Today in History

Today in History

1513 Pope Julius II dies. He will lie in rest in a huge tomb sculpted by Michelangelo.

1725 New Hampshire militiamen commit the first recorded scalping of Indians by whites in North America.

1792 The U.S. Postal Service is created.

1809 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the power of the federal government is greater than any individual state in the Union.

1831 Polish revolutionaries defeat the Russians in the Battle of Grochow.

1864 Confederate troops defeat a Union army sent to bring Florida into the Union at the Battle of Olustee, FL.

1900 J.F. Pickering patents his airship.

1906 Russian troops seize large portions of Mongolia.

1915 President Woodrow Wilson opens the Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.

1918 The Soviet Red Army seizes Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

1938 Hitler demands self-determination for Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

1941 The United States sends war planes to the Pacific.

1942 Lt. Edward O’Hare downs five out of nine Japanese bombers that are attacking the carrier Lexington.

1943 German troops of the Afrika Korps break through the Kasserine Pass, defeating the U.S. forces.

1954 The Ford Foundation gives a $25 million grant to the Fund for Advancement of Education.

1959 The FCC applies the equal time rule to TV newscasts of political candidates.

1962 Mercury astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.

1963 Moscow offers to allow on-site inspections of nuclear testing.

1965 Ranger 8 hits the moon and sends back 7,000 photos to the United States.

1968 The North Vietnamese army chief in Hue orders all looters to be shot on sight.

1971 Young people protest having to cut their long hair in Athens, Greece.

1982 Carnegie Hall in New York begins $20 million in renovations.

Born

1726 William Prescott, U.S. Revolutionary War hero at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

1808 Honore Daumier, French caricaturist.

1844 Ludwig Boltzmann, atomic physics engineer

1888 Marie Rambert, ballet dancer and director.

1894 Curt Richter, biologist.

1898 Jimmy Yancey, American blues pianist.

1901 Rene Dubos, microbiologist; he developed the first commercial antibiotic.

1901 Louis I. Kahn, architect.

1902 Ansel Adams, American landscape photographer; he was known especially for western wilderness and mountain panoramas.

1904 Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union (1964-1980).

1924 Gloria Vanderbilt, fashion designer

1925 Robert Altman, film director (Nashville, The Player).

1927 Sidney Poitier, American actor; he was the first African-American male to win an Oscar (Lilies of the Field).

History