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Historical Events

Results 1 - 100 of 176

1472 - Orkney and Shetland are left by Norway to Scotland, due to a dowry payment.
1525 - Swiss & German mercenaries desert Francois I's army
1547 - King Edward VI of England was enthroned following death of Henry VIII
1613 - Gerard Reynst appointed Dutch gov-gen of East-Indies
1653 - Defeat of Dutch fleet under Adm Van Tromp by Adm Blake off Portsmouth
1673 - 1st recorded wine auction held (London)
1710 - Johan Willem Friso becomes viceroy of Groningen Neth
1725 - 10 sleeping Indians scalped by whites in NH for £100 a scalp bounty
1732 - Estates of Holland ratifies Treaty of Vienna
1737 - French minister of Finance, Chauvelin, resigns
1745 - Bonnie Prince Charlies troops occupy Fort August, Scotland
1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Castle of Inverness
1768 - 1st American chartered fire insurance company opens (Penn)
1792 - US postal service created, postage 6 cents - 12 cents depending on distance
1798 - Louis Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power.
1809 - Supreme Court rules federal govt power greater than any state
1810 - Andreas Hofer, Tyrolean patriot and leader of rebellion against Napoleon's forces, was executed.
1811 - Austria declares bankruptcy
1816 - Rossini's opera "Barber of Seville" premieres in Rome
1823 - English Capt James Weddell reaches 74°15' S, 1520 km from S pole
1831 - Polish revolutionaries defeat Russians in battle of Growchow
1832 - Charles Darwin visits Fernando Noronha in Atlantic Ocean
1835 - Concepcion, Chile destroyed by earthquake; 5,000 die
1839 - Congress prohibits dueling in District of Columbia
1846 - British occupy Sikh citadel of Lahore
1856 - John Rutledge, Liverpool-NY steamer, hits iceberg; many die
1861 - Dept of Navy of Confederacy forms
1861 - Steeple of Chichester Cathedral blown down during a storm
1864 - Civil War battle of Olustee, Florida
1865 - M I T forms 1st US collegiate architectural school
1869 - Tenn Gov W C Brownlow declares martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis
1872 - Hydraulic electric elevator patented by Cyrus Baldwin
1872 - Luther Crowell patents a machine that manufactures paper bags
1872 - Metropolitan Museum of Art opens (NYC)
1872 - Silas Noble & JP Cooley patents toothpick manufacturing machine
1873 - U of Calif gets its 1st Med School (UC/SF)
1877 - 1st cantilever bridge in US completed, Harrodsburg, Kentucky
1877 - International Association (minor baseball league) organizes
1887 - 1st minor league baseball association organizes (Pittsburgh)
1887 - Germany, Austria-Hungary & France end Triple Alliance
1890 - Amsterdam Theater destroyed by fire
1895 - Congress authorizes a US mint at Denver, Colorodo
1899 - Ill Tel & Tel granted franchise for Chicago freight tunnel system
1901 - 1st territorial legislature of Hawaii convenes
1902 - Heavy surf breaks over Seal Rocks & damages Sutro Baths, SF
1903 - Nick Young remains as NL president as AG Spalding ends challenge
1909 - Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro.
1912 - Argentina beat the MCC in their inaugural cricket 1st-class fixture
1913 - King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.
