1534: Jacques Cartier becomes the first European to discover the St. Lawrence River.
1790: The Philadelphia Spelling Book by John Barry becomes the first book to be copyrighted in the US.
1856: 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.1891: Cole Porter is born.
1909: Alice Huyler Ramsey, a 22-year old housewife and mother from Hackensack, NJ, becomes the first woman to drive across the United States. With three female companions -none of whom could drive a car- for 59 days she drove a Maxwell automobile from Manhattan to San Francisco. She said, "Good driving has nothing to do with sex. It's all above the collar."
1915: Les Paul is born. He is a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar.1931: Jackie Mason is born. Here he is on the ancient Howard Stern Show that WPIX used to show. It's NSFW.
1934: Donald Duck makes his debut in The Wise Little Hen. Donald was always my favorite Disney character. He was the only one of the Disney stable who had any bite. I also liked Pluto because he was cursed to be a non-sentient animal in a world of sentient animals and still he bore he cross with good cheer.
1954: Joseph Welch, special Counsel for the US Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated the Army. He said, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
1959: The USS George Washington is launched as the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles.
1963: Johnny Depp is born. Ladies like him, for some reason. 
1967: Israel captures the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War.1973: Secretariat wins the Triple Crown (The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness Stakes and The Belmont Stakes).
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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