EVENTS
- 1701 – Yale University was founded in Killingworth, Connecticut (as the Collegiate School of Connecticut). The school moved to New Haven in 1716. Two years later, the name was changed to Yale College to honor Elihu Yale, a philanthropist. In 1886, it became Yale University.
- 1781 – George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia
- 1793 – Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. She was the wife of King Louis XVI and had become the symbol of the people’s hatred for the old regime due to her extravagance and frivolity. According to legend, she responded, “Let them eat cake,” when told poor people had no bread.
- 1853 – The Crimean War began after the Turkish Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, Britain, France and portions of Italy allied with the Turks against Russia. It became the first war observed up close by newspaper reporters and photographers. One of the battles was immortalized in Tennyson’s poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Amid poor sanitary conditions, disease killed many wounded French and British troops. British nurse Florence Nightingale then pioneered modern-style sanitation methods, saving many lives.
- 1859 – Fanatical abolitionist John Brown seized the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry with about 20 followers. Three days later, Brown was captured and the insurrection was put down by U.S. Marines under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee. Brown was convicted by the Commonwealth of Virginia of treason, murder, and inciting slaves to rebellion, and was hanged on December 2, 1859.
- 1916 – The first birth control clinic in America was opened in Brooklyn, New York, by Margaret Sanger, a nurse who worked among the poor on the Lower East Side of New York City.
- 1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney
- 1945 – Food and Agriculture Organization established. The Food and Agriculture Organization, popularly known as the FAO was established in Quebec City, Canada.
- 1946 – Ten former Nazi leaders were hanged by the Allies following their conviction for war crimes at Nuremberg, Germany.
- 1964 – China detonated its first nuclear bomb at the Lop Nor test site in Sinkiang.
- 1970 – Anwar Sadat is elected President of Egypt
- 1978 – Karol Jozef Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul II. He is the first Polish Pope and will be Pope for 27 years.
- 1986 – First Person to Scale all Eight-Thousanders. Italian Mountaineer, Reinhold Messner, scaled the Lhotse, in Nepal. It is the world’s 4th tallest peak, and it is one of the 14 eight-thousanders – mountains that are more than 8000 meters above sea level.
- 1995 – The Million Man March took place in Washington, D.C., under the direction of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who delivered the main address to the gathering of African American males.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1758 – Noah Webster (First American Dictionary)
- 1854 – Oscar Wilde (Playwright)
- 1886 – David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) was born in Plonsk, Poland (He was largely responsible for founding the modern state of Israel in 1948 and is revered as “Father of the Nation.”
- 1888 – American playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) was born in New York City (He wrote more than 35 plays and was the first American dramatist awarded a Nobel Prize for literature (He also received four Pulitzers (His dramas, which dealt realistically with psychological and social problems, included; Beyond the Horizon, The Iceman Cometh, The Emperor Jones and Long Day’s Journey into Night.
- 1898 – American jurist William O (Douglas (1898-1980) was born in Maine, Minnesota (He served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court for 36 years and was also a world traveler, conservationist, outdoorsman and author.
- 1925 – Angela Lansbury (English/American actress, singer)
- 1946 – Suzanne Somers (Actress)
- 1958 – Tim Robbins (Actor)
- 1962 – Flea (Guitarist for Red Hot Chili Peppers)
- 1974 – Paul Kariya (Canadian ice hockey player)
- 1977 – John Mayer (Musician)
- 1992 – Bryce Harper (Baseball Player)
DEATHS
- 1791 – Grigory Potemkin (Russian military leader, politician)
- 1793 – Marie Antoinette (Austrian wife of Louis XVI of France)
- 1951 – Liaquat Ali Khan (Indian/Pakistani lawyer, politician, Prime Minister of Pakistan)
- 1981 – Moshe Dayan (Israeli general, politician, 5th Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel)
- 2011 – Dan Wheldon (English race car driver)