1915 - Panama-Pacific International Exposition opens in SF
1917 - Ammunitions ship explodes in Archangelsk harbor, about 1,500 die
1917 - Kern, Bolton & Wodehouse's musical "Oh, Boy!," premieres in NYC
1919 - French premier Clemenceau injured during assassination attempt
1921 - Riza Khan Pahlevi seizes control of Iran
1922 - Marc Connelly & George Kaufman's "To the Ladies," premieres in NYC
1922 - Vilinus, Lithuania, agrees to separate from Poland
1922 - WOR-AM in New York City begins radio transmissions
1923 - Christy Mathewson becomes pres of Boston Braves
1927 - Golfers in SC arrested for violating Sabbath
1929 - American Samoa organizes as territory of US
1929 - Red Sox announce they will play Sunday games at Braves Field
1930 - Capelle soccer team forms
1931 - Congress allows California to build Oakland-Bay Bridge
1932 - Japanese troops occupy Tunhua China
1933 - Curom, Curacaose Broadcast System starts: Princess Juliana's speech
1933 - House of Reps completes congressional action to repeal Prohibition
1933 - Sidney Howard's "Alien Corn," premieres in NYC
1934 - Virgil Thomson's opera "4 Saints in 3 Acts" opens in NYC
1935 - Karoline Mikkelson is 1st woman on Antarctica
1937 - 1st automobile/airplane combination tested, Santa Monica, Ca
1938 - UK Foreign Sec Eden resigns, says PM Chamberlain appeased Germany
1940 - Larry Clinton & his Orchestra record "Limehouse Blues"
1941 - 1st transport of Jews to concentration camps leave Plotsk Poland
1941 - Nazis order Polish Jews barred from using public transportation
1941 - Romania breaks relations with Netherlands
1942 - Lt E H O'Hare single-handedly shoots down 5 Japanese heavy bombers
1942 - Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.
1943 - Allied troops occupy Kasserine pass in Tunisia
1943 - New volcano Paracutin erupts in farmer's corn patch (Mexico)
1943 - Phil Wrigley & B Rickey charter All-American Girls Softball League
1943 - American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
1944 - Batman & Robin comic strip premieres in newspapers
1944 - US takes Eniwetok Island
1944 - World War II: The "Big Week" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
1947 - Chemical mixing error causes explosion that destroys 42 blocks in LA
1947 - Lord Mountbatten appointed as last viceroy of India
1947 - State of Prussia ceases to exist.
1948 - Czechoslovakia's non-communist minister resigns
1949 - 1st International Pancake Race held (Liberal Ks)
1950 - Dylan Thomas arrives in NYC for his 1st US poetry reading tour
1950 - WOL-AM in Washington DC swaps calls with WWDC
1952 - "African Queen" opens at Capitol Theater in NYC
1952 - 1st black umpire in organized baseball certified (Emmett Ashford)
1953 - August A Busch buys the Cards for $3.75 million
1953 - US Court of Appeals rules that Organized Baseball is a sport & not a business, affirming the 25-year-old Supreme Court ruling
1954 - Babe Didrikson-Zaharias wins LPGA Serbin Golf Open
1954 - General Zahedi wins election in Persia
1955 - Fay Crocker wins LPGA Serbin Golf Open
1956 - WOSU TV channel 34 in Columbus, OH (PBS) begins broadcasting
1957 - Hughie Tayfield takes 9-113 v England, 13 wkts for match

Famous Birthdays

Results 1 - 100 of 295

1494 - Johan Friis, chancellor (Denmark, helped formed Lutheranism)
1507 - Gentile Bellini, Italian artist (Sultan Mohammed II)
1523 - Jan Blahoslav, Czech humanist/bishop (Bohemian brothers)
1632 - Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds, English PM (1690-94)/founder (Tories)
1633 - Jan de Baen, portrait painter/etcher
1656 - Johannes Schenck, German/Neth composer, baptised
1734 - Franz Ignaz Beck, composer
1745 - Johann Peter Salomon, composer
1745 - Henry James Pye, English poet (d. 1813)
1751 - Johann Heinrich Voß, German poet (d. 1826)
