Today in History

Queen Elizabeth II, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, dies at the age of 96, in her home at Balmoral.

Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever recorded, slams into the Philippines, with sustained winds of 195 mpg (315 kph) and gusts up to 235 mph (380 kph); over 5,000 are killed (date is Nov 7 in US).

Princess Josephine of Denmark, Countess of Monpezat (Josephine Sophia Ivalo Mathilda), and Prince Vincent of Denmark, Count of Monpezat (Vincent Frederik Minik Alexander).

The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus.

Georgia invades South Ossetia, touching off a five-day war between Georgia and Russia.

An EF2 tornado hits Brooklyn, New York, the first in that borough since 1889.

The Cuzco Declaration signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations.

Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex and Sophie, Countess of Wessex.

US President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act, intended to improve America’s educational system.

US President George W. Bush establishes the Office of Homeland Security.

Dispute begins over US presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore; Supreme Court ruling on Dec. 12 results in a 271-266 electoral victory for Bush.

U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O’Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.

USAir Flight 427 crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 132 people aboard; subsequent investigation leads to changes in manufacturing practices and pilot training.

The leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine sign an agreement that dissolves the Soviet Union and establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Iraq annexes the state of Kuwait as its 19th province, six days after Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait.

NASA Space Shuttle Columbia begins its eighth flight, NASA’s 30th shuttle mission.

Wildfires in Yellowstone National Park in the US, the world’s first national park, force evacuation of the historic Old Faithful Inn; visitors and employees evacuate but the inn is saved.

An Israeli army tank transporter kills 4 Palestinian refugees and injures 7 others during a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, leading to the First Intifada.

Thomas Creighton dies after having three heart transplants in a 46-hour period.

The Soviet Union announces it will not participate in Summer Olympics planned for Los Angeles.

Wilson B. Goode is elected as the first black mayor of the city of Philadelphia.

The Washington, D.C., police shoot and kill a man threatening to blow up the Washington Monument.

John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.

Pink (Alecia Beth Moore), multiple award-winning singer, including three Grammys (“Lady Marmalade,” “Trouble,” “Imagine.”)

Ken Warby of Australia sets the world water speed record, 317.60 mph, at Blowering Dam in Australia; no other human has yet (2013) exceeded 300 mph on water and survived.

Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos discovers what is believed to be the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina in northern Greece.

Frank Robinson of the Cleveland Indians becomes first black manager of a major league baseball team.

President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard M. Nixon for any crimes arising from the Watergate scandal he may have committed while in office.

In the Yom Kippur War an Israeli armored brigade makes an unsuccessful attack on Egyptian positions on the Israeli side of the Suez Canal.

Martin Freeman, actor (The Office BBC Two TV series; Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey).

Tom Anderson, entrepreneur; co-founder of Myspace website.

The “Days of Rage” begin in Chicago; the Weathermen faction of the Students for a Democratic Society initiate 3 days of violent antiwar protests.

South Vietnam’s Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky arrives in Paris for peace talks.

In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed.

Sinead O’Connor, Irish singer, songwriter; has frequently generated controversy with her views on social issues such as organized religion and women’s rights.

Vietnam War, Operation Hump: US 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team ambushed by over 1,200 Viet Cong in Bien Hoa Province. Nearby, in the Gang Toi Hills, a company of the Royal Australian Regiment also engaged Viet Cong forces.

Teri Hatcher, actress; Lois Lane on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman TV series; won Golden Globe for Best Actress as Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives TV series.

Brad Silberling, screenwriter, director (City of Angels); wrote and directed Moonlight Mile (2002) based on the murder of his girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, by a stalker.

Bay of Pigs invaders get thirty years imprisonment in Cuba.

Max Conrad circles the globe in a record time of eight days, 18 hours and 49 minutes in Piper Aztec.

John F. Kennedy is elected 35th president, defeating Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the closest election, by popular vote, since 1880.

