EVENTS
- 1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.
- 1851 – The world’s first chess tournament is held in London. Adolf Anderssen, a maths teacher from Wrocław, won the tournament, which was held parallel to the 1851 Great Exhibition.
- 1930 – The Chrysler Building in New York (tallest man-made structure at the time) opens to the public.
Chrysler Building - 1933 – The cartoon “The Three Little Pigs”, is released by Disney.
- 1937 – In San Francisco, 200,000 people celebrated the grand opening of the Golden Gate Bridge by strolling across it.
- 1939 – Batman first shows up as a superhero in a DC comic.
- 1942 – Czech resistance fighters kill Reinhard Heydrich. The high-ranking German Nazi official was one of the main architects of the Holocaust. In retaliation, the Nazis murdered all male inhabitants over 15 years of age in the Czech village of Lidice and deported most of the remaining people to concentration camps.
- 1995 – Actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.
- 2006 – A massive earthquake devastates parts of Java, Indonesia. With 5 million people living within 50 km of the quake’s epicenter, about 6000 died, and 1.5 million were left homeless.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1794 – Cornelius Vanderbilt (Businessman and railroad tycoon)
- 1837 – Wild Bill Hickok (Wild west sheriff)
- 1907 – Rachel Carson (Environmentalist & Marine Biologist)
- 1911 – American politician Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978) was born in Wallace, South Dakota
- 1912 – Sam Snead (Golfer)
- 1922 – Christopher Lee (English and singer)
- 1923 – Henry Kissinger (Statesman)
Henry Kissinger - 1934 – Harlan Ellison (American author, screenwriter)
- 1970 – Joseph Fiennes (Actor)
- 1971 – Lisa ‘left eye’ Lopez (Singer)
- 1974 – Danny Wuerffel (Football Player)
- 1975 – Jamie Oliver (English chef, author)
- 1975 – Andre 3000 (Singer with OutKast and Actor)
- 1990 – Chris Colfer (Actor and Author)
DEATHS
- 927 – Simeon I of Bulgaria
- 1564 – John Calvin (French theologian, pastor)
- 1840 – Niccolò Paganini (Italian violinist, composer)
Niccolò Paganini - 1964 – Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian politician, 1st Prime Minister of India)
- 2011 – Gil Scott-Heron (American singer-songwriter, author)