1752 - Charles Broche, composer
1753 - Louis Alexandre Berthier, French marshal (d. 1815)
1757 - John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, English philanthropist (d. 1834)
1763 - Adalbert Gyrowetz, composer
1770 - Ferdinando Carulli, composer
1779 - Augustus Callcott, landscape painter, Kensington
1784 - Adam Black, Edinburgh Scotland, politician/publisher
1791 - Carl Czerny, Vienna Austria, pianist/composer (Schule der Virtuosen)
1794 - William Carleton, Irish novelist (d. 1869)
1796 - Eduard W van Dam van Isselt, Dutch military/liberal politician
1802 - Charles-Auguste de Beriot, Belgian violinist/composer
1803 - Friedrich Theodor Frohlich, composer
1805 - Angelina Grimke, reformer/abolitionist/politician/lawyer
1808 - Daumier, Marseilles France, artist
1809 - Albertus J Duymaer van Twist, gov-gen of Neth-Indies
1809 - Henry Walton Wessells, Brig General (Union volunteers), died in 1889
1816 - Josef Michal Ksawery Jan Poniatowski, composer
1819 - Alfred Escher, Swiss politician, railroad entrepreneur (d. 1882)
1820 - Mahlon Dickerson Manson, Brig General (Union volunteers), died in 1895
1827 - Edward Stuyvesant Bragg, Brig General (Union volunteers), died in 1912
1835 - Allessandro d'Ancona, Italian philologist
1838 - James Barbour Terrill, Brig General (Confederate Army), died in 1864
1839 - Benjamin Waugh, American minister; founder of the NSPCC (d. 1908)
1844 - Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann, Austria, physicist (statistical mechanics)
1844 - Joshua Slocum, Canadian seaman and adventurer (d. 1909)
1848 - Edward Henry Harriman, American railroad executive (d. 1909)
1850 - Nérée Beauchemin, Canadian physician and poet (d. 1931)
1852 - Nikolai Garin [Michailovski], Russian author (Tjoma Kartashov)
1854 - Louis F M van Westerhoven, actor/singer/opera director (Youth)
1861 - Nicolaas van Meeteren, Curacao, folklorist
1866 - Carl Westman, Swedish architect and designer (d. 1936)
1867 - Louise, Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife (d. 1931)
1870 - Pieter Cornelis Boutens, Holland, mystic poet/scholar (Verzen)
1874 - Mary Garden, Aberdeen Scotland, opera star
1876 - Fyodor Akimenko, composer
1880 - Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, French aristocrat and novelist (d. 1923)
1881 - Pedro Munoz Seca, Spanish playwright (Vengeanza de Don Mendo)
1883 - Shiga Naoya, Japan, novelist (Road Through Dark Night)
1886 - Bela Kun, Czehul Romania, head of Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919)
1887 - David McKinley Williams, composer
1887 - Hesketh Pearson, England, biographer/playwright (Writ for Libel)
1888 - Georges Bernanos, France, novelist (Diary of a Country Priest)
1888 - Marie Rambert, Warsaw, English ballet producer/director/teacher
1889 - Levko Mykolayevich Revutsky, composer
1893 - Russel Crouse, journalist/novelist/playwright (Life with Father)
1893 - Elizabeth Holloway Marston, American psychologist (d. 1993)
1895 - Freida Geiken, autobiographer (National Historic Taping)
1896 - Henri de Lubac sj, French theologist/anti-fascist
1897 - Ivan Albright, Illinois, painter (Door, Window)
1898 - Enzo Ferrari, Italy, sportscar manufacturer (Ferrari)
1899 - Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, LI NY, founder (Pan Am Airways)
1899 - Leon Woizikowski, Polish dancer/ballet master (Ballets Russes)
1900 - Antonio Veretti, composer
1900 - Graham Spry, St Thomas Ontario, Canadian radio pioneer
1900 - Jean Negulesco
1901 - Ali Muhammad Naguib, Khartoum, president of Egypt (1952-54)
1901 - Cecil H King, Irish/British daily newspaper publisher (Daily Mirror)
1901 - Henry Eyring, Mexican/US chemist
1901 - Louis I Kahn, Estonia, architect (Bryn Mawr dormitory) [or Dec 20]
1901 - René Jules Dubos, France, US microbiologist/author (Health & Disease)