Erik Gundersen, motorcycle speedway rider; won 3 Speedway World Championships, 2 Long Track World Championships, and 7 World Team Cup awards (riding for Denmark in the latter).

President Dwight Eisenhower orders the National Guard out of Little Rock as Ernest Green becomes the first black to graduate from an Arkansas public school.

Don Larsen of the New York Yankees pitches the first perfect game in World Series history against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The United States, Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Thailand sign the mutual defense treaty that established the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

Rickie Lee Jones, singer, songwriter, musician; listed on VH1 list of greatest women of rock music.

Kim Basinger, actress, singer, producer; won Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for L.A. Confidential (1997).

Edward Zwick, director, producer whose films often are based on historic events (Glory, The Last Samurai).

Japanese representatives sign a peace treaty in San Francisco.

Mary Hart, actress, journalist; hosted Entertainment Tonight TV program 1982–2011.

Bonnie Raitt, blues singer, songwriter, musician. Rolling Stone magazine included her on its lists of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.

Gregg Allman, singer, songwriter, musician; founding member of The Allman Brothers Band.

President Harry S. Truman vows to stand by the Yalta accord on self-determination for the Balkans.

Korea is partitioned by the Soviet Union and the United States.

The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.

Larry Martin, paleontologist; leading opponent of the "birds are living dinosaurs" theory.

The United States and Great Britain invade Axis-occupied North Africa.

Bobby Elliott, drummer, member of the band The Hollies.

The German Luftwaffe attacks Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.

Sir James Galway, virtuoso flute player known as "The Man With the Golden Flute."

Crystla Bird Fauset of Pennsylvania, becomes the first African-American woman to be elected to a state legislature.

Dustin Hoffman, American actor.

Rona Barrett, gossip columnist; co-host of NBC’s Tomorrow program (1980-81).

Senator Huey Long of Louisiana is shot to death in the state capitol, allegedly by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, Jr.

Flip Wilson (Clerow Wilson Jr.), comedian and actor; won a Golden Globe and two Emmy Awards for his 1970s TV variety series, The Flip Wilson Show.

Japan tells the League of Nations that it has no control over her designs in China.

Morley Safer, journalist; 60 Minutes correspondent (1970– ).

Maximilian Schell, actor, writer, director, producer; won Academy Award for Best Actor for Judgement at Nuremberg (1961).

Bobby Bowden, US college football coach; holds NCAA record for most career wins and bowl wins by any Division I FBS coach.

Theodore Sorensen, advisor to John F. Kennedy.

Patti Page, singer (“Tennessee Waltz,” “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”).

Cesar Milstein, molecular biologist.

Sammy Davis Jr., singer ("The Candy Man"), dancer, actor (Ocean’s 11); member of the "Rat Pack".

The gas chamber is used for the first time to execute a murderer.

Adolf Hitler attempts a coup in Munich, the “Beer Hall Putsch,” and proclaims himself chancellor and Ludendorff dictator. .

Jean Ritchie, singer, songwriter of folk music ("Blue Diamond Mines").

First live radio broadcast of a football game; Harold W. Arlin was the announcer when KDKA of Pittsburgh broadcast live from Forbes Field as the University of Pittsburgh beat West Virginia University 21–13.

President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.

The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives pass the Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Bill.

US Army corporal Alvin C. York kills 28 German soldiers and captures 132 in the Argonne Forest; promoted to sergeant and awarded US Medal of Honor and French Croix de Guerre.

Rodney Porter, British biochemist and Nobel Proze winner.

Richard Fleischer, film director, (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Soylent Green).

Germany begins a new offensive in Argonne on the Western Front.

The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Liepzig are sunk by a British force in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.

Delmore Schwartz, poet and writer.

First Balkan War begins as Montenegro declares war against the Ottoman Empire.

Elizabeth Bishop, poet.

The Democrats prevail in congressional elections for the first time since 1894.

Katherine Hepburn, American actress who won four Oscars. Her movies included Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story and The African Queen.

Arthur J. Goldberg, labor lawyer instrumental in the merger of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Richard Llewellyn, author (How Green Was My Valley).

