79: Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash.
410: The Visigoths under Alaric begin to pillage Rome for three days.1215: Pope Innocent III declares the Magna Carta invalid.
1456: The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.
1572: Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre takes place. On the orders of king Charles IX of France, a massacre of Huguenots (French Protestants) begins.
1608: The first official English representative to India lands in Surat.
1662: The Act of Uniformity requires England to accept the Book of Common Prayer.
1682: William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.
1690: Calcutta, India is founded.1759: William Wilberforce, English abolitionist, is born.
1814: British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings.1831: Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle.
1857: The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in U.S. history.
1875: Captain Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim the English Channel.
1891: Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.1905: Arthur Crudup, bluesman and guitar virtuoso is born.
1909: Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.
1912: Alaska becomes a United States territory.
1915: Science fiction titan, James Tiptree, Jr is born. James Tiptree was actually the pen name of Alice Sheldon, who wrote for years as a man and nobody was the wiser (including me until just now).
1916: Hal Smith is born. He is best know for playing Otis the loveable alcoholic on The Andy Griffith Show.
1922: Howard Zinn, historical revisionist is born.
1929: Yasser Arafat is born.1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).
1934: Kenny Baker is born. He was the guy in the R2-D2 outfit in the Star Wars movies.
1938: Mason Williams is born. He did the popular guitar instrumental Classical Gas.1939: The Nazi-Soviet Pact is signed between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. It would last a little under two years.
1942: During the The Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the Japanese aircraft carrier Ryujo is sunk and US carrier Enterprise heavily damaged.
1949: Charlie Rocket is born. He was one of the underappreciated comedic talents of his day.
1951: Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game is born. I guess he's kind of insane but insanity and genius frequently go hand in hand.
1954: The Communist Control Act goes into effect and the American Communist Party is outlawed. I assume that, at some point, this law was gotten rid of as there still is a CP/USA.1958: Steve Guttenberg is born.
1960: A temperature of -127°F is measured in Vostok, Antarctica — a world-record low.
1960: Cal Ripken, Jr. is born.
1962: Craig Kilborn, the first host of The Daily Show, is born.1963: John Bush, singer for Anthrax is born.
1965: Marlee Matlin is born.
1967: Led by Abbie Hoffman, a group of hippies temporarily disrupt trading at the NYSE by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing a cease in trading as the brokers scramble to grab them up.1968: France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.
1973: Dave Chappelle is born.
1974: Jennifer Lien is born. She played Kes on Star Trek: Voyager until the producers booted her off in favor of Jeri Ryan for not being sexy enough. Frankly, I have no idea what they were talking about.
1981: Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.1989: Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose is banned from baseball for gambling by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.
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.
