Today in History

Osama Bin Laden is killed in Abbottabad Pakistan by US Navy SEALS in Operation Neptune Spear.

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom takes over judicial functions of the House of Lords.

The I-35W bridge at Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapses into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring 145.

Armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in the Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia, Russia.

Trans World Airlines’ final flight following the carrier’s purchase by American Airlines; TWA began operating 76 years earlier. The final flight, 220, piloted by Capt. Bill Compton, landed at St. Louis International Airport.

Serbia joins the United Nations.

The euro, the new money of 11 European nations, goes into effect on the continent of Europe.

On National Day, Vietnam releases 5,000 prisoners, including political dissidents.

Bosnian Serbs begin sniping in Sarajevo, after Croats and Muslims vote for Bosnian independence.

Ukraine’s voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the USSR.

Channel Tunnel sections from France and the UK meet beneath the English Channel.

East Germany’s parliament changes its constitution, abolishing a section that gave the Communist Party the leading role in the state.

Benazir Bhutto, politician, becomes the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Pakistan and the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North pleads the 5th Amendment before a Senate panel investigating the Iran-Contra arms sale.

The wreck of the Titanic found by Dr. Robert Ballard and Jean Louis Michel in a joint U.S. and French expedition.

Honda opens a plant in Marysville, Ohio, becoming the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the US.

AIDS virus officially recognized.

US returns sovereignty of the Panama Canal to Panama.

The U.S. reports finding wiretaps in the American embassy in Moscow.

Legendary boxing match: Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier in the “Thrilla in Manila.”

Five Nixon aides–Kenneth Parkinson, Robert Mardian, Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell–go on trial for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation.

Leon Jaworski appointed as new Watergate Special Prosecutor.

America’s Bobby Fischer beats Russia’s Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become world chess champion.

Indian Army recaptures part of Kashmir, which had been occupied by Pakistan.

Dr. Hugh Scott of Washington, D.C. becomes the first African-American superintendent of schools in a major U.S. city.

America’s first draft lottery since 1942 is held.

The Motion Picture Association of America officially introduces its rating system to indicate age-appropriateness of film content.

Tina Arena (Filippina Lydia Arena), singer, songwriter, actress, record producer; first Australian to receive the Order of State; awarded Knighthood of the Order of National Merit, by the President of the French Republic (2009).

Andrew Adamson, New Zealand film director, producer, screenwriter (Shrek; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe); he was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2006.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 others are arrested in protest against voter discrimination in Alabama.

Karen Marie Moning, bestselling author; her Highlander and Fever series blend urban fantasy with Celtic mythology.

Mark McGwire, “Big Mac,” pro baseball player who broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run record; admitted in 2010 to using performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson debuts; Carson will remain The Tonight Show host until 1992.

The Federal Republic of Cameroon is formed by the merger of East and West Cameroon.

Tim Cook, business executive; CEO of Apple, inc. (2011– ).

Fidel Castro seizes power in Cuba as General Fulgencio Batista flees.

Candace Bushnell, author (Sex and the City, The Carrie Diaries).

“”In God We Trust” appears on US paper currency as an act to distinguish the US from the officially atheist USSR; the motto had appeared on coins at various times since 1864.

Rosa Parks refuses to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, defying the South’s segregationist laws.

The Geneva Accords divide Vietnam into two countries at the 17th parallel.

Nancy Lopez, professional golfer.

Algerian National Liberation Front begins guerrilla warfare against the French.

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Software and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Pablo Escobar, Colombian drug lord whose Medellin Cartel killed thousands.

North Korea is established.

Dave Arneson, game designer; co-created Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game with Gary Gygax, establishing the roleplaying game genre.

Lynne Russell, journalist; first woman to anchor a nationally televised prime time news program in US (CNN Headline News, 1983–2001).

Bette Midler, singer, songwriter, actress, producer; her awards include 3 Grammys, 4 Golden Globes, 3 Emmys and a special Tony for her contribution to Broadway (1974).

Richard “Kinky” Friedman, singer, songwriter, humorist, author; known for his satirical lyrics and commentary (“Sold American”); ran as an independent for Governor of Texas (2006).

American troops invade Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.

National gasoline rationing goes into effect in the United States.

The first Civil Air Patrol is organized in the United States.

Richard Pryor, influential comedian, actor, satirist.

Lily Tomlin, multiple-award-winning actress, comedian, writer, producer (Laugh-In, Nashville, The Magic School Bus).

Bill Anderson, country singer, songwriter; known as Whisperin’ Bill, he ranked among the top country songwriters of the 1960s and ’70s and has continued to pen No. 1 hits into the 21st century.

The Rodeo Cowboy’s Association is founded.

Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg], American actor, writer and director (Annie Hall).

Josef Stalin’s aide, Sergei Kirov, is assassinated in Leningrad.

Nazi storm troops become an official organ of the Reich.

Albert Collins, guitarist.

The Empire State Building opens in New York.

A.R. Gurney, American playwright (Love Letters, The Dining Room).

Milan Kundera, Czech writer (The Farewell Party, The Unbearable Lightness of Being).

China’s Chiang Kai-shek begins attacks on communists.

Adolf Hitler holds his first Nazi meeting in Berlin.

Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jean Mortenson, later Norma Jean Baker), film actress and icon.

Martin Rodbell, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist.

Legendary Oklahoma marshal Bill Tilghman, 71, is gunned down by a drunk in Cromwell, Oklahoma.

