EVENTS
- 336 – Saint Mark elected Catholic Pope.
- 1535 – Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.
- 1671 – Henry Morgan captures Panama.
- 1886 – Modern hockey is born. The foundation of The Hockey Association in England formalized a modern version of the game that had already been played in ancient times.
- 1896 – The first X-ray machine is demonstrated.
- 1911 – First aircraft landing on a ship made by Eugene Ely.
- 1919 – The Paris Peace Conference opens. The aim of the conference was to set the peace terms after World War I, resulting in the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
- 1943 – Insurgents in the Warsaw Ghetto take up arms against the German oppressors. This lead to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II.
- 1966 – Robert Clifton Weaver was sworn in as the first African American cabinet member in U.S. history, becoming President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
- 1975 – The Jeffersons debuts on CBS.
- 1997 – Børge Ousland becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. The Norwegian polar explorer walked 3000 km (1864 miles) across the Earth’s southernmost continent.
- 2002 – The Sierra Leone Civil War ends. The conflict had lasted 11 years and left over 50,000 dead.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1689 – Montesquieu (French philosopher)
- 1782 – Daniel Webster (American Politician and Speaker)
- 1854 – Thomas Watson (Inventor with Alexander Graham Bell)
- 1882 – A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh Author)
- 1892 – Oliver Hardy (American comedian, actor)
- 1904 – Cary Grant (Actor)
- 1913 – Danny Kaye (American actor)
- 1955 – Kevin Costner (Actor)
- 1961 – Mark Messier (NHL Hockey Player)
DEATHS
- 1862 – John Tyler (American lawyer, politician, 10th President of the United States)
- 1936 – Rudyard Kipling (English author, poet, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1952 – Curly Howard (American actor, comedian)
- 1956 – Konstantin Päts (Estonian politician, 1st President of Estonia)
- 2011 – Sargent Shriver (American politician, 21st United States Ambassador to France)