery” (1903), Denmark’s parliament enacted a law granting Iceland independence under the Danish crown (1918), Yugoslavia’s declaration of independence (1918), Lady Nancy Astor sworn in as the first female member of the British House of Commons (1919), Józef Piłsudski’s resignation as first marshal of Poland (1922), George & Ira Gershwin’s musical “Lady Be Good” premiered in Manhattan (1924), the first issue of André Breton’s “La Révolution Surréaliste” published in Paris (1924), the Treaty of Locarno (1925), the first Postage Stamp Day in Austria (1934), Heinrich Himmler ordered the deportation of Polish Jews (1939), Emperor Hirohito signed Japan’s declaration of war against the US (1941), the Beveridge Report published by Clement Attlee’s government outlining his plans for the creation of a British welfare state (1942), Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra premiered (1944), Benjamin Britten’s opera “Billy Budd” premiered in London (1951), Hugh Hefner published the first issue of “Playboy” with Marilyn Monroe as the magazine’s first centerfold (1953), Rosa Parks arrested on a bus in Montgomery (1955), the Central African Republic became an autonomous member of the Communauté Française (1958), Patrice Lumumba apprehended in the Congo (1960), “Tootsie” premiered in Hollywood (1982), the Musée d’Orsay opened in Paris (1986), Benazir Bhutto named prime minister of Pakistan, the first woman to lead a Muslim country (1988), first World AIDS Day (1988), East Germany amended its constitution to remove the provision regarding the Communist Party’s monopoly on power (1989), 1990 Hissène Habré of Chad fled to Cameroon (1990), Nursultan Nazarbayev sworn in as president of Kazakhstan (1991), Tupac Shakur convicted on sexual assault charges (1994), The Return of the King” — the third & final film in the “Lord of the Rings” series directed by Peter Jackson & starring Elijah Wood & Ian McKellen premiered in Wellington (2003), Enrique Peña Nieto sworn in as president of Mexico (2003), “The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies” — the third & final Hobbit film directed by Peter Jackson & starring Martin Freeman & Ian McKellen — premiered in London (2003), Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn declared King of Thailand, succeeding his father King Bhumibol Adulyadej (2016), François Hollande announced he would not seek a second term — the first president of the French Fifth Republic not to do so (2016), Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh defeated by Adama Barrow after 22 years in power (2016), Michal Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI (2017), 36,000 participated in Gilets Jaunes demonstrations in Paris (2018), a 55-year-old resident of Wuhan became the first known person to develop the COVID-19 virus (2019) & Ellen Page came out as Elliot Page (2020) on this day.

December 2

Georges Seurat (1859), Charles Ringling (1863), John Barbirolli (1899), Adolph Green (1915), Randolph Apperson Hearst (1915), Sylvia Syms (1917), Maria Callas (1923), Alexander Haig, Jr. (1924), Julie Harris (1925), Edwin Meese (1931), Harry Reid (1939), Gianni Versace (1946), Stone Phillips (1954), Dennis Christopher (1955), Deb Haaland (1960), Lucy Liu (1968), Jason Collins (1978), Jarron Collins (1978), Britney Spears (1981), Aaron Rodgers (1983) & Edward Windsor, Lord Downpatrick (1988) were born #OnThisDay. Hernán Cortés (1547), Philippe II, duc d’Orléans & régent de France (1723), Marquis de Sade (1814), Adele von Saxe-Miningen, queen of England (1849), John Brown (1859), Paolo Tosti (1916), Edmond Rostand (1918), Henry Clay Frick (1919), Vincent d’Indy (1931), John Ringling (1936), Constantin Dinu Lupatti (1950), Francis Picabia (1953), Francis Cardinal Spellman, archbishop of New York (1967), Desi Arnaz (1986), Aaron Copland (1990), Pablo Escobar (1993), Roxie Roker (1995), Alicia Markova (2004), Odetta Holmes (2008) & Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (2020) died on this day. The University of Leipzig opened (1409), Sir Christopher Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral consecrated in London (1697), Napoléon crowned himself emperor of the French (1804), Napoléon defeated Austrian & Russian forces at Austerlitz (1805), James Madison re-elected president (1812), James Monroe enunciated the Monroe Doctrine in his address to Congress (1823), William Henry Harrison elected the ninth president of the United States (1840), James K. Polk announced his policy of expansion into the West termed ‘Manifest Destiny’ by others (1845), Franz Josef became emperor of Austria & king of Hungary & Bohemia (1848), Louis Napoléon overthrew the Second Republic & established the Second Empire, declaring himself Napoléon III (1851), John Brown hanged (1859), Charles Dickens gave his first public reading in the United States at a theater in Manhattan (1867), resignation of Benjamin Disraeli’s first government (1868), Camille Saint-Saëns’ opera “Samson et Dalila” premiered in Weimar (1877), King Gillette began selling safety razor blades (1901), Pu Yi became emperor of China at the age of two (1908), the Austrian army occupied Belgrade (1914), Davidson Black announced the discovery of Homo Erectus (1927), La Guardia Airport became operational in Queens (1939), the Mutual Defense Treaty concluded between the US & the Republic of China on Taiwan (1954), Joe McCarthy censured by the US Senate for conduct unbecoming (1954), the Benelux treaty signed by the Netherlands, Belgium & Luxembourg (1958), Louis Leakey discovered a 1.4 million-year-old homo erectus in the Olduvai Gorge (1960), Richard Nixon named Henry Kissinger his national security advisor (1968), the Environmental Protection Agency began work under its first director, William Ruckelshaus (1970), Neil Diamond & Barbra Streisand’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” hit #1 on the charts (1978), Eugene Sawyer elected acting mayor of Chicago by the City Council (1987), the Enron Corporation filed for bankruptcy (2001), “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” — the second film in the series directed by Peter Jackson, starring Martin Freeman & Ian McKellen — premiered in Los Angeles (2013), Israeli police recommend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife be charged with fraud and bribery (2018), US Attorney General William Barr declared there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, despite claims by Donald Trump (2020) & the US recorded its largest daily death toll for COVID-19 at 2,885 & for the first time patient numbers in hospital exceeded 100,000 (2020).

December 3

Charles VI of France (1368), Niccolo Amati (1596), Ludvig, Baron Holberg (1684), Antonio Soler (1729), Gilbert Stuart (1755), George McClellan (1826), Joseph Conrad (1857), Anna Freud (1895), Nino Rota (1911), Sven Nykvist (1922), Andy Williams (1927), Jean-Luc Godard (1930), Diane Kurys (1948), John ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne (1948), Asa Hutchinson (1950), Julianne Moore (1960), Terry Schiavo (1963), Tiffany Haddish (1979), Amanda Seyfried (1985) & Prince Sverre Magnus of Norway (2005) were born #OnThisDay. Diocletian (66), Piero de’ Medici (1469), Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma (1592), Robert Louis Stevenson (1894), Mary Baker Eddy (1910), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1919), Charles Ringling (1926), William Grant Still (1978), Oswald Mosley (1980), Elizabeth Glaser (1994) & Madeline Kahn (1999) died on this day. The first Covenant of Scottish Protestants (1557), Sir Thomas Herriot introduced potatoes to England from Colombia (1586), the Swedish army defeated a much larger Danish & Dutch force at the Battle of Lund (1676), the first recorded successful separation of conjoined twins (Elisabet & Catherina Meijerin) completed by Swiss surgeon Johannes Fatio in Basel (1689), George II appointed Colley Cibber British poet laureate (1730), Illinois admitted as the 21st state (1818), Andrew Jackson elected seventh president of the United States (1828), Oberlin College opened, the first co-educational college in the US (1833), Frederick Douglass published the first issue of his “North Star” newspaper (1847), Eureka Stockade Australian uprising in Ballarat (1854), Zionist settlers arrived at Petach Tikvah in Ottoman Palestine (1878), Henry Morton Stanley founded Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) (1881), an armistice ended the First Balkan war (1912), Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared for 11 days (1926), the Battle of Monte Cassino (1943), civil war in Greece (1944), Marlon Brando opened in the Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire” on Broadway (1947), the Pumpkin Papers surfaced (1948), Dwight Eisenhower criticized Joe McCarthy for claiming that Communists had infiltrated the Republican Party (1953), British & French troops pulled out of Egypt (1956), Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner’s “Camelot” opened at Majestic Theater in Manhattan (1960), Sukarno placed under house arrest in Indonesia (1967), Union Carbide’s pesticide plant leaded 45 tons of toxic compounds in India, killing 2,259 in the worst industrial accident in history (1984), Mikhail Gorbachev & George H.W. Bush suggested the Cold War was over (1989), David Attenborough warned the UN climate summit in Poland of the collapse of civilization & the natural world (2018), Kamala Harris ended her presidential campaign (2019), the 70th anniversary of NATO celebrated at Buckingham Palace in London (2019) & video of NATO leaders’ comments about Donald Trump went viral (2019) on this day.

December 4

Thomas Carlyle (1795), Oglala Sioux Chief Crazy Horse Tashunka Witko, Edith Cavell (1865), Wassily Kandinsky (1866), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875), Hamilton Harty (1879), Francisco Franco (1892), A.L. Rowse (1903), Jeanne Manford (1920), Deanna Durbin Edna Mae Durbin, Charles Keating (1923), Ronnie Corbett (1930), Roh Tae-woo (1932), Max Baer, Jr. (1937), Gary Gilmore (1940), Jeff Bridges (1949), Marisa Tomei (1964), Fereydun ‘Fred’ Armisen (1966), Suzanne Malveaux (1966), Jay-Z Shawn Carter, Tyra Banks (1973) & Jin Kim Seok-jin (1992), were born #OnThisDay. Jean Armand du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (1642), Thomas Hobbes (1679), John Gay (1732), Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (1828), Bert Lahr Irving Lahrheim, Fred Hampton (1969), Hannah Arendt (1975), Benjamin Britten (1976), Margaret Landon (1993), Geoffrey Rudolph Elton (1994) & Christine Keeler (2017) died on this day. Nicholas Breakspear elected Pope Adrian IV (1154), Treaty of Paris between Henry III of England & Louis IX of France (1259), the Council of Trent’s last session (1563), Père Marquette built the first house in what is now Chicago (1674), John Churchill (later 1st Duke of Marlborough) changed allegiance from James II to William of Orange (1688), Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I took control of Transylvania (1691), James Monroe elected 5th president of the United States (1816), James Knox Polk elected 11th president (1844), Oliver Kelley organized the Grange in Minnesota (1867), William Magear ‘Boss’ Tweed escaped from jail (1875), the first issue of the Los Angeles Times published (1881), Arthur Balfour’s resignation as British prime minister (1905), Kurt von Schleicher succeeded Franz von Papen as Reichskanzler of Germany (1932), the US Senate approved US participation in the United NAtions (1945), Dahomey (Benin) & Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) became autonomous within the Communauté Française (1958), the Museum of Modern Art hung Henri Matisse’s “Le Bateau” upside down for 47 days (1961), Aldo Moro formed a new government in Italy (1963), Jean-Bédel Bokassa crowned himself emperor of the Central African Republic, renaming it the Central African Empire (1977), Dianne Feinstein became San Francisco’s first woman & first Jewish mayor (1978), Pioneer Venus 1 went into orbit around Venus (1978), Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order on Intelligence #12333 allowing the CIA to engage in domestic counterintelligence (1981), Hezbollah released Terry Anderson after 2,454 days in captivity (1991), George H.W. Bush ordered 28,000 US troops to Somalia (1992), Amanda Knox convicted of murder in Italy (2009), Alexander Van der Bellen elected president of Austria (2016), James Levine suspended as music director of the Metropolitan Opera following sexual misconduct allegations (2017), Theresa May’s government suffered three defeats in the British House of Commons in one day (2018), Emmanuel Macron canceled plans for a controversial fuel tax increase after three weeks of mass protests in France (2018), Settimio Mineo & 45 other Mafiosi arrested in Sicily (2018), la Maison de Chanel ended its use of fur & exotic skins (2018), research published in “Nature” & “Science” on Native American migration from Siberia 23,000 years ago (2018) & a University of Michigan study published in the journal “Ecology Letters” documented the shrinking of North American migratory birds due to climate change (2019) on this day.