The mutinous crew of the battleship Potemkin surrenders to Romanian authorities.

President Theodore Roosevelt is elected president of the United States. He had been vice president until the shooting death of President William McKinley.

Between 30,000 and 50,000 Bulgarian men, women and children are massacred in Monastir by Turkish troops seeking to check a threatened Macedonian uprising.

Louise Beavers, film actress.

Ernest Orlando Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron and winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for physics.

Margaret Mitchell, American writer who found success in her first and only novel, Gone With the Wind.

The first household refrigerating machine is patented.

British General Horatio Kitchener defeats the Khalifa, leader of the dervishes in Sudan, at the Battle of Atbara.

Journalist Charles Henry Dow, founder of the Wall Street Journal, begins charting trends of stocks and bonds.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling.

Juan Peron, Argentinean dictator.

James Thurber, American writer, cartoonist and editor (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).

Edgar “Yip” Harburg, lyricist (“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,” “Over the Rainbow”).

A coal mine explosion kills 100 in McAlister, Oklahoma.

Eddie Rickenbacker, U.S. fighter pilot in World War I, aviation pioneer.

Montana becomes the 41st state of the Union.

Doc Holliday, who fought on the side of the Earp brothers during the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral 6 years earlier, dies of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

Siegfried Sassoon, British author and poet famous for his anti-war writing about World War I.

Hermann Rorshach, Swiss psychiatrist, inventor of the inkblot test.

Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary leader.

President Rutherford B. Hayes declares that the United States will have jurisdiction over any canal built across the Isthmus of Panama.

Leon Trosky, Russian Communist leader.

Marshall Walter Taylor, “Major Taylor,” the world’s fastest bicycle racer for a 12-year period.

Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph.

The Great Chicago Fire begins in southwest Chicago, possibly in a barn owned by Patrick and Katherine O’Leary. Fanned by strong southwesterly winds, the flames raged for more than 24 hours, eventually leveling three and a half square miles and wiping out one-third of the city. Approximately 250 people were killed in the fire; 98,500 people were left homeless; 17,450 buildings were destroyed.

William Vaughn Moody, poet and playwright (The Great Divide).

Frank Lloyd Wright, influential American architect.

Matthew A. Henson, explorer with Robert Peary who first reached the North Pole (though some recent scholarship disputes this claim).

President Abraham Lincoln is re-elected in the first wartime election in the United States.

Union General William Averell’s cavalry destroys railroads in the southwestern part of West Virginia.

The Union is victorious at the Battle of Perryville, the largest Civil War combat to take place in Kentucky.

CSS Sumter captures the whaler Eben Dodge in the Atlantic. The American Civil War is now affecting the Northern whaling industry.

The truce at Villafranca Austria cedes Lombardy to France.

Arrow, a ship flying the British flag, is boarded by Chinese who arrest the crew, thus beginning the Second Chinese War.

The first bronze statue of Andrew Jackson is unveiled in Washington, D.C.

Kate (O’Flaherty ) Chopin, novelist, short story writer (The Awakening).

Bram Stoker, author (Dracula).

The first major battle of the Mexican War is fought at Palo Alto, Texas.

A French column surrenders at Sidi Brahim in the Algerian War.

Brigham Young is chosen to head the Mormon Church, succeeding Joseph Smith.

Antonin Dvorak, composer and violinist.

King William I of Holland abdicates.

John D. Rockefeller, financier, philanthropist, founder of Standard Oil.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German designer and manufacturer of airships.

Dmitri Ivanovich Medeleyev, Russian chemist, developed the periodic table of elements.

Some 300 American troops of the 6th Infantry leave Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to confront the Sauk Indians in what would become known as the Black Hawk War.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American pianist.

Jean Henri Dunant, Swiss philanthropist, founder of the Red Cross and YMCA, first recipient (jointly) of the Nobel Peace Prize.

29-year old poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns while sailing in Italy.

