EVENTS
- 1872 – The Great Boston Fire started in a dry-goods warehouse then spread rapidly in windy weather, destroying nearly 800 buildings. Damage was estimated at more than $75 million. The fire’s bright red glare could be seen in the sky for nearly 100 miles.
- 1887 – The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
- 1918 – German Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his throne in the closing days of World War I and fled to Holland. In Germany, Philip Scheidemann, a Socialist leader, then proclaimed a democratic Republic and became its first Chancellor.
- 1921 – Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
- 1938 – Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) occurred in Germany as Nazi mobs burned synagogues and vandalized Jewish shops and homes.
- 1965 – At 5:16 p.m., the Great Blackout of the Northeast began as a tripped circuit breaker at a power plant on the Niagara River caused a chain reaction sending power surges knocking out interconnected power companies down the East Coast. The blackout affected over 30 million persons, one-sixth of the entire U.S. population. Electricity also failed in Ontario and Quebec.
- 1967 – NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 spacecraft from Cape Kennedy.
- 1967 – ‘Rolling Stone’ makes its debut. The biweekly popular culture magazine was founded by Jann Simon Wenner in San Francisco. The magazine launched the careers of many famous authors and published the early versions of Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’.
- 1985 – Youngest person to become World Chess Champion. 22-year-old Russian Gary Kasparov won the 13th World Chess Championship against Anatoly Karpov to become the youngest World Chess Champion.
- 1989 – The Berlin Wall was opened up after standing for 28 years as a symbol of the Cold War. The 27.9 mile wall had been constructed in 1961.
- 1994 – Darmstadtium created for the first time. The heavily radioactive element with an atomic number of 110 and symbol Ds, was created at Gesellschaft fΓΌr Schwerionenforschung (Institute for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany, the city after which the element is named.
- 2004 – ‘Halo 2’ is released by Microsoft.
- 2009 – 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On this day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Polish ex-president and Noble Prize winner Lech Walesa walked through Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1731 – Benjamin Banneker (Astronomer)
- 1841 – Edward VII (King of the United Kingdom)
- 1853 – Architect Stanford White (1853-1906) was born in New York City. He designed New York’s old Madison Square Garden, the Washington Arch, and the Players, Century and Metropolitan Clubs. White was shot to death on the roof of the Madison Square Garden by an acquaintance on June 25, 1906.
- 1918 – Spiro Agnew (US Vice President)
- 1928 – Anne Sexton (American poet)
- 1934 – Carl Sagan (Astronomer)
- 1935 – Bob Gibson (Baseball Player)
- 1951 – Lou Ferrigno (TV’s original Incredible Hulk)
- 1970 – Chris Jericho (Wrestler)
- 1973 – Nick Lachey (Singer)
- 1974 – Alessandro Del Piero (Italian footballer)
DEATHS
- 1940 – Neville Chamberlain (English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
- 1953 – Ibn Saud (Saudi Arabian king)
- 1970 – Charles de Gaulle (French general, politician, President of France)
- 2004 – Stieg Larsson (Swedish writer)
- 2005 – K.R. Narayanan (Indian politician, 10th President of India)