1497: Amerigo Vespucci leaves Cadiz, Spain for his first voyage to the New World.
1775: Fort Ticonderoga is taken by a small force led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold.
1775: Representatives from the 13 colonies meet and vote to raise a new army. They also vote to put George Washington in charge of that army.1801: The Barbary Pirates of Tripoli declare war on the US.
1838: John Wilkes Booth is born near Bel Air, Maryland.
1857: In India, Sepoys rebel against their English masters, kicking off the Indian Mutiny, or the First War of Independence as it's known these days.1865: Jefferson Davis is captured by Union troops near Irwinville, Georgia.
1869: The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the east and west coast of the United States is completed when the Golden Spike is driven at Promontory Summit, Utah.
1898: Ariel Durant is born. Together with her husband Will, she wrote the multi-volume The Story of Civilization, one of the classic works of history.
1899: Fred Astaire is born.1909: David O. Selznick is born. He's one of the titans of early cinema.
1909: Maybelle Carter is born.1908: Mother's Day is celebrated for the first time in the US.
1922: The US annexes the Kingman Reef, an uninhibited atoll in the northern Pacific Ocean.
1924: J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the FBI and remains in that post until his death in 1972.
1933: The Nazis start massive public book burnings.1936: Gary Owens is born. He used to be the announcer on Laugh-In and has one of the more famous voices on TV. The last thing I heard him in was as the Silver Age Batman on the Batman:TAS episode "Legends of the Dark Night."
1940: The first German bombs of WWII fall on England at Chilham and Petham.
1940: Germany invades Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
1940: Winston Churchill is appointed Prime Minister of the UK.
1941: Rudolph Hess parachutes into Scotland to try and negotiate a peace treaty between Germany and the UK. As I've mentioned before, this was breathtakingly naive.
1946: Donovan is born. I contend that he's a novelty act, but I'm not prepared to get in a fight over it. Sunshine Superman is still one of my favorite songs.
1954: Bill Haley & His Comets release "Rock Around the Clock" which becomes the first number one rock and roll song.
1957: Sid Vicious is born. Getting famous is probably the worst thing to happen to him. I enjoy Sid & Nancy, though, but I'm pretty much an unrepentant Alex Cox fanboy.
1960: The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes the first underwater circumnavigation of the Earth.
1960: Bono is born. U2 gets a lot of flack these days for basically sucking, but as far as I'm concerned they've earned some sucking due to the great songs they made in the 80's.1970: The Boston Bruins win their first Stanley Cup since 1941 when Bobby Orr makes an overtime goal which is captured by a famous photograph known as "The Goal."
1994: Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa.
1994: John Wayne Gacy is executed. I'm pretty anti-death penalty, but in the case of people like Mr. Gacy, it gets difficult. 
1996: A rogue storm at the summit of Mount Everest kills eight climbers, making it the deadliest day in the summit's 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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