William T. Sherman, Union general in the American Civil War.

With Napoleon defeated, Louis XVIII returns to Paris.

David D. Porter, Union admiral during the American Civil War.

James Wilson Marshall, discoverer of gold in California.

At Eylau, Napoleon‘s Marshal Pierre Agureau attacks Russian forces in a heavy snowstorm.

Alvan Clark, telescope manufacturer

Simon Cameron, political boss.

French troops capture Brussels, Belgium.

The Louvre opens in Paris. But wasn’t it already a Palace and it merely opens to the people?

George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address.

The U.S. House of Representatives holds its first meeting.

Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard become the first men to climb Mont Blanc in France.

Hannah Hoes Van Buren, wife of Martin Van Buren

Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin.

The French surrender the city of Montreal to the British.

The British attack on Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, New York, is foiled by the French.

British forces under William Johnson defeat the French and the Indians at the Battle of Lake George.

Miguel Hidalgo, Mexican nationalist.

England, Austria, Saxony and the Netherlands form an alliance against Russia.

Lewis Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

John Smeaton, English engineer.

Peter the Great defeats Charles XII at Poltava, in the Ukraine, effectively ending the Swedish empire.

Queen Anne becomes the monarch of England upon the death of William III.

Belgrade is retaken by the Turks.

The Austrians take Budapest from the Turks and annex Hungary.

Fredrick William of Brandenburg issues the Edict of Potsdam, offering Huguenots refuge.

The Treaty of Radzin ends a five year war between the Turks and the allied countries of Russia and Poland.

Alain Rene Lesage, French writer (The Adventures of Gil Blas, Turcaret).

The British crown grants Rhode Island a charter guaranteeing freedom of worship.

The first Shakespearian actress to appear on an English stage (she is believed to be a Ms. Norris) makes her debut as Desdemona.

Edmond Halley, mathematician and astronomer who predicted the return of the comet that bears his name.

Ibrahim, the sultan of Istanbul, is thrown into prison, then assassinated.

The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam surrenders to the British fleet that sails into its harbor. Five years later, the British change the name to New York.

The invading armies of Spain, Austria and Bavaria are stopped at the village of St.-Jean-de-Losne, only 50 miles from France.

John Endecott arrives with colonists at Salem, Massachusetts, where he will become the governor.

Christina, Queen of Sweden (1644-54).

Giovanni Domenico Cassini, astronomer.

Jean de La Fontaine, poet and author (Fables).

The King of Bohemia is defeated at the Battle of Prague.

Johannes Kepler discovers the third Law of Planetary Motion.

The first French settlement at Quebec is established by Samuel de Champlain.

Philip IV, king of Spain and Portugal (1621-65).

Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded in Fotheringhay Castle for her alleged part in the conspiracy to usurp Elizabeth I.

The 17 provinces of the Netherlands form a federation to maintain peace.

Charles IX of France signs the Treaty of St. Germain, ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots.

Spanish explorers found St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.

An act of supremacy defines Queen Elizabeth I as the supreme governor of the church of England.

Mary, Queen of Scotland (1542-67).

Hernando de Soto discovers the Mississippi River which he calls Rio de Espiritu Santo.

The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman re-enters Budapest and establishes John Zapolya as the puppet king of Hungary.

Michelangelo’s 13-foot marble statue of David is unveiled in Florence, Italy.

Jack Cade’s Rebellion–Kentishmen revolt against King Henry VI.

King Wenceslas of Poland is murdered.

Louis IX succeeds Louis VIII as king of France.

Christian Crusaders march around Jerusalem as Muslims watch from within the city.

Charles the Bald is defeated at the Battle of Andernach.

The Vikings raid the Northumbrian coast of England.

Muhammad, the founder of Islam and unifier of Arabia, dies.

Gautama Buddha, founder of Buddhism.

St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople

Theodosius of Rome passes legislation prohibiting all pagan worship in the empire.

Quintus "Horance" Horatius Flaccus, Roman poet and satirist best known for his three books Odes.