1057: King Macbeth is killed by Duncan's son. This is an indicator of why Scotland would continue to be England's favorite punching bag for the next 650 years - they couldn't stop killing each other long enough to kill their real enemy.
1185: The cave city of Vardzia is consecrated by Queen Tamar of Georgia.
1248: The foundation stone of the Cologne Cathedral, built to house the relics of the Three Wise Men, is laid. Construction is eventually completed in 1880.1461: The Empire of Trebizond surrenders to the forces of Sultan Mehmet II. This is the real end of the Byzantine Empire. Emperor David is exiled and later murdered.
1534: Saint Ignatius of Loyola and six classmates took initial vows that would lead to the creation of the Society of Jesus in September of 1540. (Ignatius was my Confirmation Saint)
1769: Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, is born.
1824: Freed American slaves form Liberia.1843: Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1859: Charles "The Old Roman" Comiskey is born. He owned the Chicago White Sox and is one of only two players, along with Pete Browning to ever have 200 Hits, 100 Stolen Bases, 100 RBI, and 100 Runs in a single season.
1879: Ethel Barrymore, the First Lady of American Theater, is born.
1912: Julia Child is born.1912: Dame Wendy Hiller is born. She played Alice More in A Man for All Seasons and is considered one of the greatest English actors of the modern era. You won't be seeing her in any low-rent Hammer film.
1914: Julian Carlton, a male servant of architect Frank Lloyd Wright sets fire to the living quarters of the architect's Wisconsin home, Taliesin, murders seven people with an axe, and burns the living quarters to the ground.1914: The Panama Canal opens to traffic with the transit of the cargo ship Ancon.
1923: Rose Marie is born. She played the perpetually unmarried Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
1925: Mike "Touch" Connors is born. He is most famous for playing the two-fisted detective Joe Mannix, but he was also in the Roger Corman suckfest Swamp Diamonds.
1935: Jim Dale is born. He's been in many of the seemingly endless series of Carry On movies, but he is most familiar to Americans as the narrator of the Harry Potter audiobooks.
1935: Humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post are killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska.1939: The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
1944: Linda Ellerbee is born.
1945: VJ Day - this is the official date for the surrender of Japan during WWII.
1946: Jimmy Webb is born. Here's a truncated list of his crimes against humanity: He wrote Wichita Lineman, Up, Up and Away, and MacArthur Park. Somebody actually wrote MacArthur Park! I had always assumed that it was belched, fully formed, from the maw of Hell itself. Well, live and learn.1947: India gains independence from the United Kingdom and becomes an independent nation within the Commonwealth , Jawaharlal Nehru addresses the nation with the Indian Declaration of Independence and takes office as the first Prime Minister of India.
1947: The founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah is sworn in as first Governor General of Pakistan at Karachi.
1948: The Republic of Korea is established south of the 38th parallel north.1962: James Joseph Dresnok defected to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, running across the Korean DMZ. Dresnok still resides in the capital, Pyongyang.
1964: Debi Mazar is born. She is perhaps best known as Henry Hill's coke-snorting moll in Goodfellas, but I liked her in Space Truckers.
1965: The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, marking the birth of stadium rock.
1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Festival opens.
1971: President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.
1972: Ben Affleck is born.
1973: The United States bombing of Cambodia ends.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.
