1189: Richard the Lionheart is crowned King of England. Was he gay? Wasn't he? Most modern scholars think that he was.
1348: Pope Clement IV issues a Papal Bull protecting the Jews during the Black Death.1483: Richard III is crowned King of England. He was the last Plantagenet ruler of England. It's difficult to tell fact from fiction with him because the Tudors who took over England after the fall of the Plantagenets did their best to make him look like a monster. But he kind of was.
1535: Speaking of the Tudors, Sir Thomas More goes to the chop today. He was once the Lord Chancellor of England, but when he refused to support King Henry VIII's decision to separate the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church his star fell.. While his star was still ascendant, he was responsible for a lot of the Tudor-era Richard III bashing. I highly recommend the movie A Man For All Seasons.
1560: The Treaty of Edinburgh between England and Scotland is signed, formally ending the Auld Alliance (although it would hang around for a few more years).1777: During the Battle of Ticonderoga, American forces retreat from Fort Ticonderoga, New York.
1785: The dollar is unanimously chosen as the monetary unit of the United States.1885: Louis Pasteur successfully tests his rabies vaccine.
1919: The British dirigible R34 lands in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic by an airship.
1923: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is officially formed.1925: Merv Griffin is born. Don't get in an elevator with him.
1925: Bill Haley, of Bill Haley & The Comets, is born.1927: Janet Leigh is born.
1927: Pat Paulsen, comedian and perennial presidential candidate, is born.1933: The first Major League All-Star game is played in Comisky Park. The American League defeats the National League 4-2.
1937: Ned Beatty is born.
1944: The Hartford Circus Fire, one of America's worst fire disasters, kills approximately 168 people and injues 700 in Hartford, CT. My grandmother was one of the survivors.1945: Burt Ward is born. He is most famous for playing Robin on the old campy Batman TV show.
1946: George W. Bush is born.
1946: Fred Dryer is born.
1946: Sylvester Stallone is born.
1947: The AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union. This was to become one of the most ubiquitous firearms of the Cold War. It was designed to take a beating, with generous tolerances and was easy enough for an illiterate peasant to be trained on in no time. AK-47's have been dug out of the muck in Vietnam after having been submerged for 40 years and still work just fine.1950: John Byrne, comic book artist and author, is born. He is most famous (or infamous) for the reboot of the Superman series he did in the 1980's.
1951: Geoffrey Rush is born. He's, like, a real actor, but I still enjoy him most as the villainous Cassanova Frankenstein in Mystery Men.1954: Allyce Beasley is born. She played Agnes DiPesto on Moonlighting.
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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