1902 - Ansel Adams, photographer (1966 ASMP Award)
1903 - Ella Maillart, explorer
1903 - Karel Janacek, composer
1903 - Pierre Charles, Belgian heavyweight boxer
1904 - Aleksei N Kosygin, Soviet premier (1964-80)
1904 - Armin Loos, composer
1904 - Bramwell Fletcher, Yorkshire England, actor (White Cargo, Mummy)
1905 - Jascha Golowanjuk, Swedish writer (Acrobat)
1907 - Malcolm Atterbury, Phila, actor (Jonas-Thicker than Water, Apples Way)
1907 - Nadine Conner, Calif, soprano (Carmen, Pamina-Magic Flute)
1907 - Owain Jenkins, company director
1908 - Grigori Yakovlevich Bakhchivangi, test pilot (BI-1)
1908 - Rosalind Laura Burke, aviatrix
1910 - Julian Trevelyan, English Surrealist painter/collage maker
1910 - Millicent Fenwick, (Rep-R-NJ 1975-82)
1911 - Margot Grahame
1911 - Robert Guyn McBride, Tucson Arizona, composer (Mexican Rhapsody)
1912 - Pierre Boulle, French author (d. 1994)
1913 - Jozef Kresanek, composer
1913 - Mary Durack, poet
1913 - Rex Tucker, TV writer/director
1914 - John Daly, S Africa, newscaster/TV game show host (What's My Line)
1914 - Marion Kettlewell, British director (WRNS)
1914 - Willem J H Baart, Dutch vicar (Cuentanan di Nanzi)
1915 - Philip Friend, Horsham England, actor (Vulture, Fur Collar)
1916 - Jackie Gleason, Bkln NY, comedian (Ralph Kramden-Honeymooners)
1916 - Julius Juzeliunas, composer
1916 - Paul Tripp, NYC, TV host (Mr I Magination)
1917 - Frederick Page, CEO (British Aerospace Aircraft Group)
1918 - Leonore Annenberg American Billionaire

Famous Deaths

Results 1 - 100 of 130

702 - K'inich Kan B'alam II, king of the Maya state of Palenque (b. 635)
1054 - Yaroslav I, the Wise, ruler (Kiev), dies
1154 - Saint Wulfric of Haselbury Plucknett
1171 - Conan IV, Duke of Brittany (b. 1138)
1194 - Tancredo of Lecce, King of Sicily, dies
1258 - Al-Musta'sim, last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad
1408 - Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, English statesman (b. 1342)
1431 - Martinus V, [Oddo Colonna], Italian Pope, dies
1431 - Pope Martin V (b. 1368)
1524 - Tecún Umán, last leader of the Quiché-Maya
1569 - Mark van Vaernewijck, Flemish nobleman/politician, dies at 50
1579 - Nicholas Bacon, English politician (b. 1509)
1595 - Ernst, archduke of Austria, dies at 41
1618 - Philip William, Prince of Orange (b. 1554)
1626 - John Dowland, composer, dies
1628 - Gregor Aichinger, German composer/organist, dies at about 63
1656 - James Ussher, Irish bible scholar/anglican archbishop, dies at 76
1667 - David ben Samuel Halevi, rabbi/author (Shulchan Aruch), dies
1707 - Aurangzeb, Mogul emperor of India (1658-1707), dies
1731 - Frederich Karl Erbach, composer, dies at 50
1737 - Elizabeth Rowe, poet, dies
1746 - Guillaume Coustou Sr, French sculptor (Mary Leszczynska), dies at 68
1762 - Tobias Mayer, German astronomer (b. 1723)
1771 - Jean Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan, French geophysicist (b. 1678)
1773 - Charles Emanuel I, King of Sardinia/Duke of Savoy (CE III), dies at 71
1778 - Laura Bassi, Italian scholar (b. 1711)
1786 - Johann Wolfgang Kleinknecht, composer, dies at 70
1788 - Gijsbert John van Hardenbroeck, Dutch regent (Utrecht), dies at 68
1790 - Joseph II, Emperor of Holy Roman empire, dies at 48
1803 - Marie Dumesnil, French actress (b. 1713)
1806 - Lachlan McIntosh, Scottish-born American military and political leader (b. 1725)
1809 - Johann Joseph Emmert, composer, dies at 76
1810 - Andreas Hofer, milt leader (fought Napoleon's France), executed at 42
1810 - Johann Friedrich Kranz, composer, dies at 57
1817 - Martin de Ron, composer, dies at 27
1845 - Pavel Ivanovich Dulgorukov, composer, dies at 57
1848 - [Willem] Alexander FCNM, prince of Neth/gen-maj, dies at 29