December 5

Zhu Yunwen, later Jiànwén Di 建文帝, the second Ming emperor of China (1377), Giuliano della Rovere, later Pope Julius II (1443), Martin Van Buren (1782), Christina Rossetti (1830), George Armstrong Custer (1839), John Jellicoe (1859), Józef Piłsudski (1867), Fritz Lang (1890), Grace Moore (1898), Walt [Walter Elias] Disney (1901), Werner Heisenberg (1901), Strom Thurmond (1902), Otto Preminger (1905), Lin Biao (1907), Władysław Szpilman (1911), Simone Gallimard (1917), Bhumibol Adulyadej [Rama IX], King of Thailand (1946-2016) (1927), Little Richard [Wayne Penniman] (1932), Joan Didion (1934), Calvin Trillin (1935), José Carreras, Camarón de la Isla [José Monge Cruz] (1950), Osvaldo Golijov (1950), Margaret Cho (1968) & Frankie Muniz (1985) were born #OnThisDay. François II of France (1560), Phillis Wheatley (1784), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1791), Alexandre Dumas (1870), Pedro II of Brazil (1891), Claude Monet (1926), Fred Clark (1968), Al Gore, Sr. (1998), Ne Win (2002), Nina Foch (2008), Nelson Mandela (2013) & Michael I of Romania (2017) died on this day. Charlemagne became sole king of the Franks on the death of his brother Carloman (771), the French franc created (1360), Emir Edigu & the Golden Horde reached Moscow (1408), Christopher Columbus reached Hispaniola (1492), Giulio Caccini’s opera “Euridice” premiered in Florence (1602), the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity founded in Williamsburg (1776), Thomas Jefferson re-elected president (1804), Lübeck surrendered to allied armies (1813), Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonique Fantastique” premiered in Paris (1830), Andrew Jackson was re-elected president of the United States (1832), James K. Polk triggered the Gold Rush of 1849 by confirming discovery of gold in California (1848), the brigantine Mary Celeste was found near the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean (1872), Hector Berlioz’ opera “Les Troyens” premiered in Karlsruhe (1890), the Triple Alliance among Italy, Austria & Germany (originally signed in 1882) renewed for six years (1912), Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th Amendment establishing Prohibition (1933), Sikkim became a protectorate of India (1950), the Montgomery bus boycott launched by Rosa Parks & supported by the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (1955), Sukarno expelled all Dutch citizens from Indonesia (1957), “The Two Towers” — the second “Lord of the Rings” film directed by Peter Jackson & starring Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen — premiered in New York (2002), forensic scientists identified the human remains found in 1991 as Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (2008), Malta became the first country in Europe to outlaw conversion therapy (2016), Republicans in the Senate passed bills restricting the legal authority of Wisconsin’s new Democratic governor Tony Evers (2018), Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced articles of impeachment would be drawn up against Donald Trump (2019) & workers launched a national strike in France to protest Emmanuel Macron’s proposed pension reform, with more than 800,000 in 100 cities joining the strike (2019) on this day.

December 6

Ferdinand IV of Castile & León (1295-1312) (1285), Henry VI of England (1421), Baldassare Castiglione (1478), Johann Christoph Bach (1642), Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy, mother of Louis XV of France (1685), Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805), Frédéric Bazille (1841), Michael Joseph Savage (1872), Evelyn Underhill (1875), Joyce Kilmer (1886), Dion Fortune (1890), Osbert Sitwell (1892), Ira Gershwin (1896), Gunnar Myrdal (1898), Agnes Moorehead (1900), Ève Curie (1904), Paul de Man (1919), David Brubeck (1920), Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929), Richard Speck (1941), Yoshihide Suga (1948), Craig Newmark (1952), Andrew Cuomo (1957), Judd Apatow (1967) & Elian Gonzalez (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Saint Nicholas [Nikolaos of Myra] (343), Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1779), Anthony Trollope (1882), Jefferson Davis (1889), Lead Belly [Huddie William Ledbetter] (1949), Frantz Fanon (1961), Roy Orbison (1988), Frances Bauvier (1989), Tunku Abdul Rahman (1990), Dominic ‘Don’ Ameche (1993), James ‘Scotty’ Reston (1995), Werner Klemperer (2000), Philip Berrigan (2002), Hans Hotter (2003), Hugues Cuénod (2010), Holly Woodlawn (2015) & Paul Sarbanes (2020) died on this day. Mongols led by Batu Khan captured & destroyed Kiev, slaughtering all but 2,000 of the city’s 50,000 residents (1240), Thomas Aquinas’ mystical experience in Naples (1273), Hungarys Diet accepted Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI’s Pragmatic Sanction, recognizing his daughters as his legitimate successors (1723), “La Damnation de Faust” by Hector Berlioz premiered in Paris (1846), Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland for the second time (1849), Abraham Lincoln ordered the hanging of 39 Santee Sioux (1862), 13th Amendment to the US Constitution ratified abolishing slavery (1865), Rutherford B. Hayes & Samuel Tilden both elected president by the Electoral College with conflicting results reported to Congress (1876), the Washington Post’s first issue published (1877), the Washington Monument completed (1884), Theodore Roosevelt confirmed the Monroe Doctrine with the Roosevelt Corollary (1904), 361 miners killed in the Monongah coal mine disaster — the worst in US history (1907), more than 1,800 were killed in the Great Halifax Explosion — the most destructive man-made explosion before the atomic age (1917), Finland declared its independence from Russia (1917), Ireland received dominion status within the British Empire through the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State (1921), Calvin Coolidge broadcast the first presidential address by radio from the White House (1923), a federal judge lifted the US ban on James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (1933), Cole Porter’s musical “Du Barry Was A Lady” opened at the 46th Street Theatre in Manhattan (1939), the New York City Council voted to build Idlewild Airport in Queens (later renamed JFK) (1941), Simone de Beauvoir received the Prix Goncourt for French literature (1954), Ernie Davis became the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy — college football’s highest individual award (1961), “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” first broadcast on TV (1964), the Altamont Festival ended in a murder & three accidental deaths (1969), Gerald Ford sworn in to succeed Spiro Agnew as vice-president (1973), Hugo Chávez elected president of Venezuela (1998), Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital & announced plans to move the US embassy there (2017), Luxembourg became the first country to make all public transportation free (2018) & the oldest-known plague sample was found in 4,900-year-old remains of 20-year old woman in Gökhem, southern Sweden published in “Cell” (2018) on this day.

December 7

St. Columba (521), Abū-Sa’īd Abul-Khayr (967), Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545), Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598), Pietro Mascagni (1863), Johan Huizinga (1872), Willa Cather (1873), Gerard Kuiper (1905), Ted Knight [Tadeusz Wladyslaw Konopka] (1923), Mário Soares (1924), Noam Chomsky (1928), Ellen Burstyn (1932), Thad Cochran (1937), Harry Chapin (1942), Susan Collins (1952) & Princess Catharina-Amalia of the Netherlands (2003) were born #OnThisDay. Marcus Tullius Cicero (43 BCE), Holy Roman Emperor Otto II (983), Captain William Bligh (1817), Jón Sigurðsson (1879), Ferdinand de Lesseps (1894), Thomas Nast (1902), [Aloysius] Ludwig Minkus (1917), Kirsten Flagstad (1962), Rube Goldberg (1970), Potter Stewart (1985), Robert Graves (1985), Félix Houphouet-Boigny (1993), Jeane Kirkpatrick (2006), Elizabeth Edwards (2010), Harry Morgan (2011) & Édouard Molinaro (2013) died on this day. Marcus Tullius Cicero assassinated in Formiae (43 BCE), Lo-Yang emperor saw a supernova (MSH15-52) over China (185), the Royal Opera House opened in London’s Covent Garden (1732), Elizaveta Petrovna’s coup d’état in St. Petersburg (1741), Delaware became the first state to ratify the US Constitution (1787), Martin Van Buren elected 8th president of the United States (1836), the New York Philharmonic’s first concert (1842), Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Gondoliers” premiered in London (1889), David Lloyd George replaced H.H. Asquith as British prime minister (1916), the US declared war on Austria-Hungary (1917), William Walton’s violin concerto premiered in Cleveland (1939), 2,403 killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941), Jiang Kaishek fled to Taiwan (1949), Apollo 17 launched, eventually taking the ‘Blue Marble’ photo (1972), the Indonesian army invaded & occupied East Timor (1975), Spain joined NATO (1981), Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti (1986), Palestinian uprising against Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank (1987), the PLO’s Yasser Arafat recognized the state of Israel & proclaimed the state of Palestine (1988), Henri Konan Bédié declared himself president of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) (1993), Colin Ferguson killed six & injured 19 on a Long Island Rail Road train (1993), Seamus Heaney received the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm (1995), Bernie Sanders named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year (2015), Beijing issued its first ever red alert for air pollution (2015), a general strike launched by Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank & Gaza Strip in response to Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (2017), Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” premiered at MoMA in Manhattan (2019) & Bob Dylan sold his entire catalog of more than 600 songs to the Universal Music Publishing Group for over $300 million (2020) on this day.

December 8

Horace (65 BCE), Mary, Queen of Scots (1542), Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626, Hatio Walpole, 1st Baron Walpole of Wolterton (1678), Holy Roman Emperor Francis I (1708), Eli Whitney (1765), Friedrich Siemens (1826), Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832), Aristide Maillol (1861), Jean Sibelius (1865), Diego Rivera (1886), Bohuslav Martinů (1890), James Thurber (1894), Gérard Souzay (1918), Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925), Maximilian Schell (1930), Julian Critchley (1930), Flip Wilson (1933), David Carradine (1936), James Galway (1939), Mario Savio (1942), Jim Morrison (1943), Jimmy Lai [Lai Chee-Ying] (1948), Kim Basinger (1953), Norman Finkelstein (1953), Harold Hongju Koh (1954), Ann Coulter (1961), Teri hatcher (1964), Sinead O’Connor (1966) & Nicki Minaj (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Omar I, 2nd caliph (644), Barthélemy d’Herbelot de Molainville (1695), Elisabeth Charlotte (‘Liselotte’), duchesse d’Orléans (1722), Herbert Spencer (1903), Oscar II of Sweden (1907), Golda Meir [Mabovitch] (1978), John Lennon (1980), John Glenn (2016), Paul Volcker (2019) & René Auberjonois (2019) died on this day. British General James Stanhope captured by French & Spanish forces at the Battle of Brihuega in the War of the Spanish Succession (1710), George Washington’ retreating army crossed the Delaware River (1776), the first cremation in the US (Henry Laurens (1792), Ludwig van Beethoven conducting his 7th Symphony in A at its premiere in Vienna (1813), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Luisa Miller” premiered in Naples (1849), Abraham Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Amnesty & Reconstruction (1863), a fire at the Ring Theater in Vienna killed at least 620 people (1881), Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II defeated Italian General Baratieri at the Battle at Amba Alagi (1895), Gustav V became king of Sweden (1907), John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” appeared anonymously in “Punch” magazine (1915), Eamon de Valera publicly repudiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), Anastasio Somoza García elected president of Nicaragua (1936), FDR declared that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 would be a day that would live in infamy as he requested a declaration of war from Congress (1941), Jordan annexed the West Bank & East Jerusalem (1948), Chiang Kai-Shek moved the Nationalist government of the Republic of China to Taiwan (1949), “On the Town” released (1949), the first acknowledgement of a pregnancy on TV in an episode of “I Love Lucy” (1952), Frank Sinatra, Jr. kidnapped in Lake Tahoe (1963), Greeks rejected the monarchy in a referendum in Greece (1974), Kurt Waldheim re-elected UN Secretary-General (1976), John Lennon photographed by Annie Leibovitz shortly before his murder (1980), Gabriel García Márquez awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1982), “Sophie’s Choice” released (1982), Intifada uprising against Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine launched (1987), Romania’s new constitution adopted in a referendum (1991), Russia, Belarus & Ukraine formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (1991), Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law (1993), Sanna Marin became Finland’s youngest-ever Prime Minister at the age of 34 (2019) on this day.

