EVENTS
- 1836 – Texan volunteers are defeated at The Alamo.
- 1869 – Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table.
- 1899 – The painkiller Asprin is registered as a trademark. Acetylsalicylic acid was first isolated in 1897 by German chemist Felix Hoffmann. Today, the medication is sold by Bayer and is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines.
Felix Hoffmann - 1957 – Ghana becomes the first African country to gain independence from colonial rule. Ghana emerged as a sovereign state from the former British colonies Gold Coast and Togoland. Kwame Nkrumah was the country’s first leader.
- 1964 – New world record for the mile (3 minutes 56 seconds) set by Tom O’hara.
- 1967 – Stalin’s daughter defects to the West. The Soviet dictator’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, caused an international uproar when she approached the United States embassy in New Delhi and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
- 1981 – Walter Cronkite’s last CBS Evening News Broadcast.
- 1987 – 193 people die when a ferry capsizes in the North Sea. The Herald of Free Enterprise sank just minutes after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1475 – Michelango (Italian artist)
- 1619 – Cyrano De Bergerac (Author)
- 1806 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Poet)
- 1923 – Ed McMahon (Late Show TV announcer)
- 1926 – Alan Greenspan (American economist)
Alan Greenspan - 1936 – Marion Barry (American politician, 2nd Mayor of the District of Columbia)
- 1945 – Rob Reiner (Director)
- 1946 – David Gilmour (English singer-songwriter, guitarist)
- 1959 – Tom Arnold (Actor)
- 1972 – Shaquille O’Neal (Basketball Player)
DEATHS
- 1842 – Constanze Mozart (German wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- 1900 – Gottlieb Daimler (German engineer, businessman, co-founded Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft)
Gottlieb Daimler - 1982 – Ayn Rand (Russian/American author, philosopher)
- 1986 – Georgia O’Keeffe (American painter)
- 2007 – Jean Baudrillard (French philosopher)
