EVENTS
- 1492 – Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.
- 1789 – George Washington becomes the first President of the USA.
- 1803 – The United States begins the process of purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million.
Louisiana purchase - 1916 – Germany and its World War I allies become the first countries to use daylight saving time (DST). The rationale was to save energy to aid the war effort. Other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, first introduced DST later that year.
- 1938 – Bugs Bunny first appears in a cartoon.
- 1939 – Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to appear on television.
- 1948 – Palestinian Jews declared their independence from British rule and established the new state of Israel. The country soon became a destination for tens of thousands of Nazi Holocaust survivors and a strong U.S. ally.
- 1967 – Boxer Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight boxing championship after refusing to be inducted into the American military. He had claimed religious exemption.
- 1975 – The fall of Saigon marks the end of the Vietnam War. As Communist forces gained control of Saigon, South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh, who had only been in office for 2 days, surrendered unconditionally.
- 1992 – The last episode of the “Cosby Show” airs.
- 1993 – Tennis ace Monica Seles is stabbed by an obsessed fan. Although the stab wound proved to be relatively harmless, the psychological ramifications meant that Seles did not play any tournaments for over two years.
- 1993 – CERN announces that World Wide Web protocols will remain free. By offering the software required to operate a web server with an open license, the European organization ensured its dissemination, and the WWW flourished.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1770 – David Thompson (Canadian explorer)
- 1777 – Carl Friedrich Gauss (German mathematician)
Carl Friedrich Gauss - 1930 – Cloris Leachman (Actress)
- 1933 – Willie Nelson (Singer)
- 1956 – Lars von Trier (Danish director, screenwriter)
- 1959 – Stephen Harper (Canadian politician, 22nd Prime Minister of Canada)
- 1961 – Isiah Thomas (NBA basketball player)
- 1982 – Kirsten Dunst (Actress)
DEATHS
- 1030 – Mahmud of Ghazni
- 1883 – Édouard Manet (French painter)
- 1945 – Adolf Hitler (Austrian/German politician, Chancellor of Germany)
- 1980 – Luis Muñoz Marín (Puerto Rican poet, politician, 1st Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico)
- 1983 – Muddy Waters (American singer-songwriter, guitarist)
Muddy Waters