1851 - Josef Alois Ladurner, composer, dies at 81
1855 - Joseph Hume, social reformer, dies
1860 - Henry Drummond, English banker/religious leader, dies at 69
1871 - Paul Kane, Irish-born painter (b. 1810)
1892 - Hermann Kopp, German chemist (Law of Kopp), dies at 74
1893 - P.G.T. Beauregard, American Confederate general (b. 1818)
1895 - Frederick Douglass, escaped slave, anti-slavery leader, dies at 77
1904 - Gustav Adolf Heinze, composer, dies at 83
1905 - Jeremiah W. Farnham, American merchant captain
1907 - [Ferdinand-Frederic-]Henri Moissan, chemist (Nobel 1906), dies at 54
1910 - Boetros Ghali, Egyptian premier, murdered
1911 - Alexander Alexandrovich Kopilov, composer, dies at 56
1911 - Peter Nicolai von Wilm, composer, dies at 76
1916 - Klas Pontus Arnoldson, Swedish politician (Nobel 1908), dies at 71
1920 - Robert E Peary, US pole explorer (North Pole, 6/4/1909), dies at 63
1936 - John Hope, president of Atlanta University, dies at 67
1936 - Max Schreck, German actor (b. 1879)
1937 - "Barlow" Carkeek, Aust cricket wicketkeeper (1912 series), dies
1941 - La Bolduc, French Canadian singer and songwriter (b. 1894)
1942 - Guido Gasperini, composer, dies at 76
1946 - Hugh Allen, musician, dies
1951 - Howard Brockway, composer, dies at 80
1958 - Thurston Hall, actor (Mr Schuyler-Topper), dies at 75
1959 - Ray McDonald, dancer, dies of barbituate overdose at 38
1960 - Leonard Woolley, archaeologist, dies
1961 - Otto E Huiswoud, [Frank Billings], editor (Negro Worker), dies at 67
1961 - Percy Aldridge Grainger, Australian/US composer/pianist, dies at 78
1962 - Halliwell Hobbes, dies at 64
1963 - Ferenc Fricsay, Hungarian conductor (b. 1914)
1963 - Jacob Gade, Danish composer(b. 1879)
1964 - R T Stanyforth, English cricket wicketkeeper (S Africa 1927-28), dies
1965 - Fred Immler, German actor (b. 1880)
1966 - Chester W Nimitz, US admiral (WW II), dies at 80
1968 - Anthony Asquith, dies
1969 - Ernest Ansermet, Swiss conductor/composer, dies at 85
1969 - Jack Ingram, actor (Law of the West), dies of heart attack at 66
1970 - Albert Louis Wolff, composer, dies at 86
1970 - Sophie Treadwell, American playwright and journalist (b. 1885)
1972 - Herbert Menges, composer, dies at 69
1972 - Walter Winchell, writer/actor (Dondi, Love & Hisses), dies at 74
1973 - Brigitte Reimann, writer, dies at 39
1973 - Joseph Szigeti, Hungarian/US violinist, dies at 80
1973 - Maurice Dallimore, actor (Collector), dies at 60
1974 - David Monrad Johansen, composer, dies at 85
1975 - Edgar "Cookie" Fairchild, bandleader (Jerry Colonna Show), dies at 76
1975 - Lillian Fontaine, actress (Suddenly it's Spring), dies at 88
1975 - Robert Strauss, actor (Sgt Gruzewsky-Mona McCluskey), dies at 61
1976 - Kathryn Kuhlman, religious leader/faith healer, dies
1980 - Alice Longworth Roosevelt, youngest daughter of Theodore, dies at 96
1983 - James G Richardson, (Tim Cassidy-Sierra), dies at 37 in ski accident
1983 - Ray Vitte, actor (Doc, Cody-Quest), killed by police at 33
1983 - Fritz Köberle, Austrian-Brazilian physician (b. 1910)
1984 - Fikret Dzhamil Amirov, composer, dies at 61
1984 - Paul Dirac, British theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics (b. 1902)
1985 - Clarence Nash, voice (Donald Duck), dies at 80 of leukemia, in Calif
1986 - Francisco Paolo Mignone, composer, dies at 88
1986 - Jacobus G Rietkerk, Dutch foreign minister (VVD), dies at 58
1987 - Ivan Brkanovic, composer, dies at 80
1992 - Andrew Schenck, conducter, dies of melanoma at 51
1992 - Dick York, actor (Bewitched), dies of emphysema at 63
1992 - Joan Dixon, actress (Hot Lead, Bunco Squad, Gunplay), dies at 66
1993 - Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian auto-designer (Miura), dies
1994 - Derek Jarman, English director (Last of England), dies at 52