1620: Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1862: During the Civil War, Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, after George B. McClellan is removed.
1886: Comic actor Ed Wynn is born. He is the father of Keenan Wynn, of which I was not previously aware.1887: The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
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1888: Jack the Ripper kills Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim.
1906: Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
1907: The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday. At 3,106.75 (or about 1.3 pounds) that is one big hunk of carbon. To help provide security for the rock on its way to England from South Africa, a ship with an extra security detail was hired. But that turned out to be just a diversionary tactic - in reality, it was shipped in a box via registered mail. 
1913: Hedy Lamarr is born. Not only was she a fabulous babe, she is also the inventor of the frequency-hopped spread spectrum which is a key to modern wireless computer network.
1918: Spiro Agnew, 39th Vice President, is born.1921: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.
1934: Carl Sagan is born.
1938: Kristallnacht, Nazi Germany's first large-scale physical act of anti-Jewish violence, begins. The name means, literally, "Night of Broken Glass" and it was a night of government-sanctioned mayhem and murder against the Jews. In the end, 92 Jews were murdered, thousands were injured, 200 synagogues were burned to the ground and many more Jewish-owned businesses and homes were ransacked.
1941: Tom Fogerty is born. He played guitar in Creedence Clearwater Revival.
1953: The Supreme Court upholds a 1922 ruling that major league baseball did not come within the scope of federal antitrust laws.
1964: Robert Duncan McNeill is born. He played the slow-witted helmsman Lt. Tom Paris on Star Trek: Voyager.
1965: The Northeast Blackout of 1965 takes place. Most of New England, New York, New Jersey and Ontario were without power for atleast 13 hours. The cause was human error.
1967: The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published.
1989: Communist East Germany throws open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West. Joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.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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