1649: King Charles I is beheaded. Since his trial only began, like, a week ago, you can see that justice moved with uncomfortable swiftness in those days. Except when it didn't, as in:
1661: Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England is executed two years after he died. After Crommie kicked off (of natural causes) the Stewart line was restored when King Charles II assumed the throne. One of Chuck's first actions was to find all the people responsible for separating the royal head from the royal body and have them hung - whether or not they were already dead. They were then all thrown in a deep dark pit.
1798: A brawl breaks out in the House of Representatives as Matthew Lyon of Vermont spits in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut.
1820: Edward Bransfield lands on the Antarctic mainland.
1835: In the first assassination attempt against a US President, Richard Lawrence attacks President Andrew Johnson in the US Capitol. Both pistols misfire and Jackson beats the man with his cane. Old Hickory was kind of a dick (especially if you were of the Native American persuasion) but he sure did know how to handle would-be assassins.
1847: Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco.
1862: The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor, is launched.
1882: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is born.
1912: Barbara Tuchman, historian, is born. I recommend Stilwell and the American Experience in China.
1913: The House of Lords rejects the Irish Home Rule Bill.
1922: Dick Martin, of Rowan & Martin's Laugh In, is born.
1925: Douglas Engelbart is born. He invented the computer mouse.
1930: Gene Hackman is born.
1933: The first episode of the Lone Ranger is broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.
1933: Adolph Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.
1943: The German Gestapo shoots 200 Jews from the Letychiv slave labor camp in the Ukraine. In all, over 7,000 Jews were shot.
1948: Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu extremist.
1951: Phil Collins is born.
1956: Martin Luther King, Jr's home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1968: The Tet Offensive begins.
1969: The Beatles play their last public performance on the roof of Apple Records in London.
1972: 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers are gunned down by British soldiers in Northern Ireland in what became know as Bloody Sunday.
1974: Christian Bale is born.
Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up
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