December 9

Chenghua emperor of Ming China (1447), Edwin Sandys (1561), Gustavus Adolphus (1594), John Milton (1608), Émile Waldteufel (1837), Joaquín Turina (1882), Clarence Birdseye (1886), Conchita Supervía (1895), Hermione Gingold (1897), Jean de Brunhoff (1899), Margaret Hamilton (1902), Grace Hopper (1906), Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1909), Broderick Crawford (1911), Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill (1912), Max Manus (1914), Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915), Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1916), Kirk Douglas [Issur Danielovitch] (1916), Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (1920), Redd Foxx (1922), Dick Van Patten (1928), Bob Hawke (1929), Judi Dench (1934), Beau Bridges (1941), Sonia Gandhi (1946), Tom Daschle (1947), John Malkovich (1953), Jean-Claude Juncker (1954), Donny Osmond (1957), Terry Moran (1960), Felicity Huffman (1962), Masako, empress of Japan (1963), Kirsten Gillibrand (1966) & André Heinz (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Malcolm IV of Scotland (1165), Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (1437), Anthony Van Dyck (1641), Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1674), Pedro II of Portugal (1706), Yolande de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac (1793), Edith Sitwell (1964), Ralph Bunche (1971), Louella Parsons (1972), Leon Jaworski (1982), alain Poher (1996), Mary Leakey (1996), Paul Simon (2003) & Charles Rosen (2012) died on this day. Frederick II crowned in Mainz (1212), Mikhail Glinka’s opera “Ruslan & Ludmila” premiered in St. Petersburg (1842), Marguerite Durand founded the feminist daily newspaper “La Fronde” in Paris (1897), Richard Strauss’ opera “Salome” premiered in Dresden (1905), the New York American reported that Belgium’s Léopold II bribed the US Senate commission on the Congo Free State (1906), the Reichstag enacted a law restricting factory work hours for women & young people in Germany (1908), British forces under Gen. Allenby captured Jerusalem (1917), Spain became a republic (1931), China declared war on Japan, Germany & Italy (1941), the UN General Assembly unanimously approved the Convention on Genocide (1948), the John Birch Society founded (1958), Tanganyika became an independent republic within the British Commonwealth as Tanzania (1961), “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (the first “Peanuts” animated special) premiered on CBS (1965), Nicolae Ceaușescu became president of Romania (1967), Gerald Ford approved a $2.3 billion loan for the City of New York (1975), smallpox officially declared eradicated (1979), Argentinian junta leaders Jorge Rafael Videla & Emilio Eduardo Massera sentenced to life imprisonment for human rights violations (1985), the Palestinian Intifidada uprising against Apartheid Israel’s illegal occupation began in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip (1987), Lech Wałęsa won Poland’s first direct presidential election in Poland (1990), US Marines landed in Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope (1992), Charles & Diana’s separation announced (1992), US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders resigned after comments about masturbation (1994), “Brokeback Mountain” released (2005), Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich arrested on federal charges for attempting to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat (2008), Victor Ponta led the Social Liberal Union Party to a landslide victory in parliamentary elections in Romania (2012), CIA report on torture released (2014), Angela Merkel named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year (2015), South Korea’s National Assembly voted to impeach Park Geun-hye (2016), the World Anti-Doping Agency detailed Russia’s vast institutional conspiracy to win the Olympics by cheating (2016), same-sex marriage recognized in Australia as the Governor-General signed a marriage equality bill into law (2017), US officials “deliberately misled” the public on progress of the Afghanistan war & hid the fact that it was a lost cause, according to the Washington Post analysis of the “Afghanistan Papers” (2019) & Canada pproved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 (2020) on this day.

December 10

James I of Scotland (1394), Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787), William Lloyd Garrison (1805), Ada Lovelace (1815), César Franck (1822), Emily Dickinson (1830), Olivier Messaiaen (1908), Chet Huntley (1911), Dorothy Lamour [Mary Kaumeyer] (1914), Fionnula Flanagan (1941), Abu Abbas [Muhammad Zaidan] (1948), Susan Dey (1952), Rod Balgojevich (1956), Kenneth Branagh (1960), Sarah Chang (1980) & Raven-Symoné [Pearman] (1985) were born #OnThisDay. Averroes (1198), Léopold I of Belgium (1865), Alfred Nobel (1896), Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1928), Luigi Pirandello (1936), Damon Runyon (1946), Otis Redding (1967), Karl Barth (1968), Thomas Merton (1968), Jascha Heifetz (1987), Armand Hammer (1990), Alice Tully (1993), Franjo Tuđman (1999), Eugene McCarthy (2005), Richard Pryor (2005) & Augusto Pinochet (2006) died on this day. Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict demanding that he recant (1520), France began the use of the Gregorian calendar (1582), Edmond Halley read Isaac Newton’s paper “De Motu Corporum in Gyrum” to the Royal Society (1684), James II fled London (1688), France adopted the metric system (1799), Mississippi admitted as the 20th state (1817), Emory College (now Emory University) chartered in Georgia (1836), Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s army reached Savannah & began a 12-day siege (1864), Wyoming’s territorial legislature granted women the right to vote (1869), Mark Twain’s novel “Huckleberry Finn” published in the UK & Canada (1884), William McKinley signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War & conferring the Philippines, Puerto Rico & Guam on the United States (1898), the first Nobel Prize in physics awarded to Wilhelm Röntgen for his discovery of X-rays (1901), Nobel Prize in physics awarded to Pierre & Marie Curie for their study of spontaneous radiation (1903), Theodore Roosevelt became the first American awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1906), Rudyard Kipling awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first English-language writer to receive it (1907), Selma Lagerlöf became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature (1909), Maurice Maeterlinck presented the Nobel Prize for literature in absentia (1911), Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature (1913), Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Woodrow Wilson (1919), Niels Bohr won the Nobel Prize for physics (1922), the second part of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” published (1926), Jane Addams became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, winning a Nobel Peace Prize (1931), Edward VIII of England abdicated (1936), the Polish government-in-exile presented a report on the Holocaust based on information obtained by Witold Pilecki (1942), Hermann Hesse won the Nobel Prize for literature (1946), Ralph Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize (1950), Albert Schweitzer won the Nobel Peace Prize (1954), the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) founded (1956), Deavid Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” premiered in London (1962), Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, JR. presented with the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo (1964), Willy Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize (1971), William Rehnquist confirmed as US Supreme Court justice (1971), U.S. Rep. Wilbur Mills of Arkansas resigned as chair of the House Ways & Means Committee in the aftermath of the first public sex scandal in American politics (1974), Anwar Sadat & Menachim Begin accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo (1978), “Superman” with Christopher Reeve premiered in Washington, D.C. (1978), Raul Alfonsin inaugurated as Argentina’s first civilian president (1983), Archbishop Desmond Tutu presented with a Nobel Peace Prize (1984), Elie Weisel accepted a Nobel Peace Prize (1986), Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres & Yasser Araft presented with the Nobel Peace Prize (1994), “The Fellowship of the Ring” Lord of the Rings film directed by Peter Jackson (starring Elijah Wood & Ian McKellen) premiered in London (2001), Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo (2009), Liu Xiaobo awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm while imprisoned in China (2010), Uruguay became the first country to legalize the growth, sale & use of marijuana (2013) on this day.

December 11

Pope Leo X [Giovanni dei Medici] (1475), George Mason (1725), Max von Schenkendorf (1783), Hector Berlioz (1803), Alfred de Musset (1810), Fiorello La Guardia (1882), Walter Knott (1889), Carlos Gardel (1890), Carlo Ponti (1912), Jean Marais (1913), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918), Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930), Rita Moreno [Rosita Dolores Alverío] (1931), Ferdinand A. Porsche (1935), Tom Hayden (1939), Donna Mills (1940), Max Baucus (1941), John Kerry (1943), Teri Garr (1944), Christine Onassis [Andreadis] (1950) & Mo’Nique [Monique Hicks] (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Karl (Charles) XII of Sweden (1718), Holy Roman Empress Maria Amalia (1756), Max von Schenkendorff (1817), Kamehameha V of Hawaii (1872), Bettie Page (2008) & Ravi Shankar (2012) died on this day. Marie de Bourgogne ended the ‘Great Privilege’ status of the Netherlands (1477), the Mayflower ‘Pilgrims’ came ashore at Plymouth Bay & were attacked by 30 Native Americans in the ‘First Encounter’ (1620), French troops defeated the Holy Roman Emperor’s army at the Battle of Villa Viciosa (1710), Louis XVI went on trial on treason charges in Revolutionary France (1792), the Battle of Fredricksburg began in Virginia (1862), British high commissioner Henry Bartle Frere presented the Zulu kingdom an ultimatum (1878), Theodore Roosevelt denounced abuses in the Congo Free State (1906), the Mona Lisa recovered after being stolen from the Louvre (1913), Chinese warlord Yuan Shih-kai proclaimed himself emperor of China (1915), Edward VIII announced his abdication in a radio broadcast (1936), Nazi Germany declared war on the United States (1941), the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) founded (1946), Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement from baseball (1951), Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) declared independent of France (1958), Stanley Kramer’s film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” premiered in Manhattan (1967), the US Libertarian Party founded (1971), $5 million in cash stolen from JFK in the infamous ‘Lufthansa heist’ (1978), “Magnum P.I.” starring Tom Selleck premiered on CBS (1980), Javier Pérez de Cuélla of Peru elected the 5th Secretary-General of the United Nations (1981), El Salvador’s army killed more than 900 civilians in a massacre at El Mozote (1981), William Kennedy Smith acquitted on rape charges (1991), Audrey Hepburn awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H.W. Bush (1992), Russian troops invaded Chechnya (1994), the Kyoto Protocol adopted by UN member states as an attempt to address climate change (1997), the People’s Republic of China joined the World Trade Organization (2001), Cronulla riots in Sydney (2005), Bernie Madoff arrested (2008), Stephen Hawking won the Fundamental Physics Prize (2012), Pope Francis named Time’s person of the year (2013), 20 people killed by the Bubonic Plague in a village in Madagascar (2013), CIA director John Brennan defended torture (2014), 18 journalists named Time’s person of the year, including the late Jamal Khashoggi (2018), Greta Thunberg named Time’s person of the year (2019) & Bougainville voted to become independent of Papua New Guinea (2019) on this day.

December 12

Albert II, duke of Austria (1298), Anne of Denmark, queen of England (1574), John Jay (1745), Marie-Louise of Austria, empress of the French (1791), Gustave Flaubert (1821), Edvard Munch (1863), Edward G. Robinson [Goldenberg] (1893), Frank Sinatra (1915), Bob Barker (1923), Ed Koch (1924), Helen Frankenthaler (1928), John Osborne (1929), Connie Francis [Concetta Franconero] (1937), Dionne Warwick (1940), Brandon Teena (1972), Mayim Bialik (1975) & Otto Warmbier (1994) were born #OnThisDay. Carloman, king of the Franks (884), Tancred (1112), Robert Browning (1889), Menelik II, emperor of Ethiopia (1913), Douglas Fairbanks (1939), Tallulah Bankhead (1968), Clementine Spencer Churchill (1977), Anne Baxter (1985), Antoine Pinay (1994), Jean-Pierre Guerlain (1996), Mo Udall (1998), Lawton Chiles (1998), Keiko (the “Free Willy” orca) (2003), Peter Boyle (2006), Ike Turner (2007), Danny Aiello (2019) & John le Carré [David Cornwell] (2020) died on this day. Byzantine Emperor Heraclius defeated Sassanid Persia at the Battle of Nineveh (627), the Order of the Dragon created by Sigismund of Hungary (1408), Isabella crowned herself queen of Castile & Aragon (1474), Brandenburg’s army occupied Stettin (1677), the Royal Society censured Edmond Halley for suggesting that the story of Noah’s flood could be an account of a comet (1694), Ludwig van Beethoven had his first lesson in composition from Franz Joseph Haydn in Vienna (1792), Washington, D.C. established as the national capital (1800), Mexico recognized as an independent state by the US (1822), Theodor Mommsen awarded the Nobel Prize for literature (1902), Roger Casement completed his report on human rights atrocities in Léopold II’s État Libre du Congo (1903), Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” was recovered two years after being stolen from the Louvre (1913), Maurice Ravel’s ballet “La Valse” premiered in Paris (1920), Rezā Shāh Pahlavi replaced the deposed the last Qajar Shah of Iran (1925), Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government of China declared war on Japan (1936), John D. Rockefeller, Jr. donated six blocks in Manhattan for the building of the United Nations complex (1946), Adolf Eichmann found guilty of war crimes in Israel (1961), Kenya declared its independence from Britain (1963), Argentina requested the extradition of its former president Juan Domingo Perón (1963), Frank Sinatra, J. returned by kidnappers after his father paid the ransom demand (1963), “A Man for All Seasons” film directed by Fred Zinnemann premiered in Manhattan (1966), Arthur Ashe became the first tennis player of African descent ranked #1 (1968), Jimmy Carter announced his presidential candidacy (1974), Sara Jane Moore plead guilty to trying to assassinate Gerald Ford (1975), “Saturday Night Fever” premiered in Manhattan (1977), Apple made its initial public offering on the NYSE (1980), Armand Hammer bid $5 million for one of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks (1980), Gambia & Senegal created the federation of Senegambia (1981), Leona Helmsley was sentenced to a four-year prison sentence for tax fraud (1989), the US Supreme Court found in favor of George W. Bush in Bush vs. Gore (2000), Sinona Ryder arrested on shoplifting charges in Beverly Hills (2001), Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte boasted of killing suspected criminals while mayor of Davao City (2016), Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore in an upset win in a Senate race in Alabama (2017), Boris Johnson led the Conservative Party to a landslide victory in the British general election (2019) & UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders to declare a ‘climate emergency’ on the 5th anniversary of the Paris climate accord (2020) on this day.

