EVENTS
- 845 – Paris is sacked by Viking raiders.
- 1910 – First seaplane takes off from a water runway.
- 1963 – Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds” is released. The film about a swarm of birds wreaking havoc in Bodega Bay, California has become a classic of the horror movie genre.
- 1969 – Greek poet Giorgos Seferis speaks out against the military junta. The Nobel Prize laureate issued his now famous statement against Greece’s repressive right-wing Regime of the Colonels on the BBC World Service.
- 1979 – A radiation leak occurs at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the US.
- 1990 – President George H. W. Bush posthumously awards Jesse Owens the Congressional Gold Medal.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1483 – Raphael (Italian painter, architect)
- 1936 – Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian/Spanish journalist, author, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1946 – Alejandro Toledo (Peruvian politician, 48th President of Peru)
- 1955 – Reba McEntire (Singer and Actress)
- 1970 – Vince Vaughn (Actor)
- 1975 – Kate Gosselin (Reality show Jon and Kate plus 8)
- 1981 – Julia Stiles (Actress)
- 1986 – Lady Gaga (Singer)
DEATHS
- 1584 – Ivan the Terrible (Russian Tsar)
- 1941 – Virginia Woolf (English author, critic)
- 1943 – Sergei Rachmaninoff (Russian pianist, composer, conductor)
- 1969 – Dwight D. Eisenhower (American general, politician, 34th President of the United States)
- 2004 – Peter Ustinov (English actor, director, producer, screenwriter)