1607: English colonists of the Jamestown settlement make landfall in Virginia.
1805: The US Marines capture Derne, Tripoli under the command of 1st Lt. Presley O'Bannon.
1822: Frederick Law Olmstead is born. He designed many famous urban parks including Central Park.
1865: Union soldiers corner and shoot John Wilkes Booth.1886: Ma Rainey "The Mother of the Blues" is born.
1894: Rudolph Hess is born. He was a high-ranking Nazi who, before the war, thought he could salvage an alliance between England and Germany. On his own initiative, he flew a plane to England and was promptly arrested. He spent the rest of his life behind bars until he died in 1987. He's kind of a pitiful figure for being so naive, but he was also a Nazi so I don't feel all that sorry for him.
1912: A.E. van Vogt is born. He was a titan of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
1917: Architect I.M. Pei is born. He designed, among other things, the glass pyramids outside of the Louvre. I almost shattered one of them while waiting in line and idly skipping francs across the fountains. Stupid Americans!
1918: Faith an' begorrah, Stafford Repp is born! He played the comically Irish chief of police on the old Batman TV show.
1933: The Gestapo is formed.1933: Carol Burnett is born.
1937: During the Spanish Civil War, Guernica, Spain is bombed by the Luftwaffe.
1938: Duane Eddy, guitar god, is born.1942: Bobby Rydell is born. He was a 50's-era teen idol who sang such hits as "Volare" and "Diana." "Diana" is interesting in that it is a creepy statutory rape song from the 50's about a younger man with an older woman instead of vice-versa, which was the norm for creepy statutory rape songs from the 50's.
1943: Gary Wright is born. He sang "Dream Weaver" which is enough to damn him in my book.
1947: Warren Clarke is born. He is most famous for playing the slow-witted droog Dim in A Clockwork Orange.
1960: Roger Taylor, drummer for Duran Duran is born.1961: Joan Chen is born. She was just gorgeous in Twin Peaks and also proved to be a good director in Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, which chronicles the Great Leap Forward in Maoist China. Don't take a first date to go see it.
1986: An explosion and fire in the #4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant causes the worst nuclear disaster in history.
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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