December 13

Erik XIV of Sweden (1533), Henry IV of France (1553), Yongzheng, Qing emperor of China (1678), Carlo Gozzi (1720), [Ernst] Werner von Siemens (1816), Mary Todd Lincoln (1818), Talcott Parsons (1902), Carlos Montoya (1903), Laurens Jan van der Post (1906), Van Heflin [Emmett Evan Heflin, Jf.] (1910), George P. Shultz (1920), José Sarria (1922), Dick Van Dyke (1925), Christopher Plummer (1929), Ted Nugent (1948), Ben Bernanke (1953), Steve Buscemi (1957), Jamie Foxx (1967) & Taylor Swift (1989) were born #OnThisDay. Maimonides [Moses Ben Maimon] (1204), Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich (Frederick) II (1250), Donatello (1466), Manuel I of Portugal (1521), Ottoman sultan Selim II (1574), Samuel Johnson (1784), Samuel Gompers (1924), Wassily Kandinsky (1944), Anna Mary ‘Grandma’ Moses (1961), Mary Renault [Challans] (1983), Richard Holbrooke (2010), Alan Thicke (2016) & Richard Hatcher (2019) died on this day. Council of Trent opened by Pope Paul III (1545), Sir Francis Drake set sail from England to circumnavigate the globe (1577), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II issued his first anti-Protestant decree (1621), Prussia, Austria & Russia signed the secret Treaty of Berlin concerning succession to the Polish throne (1732), Paraguay declared war on Brazil, launching the War of the Triple Alliance (1864), Woodrow Wilson arrived in France for peace treaty negotiations (1918), the US army of occupation crossed the Rhine into Germany (1918), George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” premiered at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan (1928), Japanese troops perpetrated the Nanjing Massacre (the ‘Rape of Nanjing’) (1937), Léon Blum elected prime minister of France (1946), the Knesset voted to transfer Israel’s capital to Jerusalem (1949), Elsa Schiaparelli’s House of Schiaparelli at Place Vendôme in Paris closed (1954), “Anastasia” (starring Ingrid Bergman) released (1956), Poland’s Communist government declared martial law & arrested members of Solidarity (1981), “Driving Miss Daisy” released (1989), F.W. de Klerk met with Nelson Mandela to discuss ending South Africa’s apartheid regime (1990), New York State Assembly Speaker Mel Miller convicted of federal mail fraud (1991), Kofi Annan elected Secretary-General of the United Nations (1996), Al Gore delivered the concession speech ending his presidential candidacy (2000), the European Union announced that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia & Slovenia would become members (from 5.1.04) (2002), Gen. Augusto Pinochet put under house arrest, reversed on appeal (2004), Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, criticized the UN Security Council for its lack of action over war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan (2014), Salma Hayek accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment & threatening to kill her (2017) & Greta Thunberg was named Time’s person of the year (2019) on this day.

December 14

Nostradamus [Michel de Nostre-Dam] (1503), Tycho Brahe (1546), Erastus Corning (1794), Charles Canning (1812), Roger Fry (1866), George VI of England (1895), Margaret Chase Smith (1897), Kurt Schuschnigg (1897), Paul I of Greece (1901), Karl Carstens (1914), Rosalyn Tureck (1914), Attila Petschauer (1914), Felix the Cat (1919), Don Hewitt (1922), Étienne Tshisekedi (1932), Lee Remick (1935), Michael Ovitz (1946), Patty Duke (1946), Christopher Parkening (1947), Dilma Rousseff (1947), James Comey (1960), Miranda Hart [Dyke] (1972) & Awkwafina [Nora Lum] (1988) were born #OnThisDay. Harald IV ‘(Gylle Krist’) of Norway (1136), John Oldcastle (1417), Vlad III of Allachia (‘Dracula’) (1476), Friedrich von Sachsen (Duke Frederick of Saxony), 36th Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights (1510), James V of Scotland (1542), St. John of the Cross [Juan de Yepes y Álvarez] (1591), Ottoman sultan Mahmud I (1754), Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1788), Carlos (Charles) III of Spain (1788), George Washington (1799), George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1861), Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse (1878), Léopold II of Belgium (1909), Stanley Baldwin (1947), Dinah Washington [Ruth Lee Jones] (1963), Walter Lippmann (1974), Andrei Sakharov (1989), Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1990), Johannes, 11th Prince of Thurn und Taxis (1990), Myrna Loy [Williams] (1993), Orval Faubus (1994), Norman Fell (1998), Peter O’Toole (2013), Bess Myerson (2014). Chinese emperor Wengzong conspired with his chancellor Li Xun & Gen. Zheng Zhu to kill all the eunuchs, but the plot was foiled (Sweet Dew Incident) (835), Mary Stuart became queen of Scotland at six days old (1542), the Theresian Military Academy founded (the first military academy in the world) (1751), Napoléon’s invasion of Russia ended with at least 530,000 members of the Grande Armée lost (1812), Alabama admitted as the 22nd state (1819), the first chamber music group in the US gave its first performance in Boston (1849), Abraham Lincoln pardoned his sister-in-law Emilie Todd Helm (1863), Paraguay invaded the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864), Henry Morton Stanley returned to Brussels from the Congo (1882), the American Academy of Political & Social Science organized in Philadelphia (1889), France and Italy signed a secret agreement by which Italy recognizes France’s right to exploit Morocco in return for France’s conceding her the same right in Tripoli (1900), Max Planck published his groundbreaking study on radiation that established the quantum theory of modern physics (1900), Roald Amundsen’s expedition became the first to reach the South Pole (1911), Greece formally took possession of Crete (1913), Woodrow Wilson signed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act into law (1914), Giacomo Puccini’s operatic triptych “Il Trittico” premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan (1918), David Lloyd George’s coalition government won a majority in the British general election (1918), Ottorino Respighi’s “I Pini di Roma” premiered in Paris (1924), Alban Berg’s first opera, “Wozzeck,” premiered in Berlin (1925), British troops remained in Iraq despite its formal independence (1927), the League of Nations expelled the USSR over the Soviet invasion of Finland (1930), Togo made a trusteeship of the United Nations (1946), the UN General Assembly voted to establish its headquarters in Manhattan (1946), the UN General Assembly established a High Commission for Refugees (1950), Paul-Henri Spaak appointed secretary-general of NATO (1956), Archbishop Makarios declared president of Cyprus (1959), the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) founded (1960), JFK announced his intention to increase US aid to South Vietnam (1961), John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” single recorded by Peter, Paul & Mary hit #1 on US Billboard’s Hot Top 100 (1969), “Nicholas & Alexandra” film adaptation of Robert K. Massie’s best selling history premiered (1971), “Saturday Night Fever premiered in LA (1977), Israel annexed the Golan Heights (1981), “Philadelphia” premiered in Century City (1993), the Dayton Agreement signed in Paris by Slobodan Milošević, Alija Izetbegović, Franjo Tuđman & Bill Clinton (1995), George W. Bush announced the capture of Saddam Hussein (2003), Iraqi journalist Muntadhar zl-Zaidi threw his shoes at George W. Bush on his fourth & final visit to Iraq (2008), Adam Lanza murdered 20 children & 6 staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown (2012), Shinzō Abe & his ruling Liberal Democratic Party won re-election in Japan (2014), Reuters reported that the US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson knew for decades their talc was contaminated with asbestos (2018), the electoral college voted 306-232 to elect Joe Biden president (2020), US Attorney General William Barr resigned (2020) & Russia was revealed to have been behind a massive cyberattack on US government agencies & private companies (2020) on this day.

December 15

Nero (37), Michel-Richard Delalande (1657), Gustave Eiffel (1832), Henri Becquerel (1852), J. Paul Getty (1892), Oscar Niemeyer (1907), Thomas ‘Tim’ Conway (1933), Chico Mendes (1944), Michael King (1945), Don Johnson (1949), Julie Taymor (1942), Mark Warner (1954), Miranda Otto (1967), Lee Jung-jae (1972), Annalena Baerbock (1980), Michelle Dockery (1981) & Rachel Brosnahan (1990) were born #OnThisDay. Byzantine emperor Basilius II ‘the Bulgarendoder’ (1025), Haakon IV of Norway (1263), Afonso de Albuquerque (1515), Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes (1621), Jan Vermeer (1675), Charles Stanhope, 3rd earl Stanhope (1816), Hunkapapa-Sioux chief Sitting Bull (1890), Fats Waller [Thomas Wright] (1943), glenn Miller (1944), Charles Laughton (1962) Walter Elias ‘Walt’ Disney (1966), Jan Peerce [Jacob Pincus Perelmuth] (1984), William Proxmire (2005), Oral Roberts (2009), Blake Edwards (2010), Christopher Hitchens (2011) & Joan Fontaine (2013) died on this day. Byzantine General Belisarius defeated the Vandals under King Gelimer at the Battle of Ticameron (533), Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal after becoming 1st known European to sail round the Cape of Good Hope (1488), Prussia defeated Saxony & Austria at the Battle of Kesseldorf (1745), the Bill of Rights ratified with Virginia’s approval, becoming the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution (1791), Gioachino Rossini commissioned to compose “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” (1815), Napoleon Bonaparte’s state funeral 19 years after his death (1840), Kamehameha of Hawaii became the first reigning king to visit the US, received by Ulysses Grant at the White House (1874), Russia’s new Bolshevik government concluded an armistice with Germany & Austria-Hungary (1917), the American Jewish Congress held its first meeting (1918), “Gone With the Wind” premiered in Atlanta (1893), Madison Square Garden opened in Manhattan with a hockey game (1925), Glenn Miller’s USAF plane disappeared over the English Channel (1944), Gen. Douglas MacArthur ordered state Shinto disestablished as the state religion of Japan (1945), Christine Jorgensen became the first known American to undergo sex reassignment surgery (1952), Adolf Eichmann sentenced to death in Israel for war crimes (1961), Canada’s House of Commons voted 163-78 to approve the Maple Leaf Flag (1964), the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (1973), J. Paul Getty III found in Italy five months after his kidnapping (1973), Jimmy Carter announced that the US would recognize the People’s Republic of China & sever relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan (1978), the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left the US for Panama (1979), Downing Street Declaration concerning Northern Ireland’s self-determination (1993), Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” opened in theaters (1993), the House judiciary committee released a report recommending the impeachment of Bill Clinton (1998), il Torre Pendente (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) reopened after 11 years & $27 million spent to try to correct its notorious lean (2001), George W. Bush declared the war in Iraq at an end (2011), Jacques Chirac convicted on corruption charges with a two-year suspended sentence (2011), Michelle Bachelet re-elected president of Chile (2013), white supremacist Dylann Roof found guilty of killing nine in the Charleston church massacre (2016) & the Sun published a recording of Tom Cruise berating his film crew for violating COVID-19 protocols (2020) on this day.

