48 BC: Pompey the Great is assassinated on orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt after landing in Egypt.
935: Saint Wenceslas is murdered by his brother, Boleslaus I of Bohemia. He's the guy in the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas" except that the song doesn't spend too much time on the murder.
1066: After the Battle of Stamford Bridge, a castle is built at Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England really gets underway. I just learned that there is also an Australian soccer player named Norman Conquest, which is one of the coolest names I've ever heard.1708: Peter the Great defeats the Swedes at the Battle of Lesnaya.
1779: Samuel Huntington is elected president of the Continental Congress, suceeding John Jay.
1781: American forces, backed by the French Navy, begin the Siege of Yorktown.1836: Thomas Crapper, inventor of the modern flush toilet (allegedly) is born.
1850: Flogging is abolished by the US Navy.
1867: The US takes control of Midway Island.
1889: The first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) defines the length of a meter as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice.
1901: Ed Sullivan is born.1909: Al Capp is born. He did the comic strip Li'l Abner.
1925: Arnold Stang is born. He played the nebbishy Pretzi opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger's Hercules in the you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it Hercules in New York.1928: Sir Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin.
1934: Bridgette Bardot is born.
1937: Rod Roddy, long time announcer for The Price Is Right is born.
1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland after their invasion during World War II.
1941: Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox finishes the season with a batting average of .406. He is the latest major league player to have a batting average of .400 or better.
1943: J.T. Walsh is born. Here is is in Sling Blade.
1946: Jeffrey Jones is born.
1952: Sylvia Kristel, star of the French Emmanuelle movies is born.
1964: Janeane Garofalo is born.
1967: Mira Sorvino is born.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment