1586: The first potato arrives in Britain.1609: Bermuda is first settled, by survivors of the English Sea Venture, en route to Virginia.
1866: Beatrix Potter is born.
1868: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is passed, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.1901: Rudy Vallee is born in Island Pond, VT.
1914: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after it failed to meet the conditions of an ultimatum it set on July 23 following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serbian assassin. This event leads to the outbreak of World War I.
1929: Jackie Kennedy is born.
1932: US President Herbert Hoover orders the United States Army to forcibly evict the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, DC.1942: Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into Russia. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so will be immediately killed.
1943: Richard Wright, keyboardist for Pink Floyd, is born.
1943: During Operation Gomorrah, the British bomb Hamburg causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.
1945: Jim Davis, founder of the Garfield media empire, is born.
1945: The US Senate ratifies the UN charter.1945: In heavy fog a US Army B-25 bomber accidentally crashes into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 and injuring 26.
1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.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.