December 16

Catherine of Aragon (1485), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770), Jane Austen (1775), Léopold I of Belgium (1790), George Santayana (1863), Zoltán Kodály (1882), Alexander I of Yugoslavia (1888), Noël Coward (1899), Margaret Mead (1901), Arthur C. Clarke (1917), James McCracken (1926), Kenneth Gilbert (1931), Liv Ullmann (1938), Jimmie Lee Jackson (1938), Lesley Stahl (1941), Steven Bochco (1943), Yosemite Sam (1944), Benny Andersson (1946) & Trevor Pinnock (1946) were born #OnThisDay. Wu Zetian, empress of China (705), Pépin de Héristal (714), Charles, Comte de Valois (1325), Yi Sun-sin (1598), Jan Casimir Vasa [Jan Kazimierz] (1672), Wilhelm Grimm (1859), Alphonse Daudet (1897), Camille Saint-Saëns (1921), Giovanni Agnelli (1945), William Somerset Maugham (1965), Tito Schipa (1965), Col. Harland Sanders (1980), Sylvester James, Jr. (1988), Kakuei Tanaka (1993), Samuel Lipman (1994) & Laurens Jan van der Post (1996) died on this day. An Lushan initiated the An Shi Rebellion against China’s Tang dynasty (755), Henry VI of England crowned king of France (1431), Vasco da Gama became the first European to sail Africa’s east coast, calling it ‘Natal’ (1497), François I ordered the persecution of Protestant Huguenots in France (1538), Admiral Yi Sun-sin died leading the Korean navy in a decisive victory over Japan at the Battle of Noryang Point (1598), Spanish viceroy Hernando Arias de Saavedra founded the provinces of Rio de la Plata (Argentina) & Guaira (Paraguay) (1617), Mount Vesuvius erupted, killing at least 3,000 people (1631), Oliver Cromwell appointed Lord Protector of England, Scotland & Ireland (1653), Bill of Rights enacted by the British parliament establishing the first written limits on the monarch (1689), Pyotr Rumyantsev’s Russian forces took the Prussian fortress of Kolberg (Kolobrzeg) in the Seven Years’ War (1761) Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera “Alceste” premiered (1767), Boston Tea Party (1773), Voortrekkers defeated Zulus at the Battle of Blood River (1838), Transvaal declares itself the Republic of South Africa (1880), French troops captured the citadel in Hanoi during the Tonkin Campaign (1883), British recognition of Léopold II of Belgium’s Congo Free State (1884), Antonín Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony No. 9 premiered at Carnegie Hall (1893), Greece’s Royal Hellenic Navy defeated the Ottoman navy at the Battle of Eli during the First Balkan War (1912), the Anglo-Irish Treaty ratified (1921), the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes (1944), Christian Dior & Marcel Boussac founded the fashion house la Maison Dior (1946), Harry Truman declared the Korean War a state of emergency (1950), Dwight Eisenhower held the first White House press conference with 161 reporters (1953), David Lean’s film “Lawrence of Arabia” released in the United States (1962), the British House of Commons voted 343-185 to abolish the death penalty (1969), Arthur Hiller’s film “Love Story” released (1970), Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young US ambassador to the UN (1976), Ronald Reagan denounced Jimmy Carter’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China (1978), Ronald Reagan appointed Alexander Haig, Jr. as secretary of state (1980), Stephen Spielberg’s film “The Color Purple” premiered in Manhattan (1985), revolt against Communist rule in Soviet Kazakhstan (1986), Roh Tae-woo elected president of the Republic of Korea (1987), Lyndon LaRouche convicted of tax & mail fraud (1988), protest broke out in Timişoara in response to an attempt by Nicolae Ceaşescu’s regime to evict dissident Hungarian pastor László Tőkés (1989), Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide elected president of Haiti (1990), the UN General Assembly voted 111-25 (with 13 abstentions) to reverse its declaration that Zionism is racism (1991), Kazakhstan independent (1991), the European Union officially adopted the name ‘euro’ for its single currency (1995), Ben Bernanke named Time’s person of the year (2009) & a nine-year-old girl who died of an asthma attack in 2013 became the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as the cause of death (2020) on this day.

December 17

Prince Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland & Bavaria (Ruprecht Pfalzgraf bei Rhein, Herzog von Bayern) (1619), Domenico Cimarosa (1749), John Greenleaf Whittier (1807), Ford Madox Ford (1873), Mackenzie King (1874), Arthur Fiedler (1894), William Safire (1929), Bob Guccione (1930), Pope Francis [Jorge Mario Bergoglio] (1936), Muhammadu Buhari (1942), Christopher Cazenove (1945), Manny [Emmanuel Dapidran] Pacquiao (1978) & Chelsea [Bradley] Manning (1987) were born #OnThisDay. Isabella of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy (1471), Adrian Willaert (1562), Don Juan of Spain (1679), Simón Bolívar (1830), Kaspar Hauser (1833), Désirée Clary, Queen of Sweden & Norway (1860), Léopold II of Belgium (1909), Don Draper (1990), Dana Andrews (1992), Kim Jong-il (2011), Cesária Évora (2011), Daniel K. Inouye (2012), Henry Heimlich (2016), Penny Marshall (2018) & Stanley Cowell (2020) died on this day. Totila’s Ostrogoths bribed the Byzantine garrison to enter Rome (546), Timur (Tamerlane) captured & sacked Delhi after defeating Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud’s army (1398), Ferdinand von Habsburg elected king of Bohemia (1526), Pope Paul II excommunicated Henry VIII of England (1538), Japanese peasants led by Amakusa Shiro rose up against the daimyo Matsukura Shigeharu in the Shimabara Rebellion (1637), French & Swedish troops occupied Breisach on the Rhine (1638), France, Britain & Austria declared war on Spain (War of the Quadruple Alliance 1718–1720) (1718), France recognized the independence of the United States (1777), an Aztec calendar stone discovered in Mexico City (1790), Congress of Angostura established Colombia’s independence from Spain (1819), Henry Cole (founder of the Victoria & Albert Museum) commissioned the printing of the 1st Christmas card (1843), Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issued order #11 expelling Jews from his military district (including parts of Tennessee, Mississippi & Kentucky) (1862), Franz Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony No. 8 premiered in Vienna with Johann von Herbeck conducting (1865), France declared Madagascar a protectorate (1885), the first issue of “Vogue” published (1892), Wilbur & Orville Wright made the first successful flight of a self-propelled airplane in history (1903), Ugyen Wangchuck became the first hereditary king of Bhutan (1907), Ottoman Turkey’s new parliament convened with a majority of Young Turks (1908), Léopold II of Belgium died after a reign of exactly 44 years (1909), Albania’s de facto independence from the Ottoman Empire recognized at the London Conference of Ambassadors (1912), Britain declared Egypt a protectorate (1914), workers & soldiers took control of the German government in Berlin (1918), Austria’s parliament legislated an 8-hour working day (1919), South Africa granted a League of Nations mandate over South West Africa (Namibia) (1920), the last British troops left the Irish free State (1922), George II of Greece overthrown (1923), Major Gen. Henry C. Pratt issued Public Proclamation No. 21 declaring the ‘internment’ of Japanese Americans would end (1.2.1945) in two weeks (1944), the Clean Air Act became law in the United States (1963), “Goldfinger” premiered in London (1964), John Paul Stevens appointed to the US Supreme Court (1975), Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme sentenced to life for her attempted assassination of Gerald Ford (1975), the Provisional IRA bombed Harrod’s in London (1983), “The Simpsons” created by Matt Groening premiered on Fox TV as a full animated series with the episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” (1989), Boris Yeltsin announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (the third “Lord of the Ring” film) released (2003), Angela Merkel elected Germany’s chancellor for a third term (2013), Sebastián Piñera won re-election in Chile’s presidential election run-off (2017), CBS announced former CEO Les Moonves would not receive his $120 million exit payout (2018), Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf sentenced to death in absentia for high treason (2019), Emanuel Macron tested postive for COVID-19 (2020) & Carl XVI Gustaf criticized Sweden’s controversial COVID-19 strategy (2020) on this day.

December 18

Camille Pleyel (1788), J.J. Thomson (1856), Edward MacDowell (1860), Franz Ferdinand (1863), Saki [Hector Hugo Munro] (1870), Joseph Stalin (1878), Paul Klee (1879), Ty Cobb (1886), Robert Moses (1888), Christopher Fry (1907), Celia Johnson (1908), Willy Brandt [Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm] (1913), Betty Grable (1916), Rita Streich (1920), Ramsey Clark (1927), Jacques Pépin (1935), Keith Richards (1943), Steve Biko (1946), Steven Spielberg (1946), Brad Pitt (1963), Ady Barkan (1983) & Billie Eilish (2001) were born #OnThisDay. Magnus I of Sweden (1290), Barbara Blomberg (1597), Antonio Stradivari (1737), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1839), Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1869), Neilia Biden (1972), Alexei Kosygin (1980), Paul Tortelier (1990), Sam Wanamaker (1993), Heinz Bernhard [Löwenstein] (1994), Arthur Jacobs (1996), Chris Farley (1997), Anthony Sampson (2004), Joseph Barbera (2006), Jack Linkletter (2007), Bill Strauss (2007), Mark Felt (2008), Václav Havel (2011) & Zsa Zsa Gabor [Sári Gábor] (2016) died on this day. Hannibal’s Carthaginian army defeated Roman forces at the Battle of the Trebia in the Second Punic War (218 BCE), Kublai Khan named his new dynasty the ‘Yuán’ 元 (1271), the Peace of Tournai between the city of Ghent & Philippe, duc de Bourgogne (1385), the Mayflower docked in Plymouth (1620), Abel Tasman first sighted local Māori in New Zealand (1642), Captain James Cook’s expedition in a skirmish with Māori at Grass Cove in New Zealand’s Queen Charlotte Sound (1773), Empress Maria Theresa expelled Jews from Prague, Bohemia & Moravia (1774), Charles Darwin’s HMS Beagle reached the Tierra del Fuego (1832), the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States (1865), Richard Wetherill & his brother in-law discovered the ancient Anasazi ruins of Mesa Verde in Colorado (1888), Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered in Saint Petersburg (1892), the British parliament enacted Arthur Balfour’s Education Act (1902), the Piltdown Man hoax perpetrated by Charles Dawson (1912), Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt (1915), the Battle of Verdun ended with nearly a million casualties (1916), Congress ratified the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) (1917), an international zone set up around Tangier (1923), Japanese troops landed in Hong Kong (1941), “To Tell the Truth” debuted on CBS-TV (1956), Niger autonomous within the Communauté Française (1958), the UN General Assembly condemned South Africa’s apartheid regime (1960), “The Pink Panther” premiered (1963), “The Pink Panther” cartoon series premiered with “Pink Phink” (1964), “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” Dr. Seuss special aired for the first time on CBS (1966), Richard Nixon announced the start of the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam (1972), “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” released (2002), “The Hours” premiered (2002), South Africa’s ANC chose Cyril Ramaphosa as leader to succeed Jacob Zuma (2017), 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz sworn in as Austria’s youngest chancellor (2017), the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump (2019), Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine granted emergency authorization by the US Food & Drug Administration (2020), Vice President Mike Pence received the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine live on TV (2020) on this day.

December 19

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676), Philip V of Spain (1683), Princess Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, eldest child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI (1778), Edwin Stanton (1814), Henry Clay Frick (1849), Joseph ‘King’ Oliver (1881), Fritz Reiner (1888), Ralph Richardson (1902), Leonid Brezhnev (1906), Jean Genet (1910), Édith Piaf [Édith Giovanna Gassion] (1915), David Suskind (1920), Gordon Jackson (1923), Cicely Tyson (1924), Jeanne Kirkpatrick (1926), William Christie (1944), Michelangelo Signorile (1960), Liz Cho (1971), Alyssa Milano (1972) & Jake Gyllenhaal (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Vitus Bering (1741), Emily Brontë (1848), J.M.W. Turner (1851), Alois Alzheimer (1915), Marcello Mastroianni (1996), John Lindsay (2000), Hope Lange (2003), Renata Tebaldi (2004), Robert Bork (2012) & Kurt Masur (2015) died on this day. Henry II crowned king of England (1154), Battle at Dreux: Anne de Montmorency & Huguenots under the Prince de Condé captured (1562), four of Abel Tasman’s crew killed at Wharewharangi (Murderers) Bay by Māori & Tasman’s ships departed without landing (1642), massacre of Naragansett men, women & childrend in the Great Swamp Fort by colonial militias in King Philip’s War (1675), Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack” published (1732), Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “The American Crisis” published (1776), William Pitt the Younger became the youngest prime minister in British history at the age of 24 (1783), Georgia enacted the first US state birth registration law in the US (1823), “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens published (6,000 copies sold) (1843), Italy recognized Léopold II of Belgium’s État Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State) (1884), Williamsburg Bridge opened connecting Brooklyn & Manhattan (1903), Rayon first produced commercially in Pennsylvania (1910), Constantine I restored as king of the Hellenese after a plebiscite in Greece (1920), the US Office of Censorship created to control info. related to World War II (1941), military coup in Bolivia (1943), a republic re-established in Austria (1945), Ho Chi Minh attacked French colonial forces in Hanoi (1946), China’s invasion of Tibet forced the Dalai Lama to flee (1950), Meredith Wilson’s musical “The Music Man” opened at the Majestic Theater in Manhattan (1957), Charles de Gaulle re-elected president of France with 55% of the vote (1965), Nelson Rockefeller sowrn in as vice-president of the United States (1974), “Kramer vs. Kramer” released (1979), “9 to 5” released (1980), Zhao Ziyang & Margaret Thatcher signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration to transfer Hong Kong back to China in 1997 (1984), “Platoon” released (1986), Andrei Sakharov released from internal exile by Mikhail Gorbachev (1986), Boris Yeltsin took control of the Kremlin (1991), “Titanic” released (1997), the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Bill Clinton (1998), “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” released (2001), the Lakota people declared an independent Republic of Lakotah (2007), Park Geun-hye became the first woman elected president of the Republic of Korea (2012) & the electoral college voted 304 to 227 to elect Donald Trump president of the United States (2016) on this day.

