122: The building of Hadrian's Wall begins.
1224: Francis of Assisi is afflicted with stigmata.1520: William Cecil, chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth I is born.
1743: At the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the British defeat the French near Quebec City in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War.1788: The United States' Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the country's first presidential election, and New York City becomes the temporary capital of the U.S.
1813: John Sedgwick, Civil War General, is born. He died at the Battle of Spotsylvania while excoriating his men for ducking from enemy fire. He said, "They couldn't hit an elephant at this range!" right before Confederate sharpshooters proved him wrong.
1814: The British fail to capture Baltimore, Maryland. It is a turning point in the War of 1812.1814: Francis Scott Key writes The Star-Spangled Banner
1857: Milton S. Hershey, founder of Hershey's Chocolate, is born.
1860: General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing is born.
1862: During the Civil War, Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee's battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam.1876: Stanley Lord, captain of the SS Californian the night of the Titanic disaster, is born.
1898: Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film.
1899: Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident.
1903: Claudette Colbert is born. She was just gorgeous in It Happened One Night. (The clip comes in three parts - watch 'em all! You can see Clark Gable singlehandedly destroy the undershirt industry in part two.)
1916: Roald Dahl is born.
1922: The temperature (in the shade) at Al 'Aziziyah, Libya reaches a world record 135.9°F.1925: Mel Torme is born.
1938: Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, is born.
1939: Richard Kiel is born. He is best known for playing Jaws in the James Bond movies, but he also played the title character in the MST3K episode Eegah!1943: Chiang Kai-shek is elected president of the Republic of China.
1944: Jacqueline Bisset is born.
1951: Jean Smart from Designing Women is born.
1985: Super Mario Bros. is released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in Japan. Here;s one of those infamous "speed runs" where somebody completes the game in five minutes. There's a huge controversy among people who give a damn about such things as to whether this was done using cheats or computer assistance or just plain human ingenuity.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.