Die Maerchen der Brueder Grimm von Grimm Gebrueder

December 20

Pieter de Hooch (1629), Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes (1717), Harvey Firestone (1868), Robert Menzies (1894), Susanne Langer (1895), Irene Dunne (1898), Louis Kahn (1901), George, Duke of Kent (1902), Otto Graf Lambsdorff (1926), Geoffrey Howe (1926), Kim Young-sam (1927), Gordon Getty (1933), Jean Carnahan (1933), John Spencer (1946), Uri Geller (1946), Dick Wolf (1946), Douglass Lubahn (1946), Lesley Judd (1946), Jenny Agutter (1952), Kylian Mbappé (1998) & Dylan Wang [Wang Hedi] (1998) were born #OnThisDay. Æthelbald of Wessex (860), Alfonso the Great of Leon (910), Kangxi, emperor of Qing China (1722), Sacagawea (1812), Erich Ludendorff (1937), Moss Hart (1961), Roy Disney (1971), Bobby Darin [Walden Robert Cassotto] (1973), Richard J. Daley (1976), Artur Rubinstein (1982), Max Robinson (1988), Dean Rusk (1994), Carl Sagan (1996) & Léopold Sédar Senghor (2001) died on this day. Gen. Vespasian’s troops occupied Rome after defeating the Emperor Vitellius (69), Richard the Lionheart captured in Vienna (1192), Suleiman the Magnificent accepted the surrender of the Knights of Rhodes, who move to Malta (1522), Ottario Rinuccini & Giulio Caccini’s opera “Euridice” published (1600), the French flag was lowered in New Orleans to mark the formal transfer of the Louisiana Purchase from France to USA for $27M (1803), Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm’s “Kinder- und Hausmärchen” (Children’s & Household) published (1812), “Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus” by Helmina von Chézy with incidental music by Franz Schubert premiered in Vienna (1823), Britain, France, Prussia, Austria & Russia recognized Belgium (1830), South Carolina seceded from the Union (1860), Lenin decreed the creation of the KGB’s predecessor, the Cheka (1917), 14 republics formed the Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics (USSR) (1922), Adolf Hitler freed from jail early, having served only nine months of a five-year sentence for his failed coup d’état (the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’) (1924), Free French troops occupied St. Pierre et Miquelon (1941), Japanese troops landed on Mindanao in the Philippines (1941), Frank Capra’s film “It’s a Wonderful Life” premiered in Manhattan (1946), Peter, Paul & Mary’s cover of John Denver’s song “Leaving On A Jet Plane” reached #1 on the charts (1969), Edward Gierek succeeded Wladyslaw Gomulka as Poland’s communist party leader (1970), the first issue of “Ms.” magazine published (1971), Mike Nicols’ film “Working Girl” premiered (1988), Michael Moore’s documentary “Roger & Me” opened in theaters (1989), George Bush ordered the US invasion of Panama to overthrow Manuel Noriega (1989), Portugal returned Macao to China (1999), Queen Elizabeth II surpassed Queen Victoria as the oldest British monarch (2007), the European Commission invoked Article 7, warning Poland of the possible loss of its voting rights within the European Union (2017), Jim Mattis resigned as Donald Trump’s defense secretary 2018) & new figures showed the average US male weighed 198 pounds & stood 5 feet 9 inches & female 171 pounds & 5 feet 4 inches (2018) on this day.

December 21

Thomas Becket (1117), Tommaso Masaccio (1401), Roger Williams (1603), Leopold von Ranke (1795), Benjamin Disraeli (1804), John W. McCormack (1891), George Ball (1909), Werner von Trapp (1915), Donald Regan (1918), Kurt Waldheim (1918), Phil Donahue (1935), Jane Fonda (1937), Hu Jintao (1942), Michael Tilson Thomas (1944), Samuel L. Jackson (1948), Thomas Sankara (1949), Andras Schiff (1953), Chris Evert (1954), Jane Kaczmarek (1955), Lisa Gerritsen (1957), Ray Romano (1957), Florence Griffith Joyner (1959), Kiefer Sutherland (1966), Mikhail Saakashvili (1967) & Emmanuel Macron (1977) were born #OnThisDay. Giovanni Boccaccio (1375), Marguerite de Navarre (1549), Frank Kellogg (1937), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1940), George S. Patton (1945), Paul de Man (1983), Judith Raskin (1984), Kamatari Fujiwara (1985), Nathan Milstein (1992) & Margaret Rey (1996) died on this day. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union troops captured Savannah (1864), the first basketball game played (1891), Pierre & Marie Curie discovered radium (1898), the Trades Disputes Act & the Workingmen’s Compensation Act enacted by the British parliament (1906), J. Edgar Hoover deported Emma Goldman to Russia (1919), the US Supreme Court ruled labor injunctions & picketing unconstitutional (1921), Nepal’s independence from British colonial rule (protectorate status) (1923), Shirley Temple signed a studio contract with Fox Films (1933), “Zouzou” premiered in Paris with Josephine Baker the first black woman to star in a major film (1934), “Snow White & the Seven Dwarves” premiered, the first full-length animated feature film & the first in the Walt Disney series (1937), Charles de Gaulle elected to a seven-year term as the first president of France’s Fifth Republic (1958), John F. Kennedy & Harold Macmillan met in Bermuda (1961), “King of Hearts” (Le Roi de Cœur) premiered (1966), “The Graduate” premiered in Manhattan (1967), Apollo 8 launched (1968), Elvis Presley met Richard Nixon in the White House (1970), the United Arab Emirates formed (1971) Kurt Waldheim chosen by the UN Security Council to be the fourth UN Secretary-General (1971), John Wayne Gacy elected for murder in Des Plaines (1978), Martha ‘Sunny’ Crawford von Bülow found in a coma (1980), Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie (1988), Vice-President Dan Quayle mailed 30,000 Christmas cards with the word ‘beacon’ spelled ‘beakon’ (1989), Taiwanese American AIDS researcher David Ho named Time magazine’s Man of the Year (1996), “Curious George” co-creator Margret Rey died (1996), Schengen Agreement among nine European Union members (2007), Psy’s “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views (2012) & the UN General Assembly voted 128 to 9 to denounce Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (2017).

December 22

Marie de Guise, queen & regent of Scotland (1515), Jean Racine (1639), James Oglethorpe (1696), Lucien Petipa (1815), Frank Kellogg (1856), Giacomo Puccini (1858), Edgard Varèse (1883), André Kostelanetz (1901), Jacques-Philippe Leclerc (1902), Dame Peggy [Edith Margaret Emily] Ashcroft (1907), Claudia ‘Lady Bird’ Taylor Johnson (1912), Doris Duke (1912), Barbara Billingsley (1915), Jim Wright (1922), Francesco ‘Frank’ Corsaro (1924), Lee Salk (1926), Paul Wolfowitz (1943), Diane Sawyer (1945), Maurice Gibb (1949), Robin Gibb (1949), Jean-Michel Basquait (1960), Ralph Fiennes (1962) & Ted [Rafael Edward] Cruz (1970) were born #OnThisDay. Aulus Vitellius (69), Richard Plantagenet (1550), George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans] (1880), Richard von Kraft-Ebbing (1902), Francesca Saveria Cabrini (1917), Nathanael West [Weinstein] (1940), Beatrix Potter (1943), Walter Damrosch (1950), Chico Mendes (1988), Samuel Beckett (1989) & Paddy Ashdown (2018) died on this day. Reginald Pole appointed cardinal (1536), Thomas Jefferson signed the Embargo Act into law (1807), Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 5 & No. 6, Choral Fantasy & Piano Concerto No. 4 (featuring the composer as soloist) premiered at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna (1808), Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s execution by firing squad called off at the last moment (1849), Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman presented Abraham Lincoln with the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift (1864), Scientific American announced Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph (1877), Thomas Edison created the first string of Christmas tree lights (1882), samurai Itō Hirobumi became the first prime minister of Japan (1885), Claude Debussy’s first orchestral masterpiece “Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune” premiered in Paris (1894), Alfred Dreyfus court martialed in France on false charges of treason (1894), Mikhail Fokine’s ballet “Le Cygne” — with music by Camille Saint-Saëns — premiered in St Petersburg (1907), peace talks between Germany & Russia began at Brest-Litovsk (1917), the Lincoln Tunnel opened to traffic between Weekhawken & Manhattan (1937), Columbus Zoo’s Colo became the first baby gorilla born in captivity (1956), David Lean’s film adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago” premiered in Manhattan (1965), Mike Nichols’ film “The Graduate” released (1967), Julie Nixon married David Eisenhower (1968), the Soviet Union accused China of supporting the US in Vietnam (1971), Gerald Ford signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) into law (1975), John Wayne Gacy confessed to the murder of more than two dozen boys & young men (1978), Ronald Reagan named James Watt his interior secretary & Jeanne Kirkpatrick his UN ambassador (1980), Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri sworn in as president of Argentina (1981), Bernhard Goetz shot four black muggers in a NYC subway train car (1984), Nicolae Ceauceșcu ousted after 23 years of rule in Romania (1989), Lech Wałęsa sworn in as Poland’s 1st popularly elected president (1990), Silvio Berlusconi resigned as prime minister of Italy (1994), Mexican paramilitary forces massacred attendees at a Catholic prayer meeting for indigenous activists in Acteal in Chiapas (1997), Barack Obama signed the bill into law repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ signed into law by Bill Clinton (2010), a tsunami killed more than 400 in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait after part of the Anak Krakatoa (Krakatau) volcano slipped into the sea (2018) on this day.

December 23

Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (245), Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689), Richard Arkwright (1732), Friedrich Augustus I of Saxony (1750), Alexander I of Russia (1777), Jean-François Champollion (1790), Joseph Smith (1805), Mathilde von Wesendonk (1828), Madam C.J. Walker [Sarah Breedlove] (1867), Yousuf Karsh (1908), Helmut Schmidt (1918), Robert Bly (1926), Akihito, emperor of Japan (1933), Claudio Scimone (1934), Harry Shearer (1943), Silvia Sommerlath, wife of Carl XVI & queen of Sweden (1943), Wesley Clark (1944), Susan Lucci (1946), Edita Gruberova (1946), Leslie Moonves (1948), William Kristol (1952) & Carla Bruni (1967) were born #OnThisDay. Childebert, king of the Franks (558), Dagobert II, king of Austrasia (679), Conrad I, king of East Francia (918), Roger Ascham (1568), Henri de Guise (1588), Johann Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg (1619), Thomas Malthus (1834), Roland Leighton (1915), Hideki Tojo (1948), Lavrentiy Beria (1953), Gerard Kuiper (1973), Peggy Guggenheim (1979), Jack Webb (1982), Victor Borge (2000), P.V. Narasimha Rao (2004), Oscar Peterson (2007) & Mikhail Kalashnikov (2013) died on this day. Louis XI of France & Maximilian of Austria ended the War of the Burgundian Succession with the Peace of Arras (Atrecht) (1482), Henri, duc de Guise assassinated on Henri III’s orders in the château de Blois (‘Day of the Dagger’ (1588), Giovanni Cassini discovered Saturn’s moon Rhea (1672), James II of England fled to France (1688), John Flamsteed observed Uranus (1690), Nahum Tate appointed third British poet laureate by William & Mary (1692), Maryland voted to cede a 10-square-mile area for the creation of the District of Columbia (1788), Jane Austen’s last novel “Emma” published by John Murray in London (1815), Vincent Van Gogh cut off his left ear after an argument with Paul Gauguin (1888), Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera “Hänsel und Gretel” premiered in Weimar, conducted by Richard Strauß (1893), assassination attempt on Lord Charles Hardinge, viceroy of India (1912), Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law (1913), Alice Parker patented the gas heating furnace (1919), BBC Radio began daily news broadcasts (1922), the Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe sentenced to death for setting the German Reichstag on fire (1933), Margaret Hamilton’s costume caught fire while filming “The Wizard of Oz” (1938), the first modern coelacanth discovered off the coast of South Africa (1938), “Cinderella” — the first full-length ballet by Frederick Ashton with music by Sergei Prokofiev — premiered at Sadler’s Wells Ballet in London (1948), Hideki Tojo & six other Japanese war criminals hanged in Tokyo (1948), 83 USS Pueblo crew members released by North Korea (1968), Voyager landed in California after completing the first non-stop flight around the globe on one load of fuel) (1986), Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme escaped from Alderson Prison (1987), “Philadelphia” — the first major Hollywood movie about AIDS — released (1993) the United Nations Security Council adopted a landmark resolution demanding a halt to all Israeli settlement in illegally occupied Palestine; Resolution 2334 was moved by New Zealand, Malaysia, Senegal & Venezuela & passed 14-0 with a US abstention (2016) on this day.

December 24

Galba (3), John ‘Lackland,’ king of England (1167), Marianna of Austria, queen of Spain (1634), George Crabbe (1754), Eugène Scribe (1791), Kit Carson (1809), Matthew Arnold (1822), Peter Cornelius (1824), Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837), Johnny Gruelle (1880), Michael Curtiz (1886), Howard Hughes (1905), Kim Jong-suk (wife of Kim Il-sung) (1917), Stormé DeLarverie (1920), Ava Gardner (1922), George Patton IV (1923), Teresa Stich-Randall (1927), Robert Joffrey [Abdullah Jaffa Anver Bey Khan] (1930), Anthony Fauci (1940), Paul Tagliabue (1940), Brenda Howard (1946), Jefferson ‘Jeff’ Beauregard Sessions III (1946), Hamid Karzai (1957), Kate Spade (1962), Ed Milliband (1969), Ricky Martin (1971) & Ryan Seacrest (1974) were born #OnThisDay. John Dunstable (1453), Vasco da Gama (1524), Maria Henrietta of Orange (1660), William Makepeace Thackeray (1863), Edwin Stanton (1869), Johns Hopkins (1873), John Muir (1914), Alban Berg (1935), François Darlan (1942), Charles Atlas [Angelo Siciliano] (1972), Karl Dönitz (1980), Peter Lawford (1984), Norman Vincent Peale (1993), John Osborne (1994), Rossano Brazzi (1994), Toshiro Mifune (1997), Raemer Schreiber (1998), Laci Peterson (2002), Harold Pinter (2008), Samuel P. Huntington (2008), Richard Rodney Bennett (2012), Charles Durning (2012), Jack Klugman (2012) & Richard Adams (2016) died on this day. Hagia Sophia was dedicated for the second time after being destroyed by an earthquake (563), 400 Burgundian soldiers froze to death during the siege of Nancy (1476), Thomas Wolsey appointed lord chancellor of England (1515), uprising of Moriscos in Granada (1568), Captain James Cook reached Kiritimati on Christmas, calling it ‘Christmas Island’ (1777), the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812 (1814), Franz Xaver Gruber’s “Stille Nacht” (Silent Night) sung for the first time in St. Nicholas parish church in the Austrian village of Oberndorf (1818), the Ku Klux Klan founded (1865), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Aida” premiered in Cairo (1871), Thomas Alva Edison filed a patent for his phonograph (1877), George Vanderbilt opened the Biltmore, the largest privately owned house in the US (1895), China’s dowager empress Cixi presented with a list of demands from foreign powers (1900), German South-West Africa abolished the enslavement of young children (1904), Enrico Caruso gave his last public performance at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan (1920), the London Coliseum opened (1922), Calvin Coolidge lit the first national Christmas tree at the White House (1923), Sukarno sentenced to four years in prison by Dutch authorities in what would become Indonesia (1930), FDR appointed Gen. Dwight Eisenhower supremme commander of Allied forces (1943), the French Fourth Republic established (1946), Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl & the Night VIsitors” — the first opera commissioned for television — premiered on NBC (1951), the McCarran-Walter Act went into effect (1952), the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan (1979), Libya became independent from Italy (1951), Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega sought asylum in the Vatican embassy (1989), George H.W. Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger after his conviction in the Iran-Contra Affair (1992), Woody Allen married Soon-Yi Previn (1997), Rudy Giuliani named Time magazine’s person of the year (2001) on this day.

December 25

Orlando Gibbons (1583), Noël Coypel (1628), Sir Isaac Newton (1642), Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau (1700), Pope Pius VI Conte Giovanni Angelo Braschi, Dorothy Wordsworth (1771), Clara Barton (1821), Cosima Liszt Wagner (1837), Charles Pathé (1863), Helena Rubinstein (1870), Mohammed Ali Jinnah Mahomedali Jinnahbhai, Louis Chevrolet (1878), Maurice Utrillo (1883), Conrad Hilton (1887), Robert Ripley (1890), Humphrey Bogart (1899), Gladys Swarthout (1900), Clark Clifford (1906), Cab[ell] Calloway (1907), Quentin Crisp (1908), Louis Bourgeois (1911), Anwar Sadat (1918), Ahmed Ben Bella (1918), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924), Rod Serling (1924), Carlos Castaneda (1925), Princess Alexandra, Lady Ogilvy (1936), Ismail Merchant (1936), Hanna Schygulla (1943), Gary Sandy (1945), Jimmy Buffet (1946), Barbara Mandrell (1948), Sissy Spacek (1949), Nawaz Sharif (1949), Karl Rove (1950), Annie Lennox (1954), Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán (1954), Noel Hogan (1971), Dido Florian O’Malley Armstrong, Justin Trudeau (1971), Fantasia Tonya Manley & Alexandre Trudeau (1973) were born #OnThisDay. Henry III of Castile & León (1406), Samuel de Champlain (1635), Kara Mustafa Pasha (1683), W.C. Fields (1946), Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (1957), Charlie Chaplin (1977), Joan Blondell (1979), Joan Miró (1983), Nicolae Ceaușescu (1989), Elena Ceaușescu (née Lenuța Petrescu) (1989), Dean Martin Dino Paul Crocetti, JonBenét Ramsey (1996), James Brown (2007), Eartha Kitt (2008), George Michael Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou & Peter Schreier (2019) died on this day. Christmas celebrated for the first time on Dec. 25 (337-352), Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor in Rome (800), Charles the Bald crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome (875), William the Conqueror crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey (1066), Baudouin I crowned king of Jerusalem (1100), Francis of Assisi assembled the first nativity scene (in Greccio) (1223), Christopher Columbus’ flagship the Santa María ran aground and sinks on the north coast of Hispaniola (1492), Johan Sigismund of Brandenburg converted from Lutheranism to Calvinism (1613), Gov. William Bradford of Plymouth Colony forbade game playing on Christmas (1621), Christmas Island named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Ship Company (1643), the Massachusetts General Court ordered a five shilling fine for “observing any such day as Christmas” (1659), James II of England landed in France (1688), Anders Celsius introduced the Centigrade temperature scale (1741), Austria’s Maria Theresa conceded most of Silesia to Frederick the Great’s Prussia in the Treaty of Dresden (1745), enslaved Jupiter Hammon wrote the first published poem written by an African American (1760), George Washington crossed the Delaware & surprised & defeated 1,4000 Hessian troops (1776), Georg Friederich Händel’s “Messiah” had its US premiere in Boston in a performance by the Handel & Haydn Society (1818), Louisiana & Arkansas became the first states to observe Christmas as a holiday (1831), Andrew Johnson granted an unconditional pardon to Confederates (1868), John Philip Sousa wrote the “Stars & Stripes Forever” (1896), Christmas Truce on the Western Front (1914), Hirohito succeeded Yoshihito as emperor of Japan (1926), first radio broadcast of an entire opera by the Metropolitan Opera (1931), Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart’s musical “Pal Joey” premiered in Manhattan (1940), Bing Crosby introduced Irving Berlin’s song “White Christmas” on his NBC radio program, “The Kraft Music Hall (1941), Robert Mulligan’s film “To Kill a Mockingbird” released (1962), Walt Disney’s “The Sword in the Stone” released (1963), Lyndon Baines Johnson ordered a halt to the US bombing of North Vietnam (1965), 42 Dalits burned alive in Kilavenmani village in Tamil Nadu in retaliation for a campaign for higher wages by Dalit laborers in India (1968), Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) formed by Jesse Jackson (1971), George Roy Hill’s film “The Sting” premiered (1973), Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme recaptured (1987), Nicolae & Elena Ceaușescu executed by firing squad (1989), Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in East Berlin’s Schauspielhaus to celebrate fall of the Berlin Wall, broadcast worldwide to audience of 100 million (1989), Mikhail Gorbachev’s formal resignation as president of the Soviet Union in a televised speech (1991), 1,500 year anniversary of Catholicism in France commemorating the baptism of Clovis I in Rheims (1996), JonBenét Ramsey murdered (1996), Liu Xiaobo sentenced to 11 years for advocating human rights in China (2009) & “the Wolf of Wall Street” released (2013) on this day.

December 26

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194), Calico Jack [John Rackham] (1682), Sir Thomas Gray (1716), Friedrich Melchior, Ban von Grimm (1723), Charles Babbage (1791), Dion Boucicault [Dionysus Lardner Boursiquot] (1822), George Dewey (1837), Henry Miller (1891), Mao Zedong (1893), Rosemary Woods (1917), Steve Allen (1921), Régine (1929), Gnassingbé Eyadéma (1935), Kitty Dukakis (1936), Lynn Martin (1939), [Harvey] Phil Spector (1939), Gray Davis (1942), John Walsh (1945), José Ramos-Horta (1949), André-Michel Schub (1952), Peter Edmund Hillary (1954), Evan Bayh (1955), David Sedaris (1956), Jared Leto (1971), Alexander Wang (1983) & Kit [Christopher Catesby] Harington (1986) were born #OnThisDay. Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1476), Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur (1530), Frederic Remington (1909), Charles Pathé (1957), Harry Truman (1972), Jack Benny [Benjamin Kubelski] (1974), Philip Hart (1976), Howard Hawks (1977), Dian Fossey (1985), Nigel Hawthorne (2001), Sir Angus Ogilvy (2004), Gerald Ford (2006), Leo Tindemans (2014), Jerry Herman (2019) & Desmond Tutu (2021) died on this day. Leo III elected pope (795), Spanish settlement La Navidad in the New World founded by Christopher Columbus (modern Môle-Saint-Nicolas in Haiti) (1492), Morisco Revolt in Granada (1568), the first recorded performance of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear” at the court of James I at Whitehall in London (1606), Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory discovered torturing young girls (1610), George Washington defeated the Hessians in the Battle of Trenton (1776), Raymond Desèze presented the defense for Louis XVI during the trial of the king of France (1792), Decembrist uprising against Nicholas II in Russia (1825), Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “Anna Bolena” premiered in Milan (1830), Vincenzo Bellini’s opera “Norma” premiered in Milan (1831), ‘Baby Frances’ Gumm (a.k.a., Judy Garland) made her stage debut at the age of two and-a-half (1924), George & Ira Gershwin’s musical “Of Thee I Sing” premiered on Broadway (1931), George Cukor’s film “The Philadelphia Story” released (1940), Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint session of Congress (1941), FDR signed a bill into law establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day (1941), Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler (1943), Tennessee Williams’ play “The Glass Menagerie” premiered in Chicago (1944), John Huston’s film “The African Queen” released (1951), the first Kwanzaa celebration led by Maulana Karenga (1966), “The Exorcist” released (1973), Indira Gandhi released from jail (1978), Dian Fossey found murdered in Rwanda (1985), JonBenét Ramsey found murdered (1996), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification came into force (1996), start of the largest strike in South Korean history (1996) & the Boxing Day Tsunami killed 230,000 people across South & Southeast Asia (2004) on this day.

December 27

Johann Arndt (1555), Johannes Kepler (1571), Jacob Bernoulli (1654), Louis Pasteur (1822), Mackenzie Bowell (1823), Sydney Greenstreet (1879), Marlene Dietrich (1901), Anna Russell (1911), Lê Khả Phiêu (1931), Gérard Depardieu (1948), Tovah Feldshuh (1952), Sarah Vowell (1969) & Timothée Chalamet (1995) were born #OnThisDay. Hyacinthe Rigaud (1743), Stephen Fuller Austin (1836), Gustave Eiffel (1923), Lester B. Pearson (1972), Amy Vanderbilt (1974), Houari Boumédiènne (1978), Hafizullah Amin (1979), Hoagland ‘Hoagy’ Carmichael (1981), Alan Bates (2003), Marmaduke Hussey (2006), Benazir Bhutto (2007), Norman Schwarzkopf (2012) & Carrie Fisher (2016) died on this day. Byzantine Emperor Justinian I inaugurated the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (357), Albrecht II von Habsburg elected king of Bohemia (1437), the Laws of Burgos issued in Spain (1512) the Flushing Remonstrance (1657), Prussian troops seized the Moravian capital of Olmütz (Olomouc) during the First Silesian War (1741), Charles Darwin left England aboard the HMS Beagle (1831), Prohibitionist Carrie Nation smashed up the bar at the Carey Hotel in Wichita (1900), J.M. Barrie’s play “Peter Pan” opened in London (1904), Polish uprising against German rule in Poznań (1918), Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s “Show Boat” premiered in Manhattan (1927), Emperor Hirohito of Japan narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang (1932), Radio City Music Hall opened in Manhattan (1932), Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi declared Persia ‘Iran’ (1934), FDR took control of Montgomery Ward (1944), the International Monetary Fund established (1945), the World Bank created (1945), Queen Juliana of the Netherlands granted independence to Indonesia (1949), Gian Carlo Menotti’s Pulitzer Prize winning opera “The Saint of Bleecker Street” opened at Broadway Theater (1954), Columbia Records released the “Songs of Leonard Cohen” album (1967), Apollo 8 returned to earth (1968), Juan Carlos ratified Spain’s first democratic constitution (1978), Afghanistan’s president Hafizullah Amin killed in a Soviet coup (1979), Rob Marshall’s film “Chicago” released (2002), Benazir Bhutto assassinated in a suicide bomb attack in Rawalpindi (2007), Israel launched Operation Cast Lead as part of its pursuit of genocide in the Gaza Strip with US support (2008) on this day.

December 28

Herbert von Bismarck (1849), Woodrow Wilson (1856), Lili Elbe [née Einar Wegener], Mortimer Adler (1902), Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines (1903), Stan Lee [Stanley Martin Lieber] (1922), Milton Obote (1924), Roy Hattersley (1932), Dame Maggie Smith (1934), Ian Buruma (1951), Denzel Washington (1954), Liu Xiaobo (1955), Nigel Kennedy (1956), Linus Torvalds (1969), Seth Meyers (1973) & John Legend [Stephens] were born #OnThisDay. Peiro di Lorenzo de’ Medici (1503), Rob Roy (1734), Thomas Babington Macaulay (1859), Léon Bakst (1924), Maurice Ravel (1937), Vittorio Emmanuele III of Italy (1947), Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (1961), Paul Hindemith (1963), Harry Winston (1978), Sam Peckinpah (1984), William L. Shirer (1993), Susan Sontag (2004), Gregorio Álvarez (2016) & Fred Graham (2019) died on this day. Westminster Abbey consecrated in London (1065), Galileo observed Neptune without realizing it was a planet (1612), Thomas Paine arrested for treason in France (1793), John C. Calhoun became the first vice-president to resign (1832), Spain recognized the independence of Mexico (1836), Iowa became the 29th state (1846), Harriet Tubman arrived in Auburn on her last mission to free slaves (1860), Louis & Auguste Lumière held the world’s first commercial movie screening at the Grand Café in Paris (1895), Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” premiered in Paris (1897), the Rand Rebellion broke out in South Africa (1921), George Bernard Shaw’s “St. Joan” premiered in Manhattan (1923), Leonard Bernstein’s musical “On the Town” premiered in Manhattan (1944), Chinese troops crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea (1950), the Peak District became the United Kingdom’s first national park (1950), Kim Il-song became president of North Korea (1972), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” published (1973), Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law (1973), “Fiddler on the Roof” opened at the Winter Garden Theater in Manhattan (1976), Elizabeth Jordan Carr was born — the first ‘test tube baby’ conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) (1981), Rajiv Gandhi led the Congress party to victor in India’s general election (1984), Alexander Dubček elected Chairman of the Federal Assembly (Parliament) of Czechslovakia (1989), Nicholas Hytner’s film “The Madness of King George” premiered in the US (1994), Vladimir Putin signed into law a ban on US adoption of Russian children (2012) and Japan & South Korea reached an agreement on Korean ‘Comfort Women’ (2015) on this day.

December 29

Elizabeth [Elizaveta Petrovna] of Russia (1709), Jeanne Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721), Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (1788), Charles Goodyear (1800), Andrew Johnson (1808), William Ewart Gladstone (1809), Pablo Casals [Pau Casals i Defilló], Billy Mitchell (1879), Billy [Dorothy] Tipton (1914), Tom Bradley (1917), Dina Merrill (1925), Prince Gu of Korea (1931), Mary Tyler Moore (1936), Gelsey Kirkland (1952), Carles Puigdemont [i Casamajó] (1962) & Jude Law (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Thomas Becket (1170), Jacques-Louis David )1825), Sioux Chief Big Foot (1890), Christina Rossetti (1894), Grigori Rasputin (1916), Rainer Maria Rilke (1926), Paul Whiteman (1967), Harold Macmillan (1986), Claude Bolling (2020) & Pierre Cardin (2020) died on this day. Thomas Beckett was assassinated at the high alter of Canterbury Cathedral (1170), a Spanish army under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba defeate French forces in Italy at the Battle of Garigliano, giving Spain control of the Kingdom of Naples (1503), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V buried in El Escorial (1558), Texas entered the Union as the 28th state (1845), the US 7th Cavalry massacred more than 200 captive Sioux at Wounded Knee in South Dakota (1890), the US Copyright Office copyrighted “The Entertainer” & several of Scott Joplin’s other rags (1902), Sun Yat-Sen elected the first president of the Republic of China (1911), Mongolia gained its independence from Qing China (1911), Dutch colonial authorities arrested Sukarno & other pro-independence leaders on Java (1929), “Flying Down to Rio” — the first film co-starring Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers — premiered in Manhattan (1932), the Luftwaffe bombed on London at the height of the Blitz (1940), Canada recognized the new state of Israel (1948), “The Trouble with Tribbles” Star Trek episode (1967), the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi asked Shapour Bahktiar to form a civilian government (1978), Rajiv Gandhi led the Congress party to victory in India’s parliamentary elections (1984) & Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia by the Federal Assembly after the Velvet Revolution (1989) on this day.

December 30

Titus, 10th Roman emperor (39), Rudyard Kipling (1865), Simon Guggenheim (1867), Alfred ‘Al’ Smith (1873), Alfred Einstein (1880), Hideki Tojo (1884), Carol Reed (1906), Bert Parks [Jacobson] (1914), [Catherine] Jo Van Fleet (1914), David Willcocks (1919), Jack Lord (1920), Omar Bongo (1935), Sandy Koufax (1935), [Noel] Paul Stookey (1937), Gösta Winbergh (1943), Davy Jones (1945), Patti Smith (1946), June Anderson (1952), Meredith Vieira (1953), Matt Lauer (1957), Tracey Ullman (1959), Mike Pompeo (1963), Heidi Fleiss (1965), Tiger Woods (1975), LeBron James (1984) & V [Kim Tae-hyung of BTS] (1995) were born #OnThisDay. Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York (1460), Jacob Fugger (1525), José Rizal (1896), Alfred North Whitehead (1947), Trygve Lie (1968), Richard Rodgers (1979), Isamu Noguchi (1988), Lew Ayres (1996), George Webb (1998), Artie Shaw [Arthur Ashawsky] (2004), Saddam Hussein (2006) & Dawn Wells (2020) died on this day. Henry VI’s forces defeated Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York at the Battle of Wakefield (1460), Elizabeth Báthory arrested at Csejte Castle (1610), Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido & Aeneas” premiered in London (1689), the Gadsen Purchase established the border between the US & Mexico (1853), Johannes Brahms’ 2nd Symphony in D premiered in Vienna (1877), Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” premiered (1879), José Rizal executed by firing squad in Manila by the Spanish colonial government (1896), the American Political Science Association founded in New Orleans (1903), a fire in the Iroquois Theater in Chicago killed more than 600 people (1903), Grigory Efimovich Rasputin murdered (1916), the establishment of the USSR formally proclaimed at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow (1922), Edwin Hubble formally announced existence of other galactic systems at meeting of the American Astronomical Society (1924), Winston Churchill told Canada’s parliament that Britain would never surrender to “Hitler & his Nazi gang” & Youself Karsh captured him in his most famous photo, “The Roaring Lion” (1941), George II of Greece abdicated (1944), Michael of Romania abdicated & a republic proclaimed in Romania (1947), Cole Porter’s musical “Kiss Me, Kate” opened on Broadway (1948), India recognized the People’s Republic of China (1949), Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia became independent states within the Communauté Française (1950), “The Tennessee Waltz sung by Patti Page hit #1 on the Billboard Pop Chart (1950), the USS Monitor sank in a storm of Cape Hatteras (1862), “Let’s Make a Deal” debuted on NBC (1963), Ferdinand Marcos inaugurated as preside of the Philippines (1965), Richard Nixon halted the bombing of North Vietnam & announced peace talks (1972), the constitution of the Democratic Republic of Madagascar came into force (1975), Robert Mugabe elected president of Zimbabwe (1987), Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed budget cuts sparked protests from 250,000 workers who shut down services across Israel (1996) & Argentina became the first country in Latin America to legalize abortion (2020) on this day.

December 31

Jacques Cartier (1491), Charles Edward Stuart, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ (1720), Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis (1783), Henri Matisse (1869), Elizabeth Arden (1878), George Marshall (1880), Jacob Israël de Haan (1881), Nathan Milstein (1904), Guy Mollet (1905), Jule Styne (1905), Tadeusz Breza (1905), Simon Wiesenthal (1908), Jaap Schröder (1925), Odetta [Holmes] (1930), Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia (1935), Anthony Hopkins (1937), Ben Kingsley (1943), John Denver (1943), Pete Quaife (1943), Diane von Furstenberg (1946), Donna Summer [LaDonna Gaines] (1948), Stephen Cleobury (1948), René Robert (1948), Viktor Mikhailovich Afanasieyv (1948), Joe Dallesandro (1948), Bebe Neuwirth (1959), Paul Westerberg (1959), Val Kilmer (1959), Phill Kline (1959), Baron Waqa of Nauru (1959), Gong Li (1965), Donald Trump, Jr. (1977) & Psy [Park Jae-sang] (1977) were born #OnThisDay. Commodus (192), John Wycliffe (1384), Edmund, Earl of Rutland (1460), Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury (1460), Bianca Maria Sforza, wife of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1510), Gustave Courbet (1877), Léon Gambetta (1882), Charles Koechlin (1950), Ólafur Thors (1964), Roberto Clemente (1972), Marshall McLuhan (1980), Eric ‘Ricky’ Nelson (1985), Brandon Teena (1993), Natalie Cole (2015), Richard Thornburgh (2020) & Betty White (2021) died on this day. Roman emperor Commodus assassinated (192), 80,000 Vandals, Alans & Suebians crossed the Rhine at Mainz, beginning the invasion of Gallia (406), Elizabeth Tudor granted a charter to the East India Company (1600), Queen Anne dismissed John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough as British commander in the War of the Spanish Succession (1711), Americans defeated by the British at the Battle of Quebec (1775), France returned to the Gregorian calendar, ending the experiment with the calendar of the French Revolution (1805), Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the new capital of Canada (1857), Abraham Lincoln signed a bill into law creating West Virginia as a new state (1862), Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” premiered in Manhattan (1879), Thomas Alva Edison demonstrated his incandescent lightbulb (1879), Brooklyn’s independence came to an end on the last day before its incorporation into New York City (1897), first New Year’s Eve celebration held in Times Square (1904), Gustav Mahler conducted at the Metropolitan Opera (1907), Marie Curie recieved her second Nobel Prize (1911), Benito Mussolini ordered the suppression of all opposition newspapers (1924), Charles Darrow patented the game Monopoly (1935), Battle of the Barents Sea between British & German naval forces (1942) Hungary declared war on Nazi Germany (1944), United Nations Charter ratification completed (1945), Harry Truman proclaimed the end of World War II (1946), Salvador Allende nationalized Chile’s coal mines (1970), Roberto Clemente killed in a plane crash 91972), Lt. Jerry Rawlings seized power in a coup d’état & suspended Ghana’s constitution (1981), CNN Headline News debuted (1981), Mayo Ed Koch appointed Benjamin Ward New York City’s first African American police commissioner (1983), Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari seized power in a coup d’état in Nigeria (1983), the US left UNESCO (1984), subway shooter Bernhard Goetz turned himself into the NYPD (1984), Ricky Nelson killed in a plane crash (1985), Bill Watterson ended his “Calvin & Hobbes” comic strip after 10 years (1995), Boris Yeltsin resigned as Russias president, leaving Vladimir Putin acting president (1999), Jimmy Carter turned the Panama Canal over to Panama (1999), Jamie Dimon named CEO of JP Morgan Chase (2005), Beji Caid Essebsi sworn in as Tunisia’s first democratically elected president (2014), Zionists slandered Lorde in an ad in the Washington Post after deciding to boycott Apartheid Israel (2017) & the World Health Organization (WHO) granted the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine emergency authorization (2020) on this day.

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