Victoria de Los Angeles, Spanish opera soprano.

A white mob attacks the thriving Black community of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing 85 people in what comes to be known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Germany’s Workers Party changes its name to the Nationalist Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazis).

Joseph E. Murray, transplant physician.

An American army of occupation enters Germany.

Robert Lowell, Jr., poet, won Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for Lord Weary’s Castle.

King Constantine of Greece refuses to surrender to the Allies.

Jean Stafford, American writer (The Mountain Lion).

Germany declares war on Russia.

Mary Martin, American actress.

Albert Berry completes the first in-flight parachute jump, from a Benoist plane over Kinlock Field in St. Louis, Missouri.

Italian planes perform the first aerial bombing on Tanguira oasis in Libya.

President William Howard Taft severs official relations with Nicaragua’s Zelaya government and declares support for the revolutionaries.

The Italian Parliament debates the future of the Triple Alliance and asks for compensation for Austria’s action in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Walter Reuther, labor leader who merged the American Federation of Labor with the Congress of International Organizations.

Twenty officers and 230 guards are arrested in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the revolt at the Winter Palace.

Vladimir Horowitz, Russian-born American virtuoso pianist.

Amy Johnson, English aviator.

Nordahl Brun Greig, Norwegian writer and wartime hero during WWII.

John van Druten, English playwright (I am a Camera).

Kaiser Wilhelm II refuses to meet with Boer leader Paul Kruger in Berlin.

Thomas Dorsey, American songwriter, singer and pianist, the “father of gospel music.”

American troops take San Juan Hill and El Caney, Cuba, from the Spaniards.

Mark Clark, U.S. Army general during World War II.

Alberta Hunter, blues singer.

By an act of Congress, Labor Day is declared a national holiday.

A machine for making shredded wheat breakfast cereal is patented.

James M. Cain, author (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce).

Facilities opened on Ellis Island, New York, to cope with the vast flood of immigrants coming into the United States.

Yosemite National Park is dedicated in California.

Rex Stout, writer, creator of detective character Nero Wolfe.

William Manchester, U.S. historian and biographer.

The first Labor Day is observed in New York City by the Carpenters and Joiners Union.

Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp are exonerated in court for their action in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz.

Grantland Rice, American sportswriter.

E.M. [Edward Morgan] Forster, English novelist (A Passage to India, A Room With a View).

General Lew Wallace is sworn in as governor of New Mexico Territory. He went on to deal with the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid and write Ben-Hur. His Civil War heroics earned him the moniker Savior of Cincinnati.

U.S. troops are authorized to pursue bandits into Mexico.

The Ottomans inflict a decisive defeat on the Serbs at Aleksinac.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, novelist who created Tarzan, the Ape Man.

San Francisco’s first cable cars begin running, operated by Hallidie’s Clay Street Hill Railroad Company.

The first long-distance gas pipeline in the U.S. is completed. Designed for natural gas, the two-inch pipe ran five miles from Newton Wells to Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Stephen Crane, poet and novelist (The Red Badge of Courage).

The Prussian army crushes the French at Sedan, the last battle of the Franco-Prussian War.

Louis Riel seizes Fort Garry, Winnipeg, during the Red River Rebellion.

James Buchanan, the 15th president of the United States, dies.

Canada, by the terms of the British North America Act, becomes an independent dominion.

Wild woman of the west Myra Maybelle Shirley (Belle Starr) marries James C. Reed in Collins County, Texas.

At the Battle of Five Forks, Gen. Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.

The Condor, a British blockade-runner, is grounded near Fort Fisher, North Carolina.

Oliver Herford, American humorist and poet.

President Abraham Lincoln gives the State of the Union address to the 37th Congress.

The U.S. gunboat Penguin seizes the Confederate blockade runner Albion carrying supplies worth almost $100,000.

The first installment of Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary appears in the Revue de Paris after the publisher refuses to print a passage in which the character Emma has a tryst in the back seat of a carriage.

Julia Moore, poet.

The British government decides to send a punitive naval expedition to China.

Charles Darwin presents a paper on his theory of evolution to the Linnean Society in London.

Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment during America’s Civil War.

Protestant missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman leads a party to Oregon. His wife, Narcissa, is one of the first white women to travel the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail emigrants who chose to follow Stephen Meek thought his shortcut would save weeks of hard travel. Instead, it brought them even greater misery.

Slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire.

John B. Hood, Confederate general.

Mother (Mary Harris) Jones, reformer and labor organizer.

Balfour Steward, Scottish physicist and meteorologist.

The Camp Street Theatre opens as the first English-language playhouse in New Orleans.

William Becknell leads a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.

Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick

Jems Renwick, architect.

Otto Von Bismarck, chancellor of Germany.

Philip Kearney, Union general.

American navy captain James Lawrence, mortally wounded in a naval engagement with the British, exhorts to the crew of his vessel, the Chesapeake, “Don’t give up the ship!”

Frédéric Chopin, composer and pianist.

In France, Napoleon creates an imperial nobility.

Aaron Burr is arrested in Mississippi for complicity in a plot to establish a Southern empire in Louisiana and Mexico.

The state of Virginia passes a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation.

George Sand (Amandine-Aurore Lucile Dupin), French novelist.

Ohio becomes the 17th state to join the Union.

The American schooner Enterprise captures the Barbary cruiser Tripoli. Often venturing into harm’s way, America’s most famous sailing ship, the Constitution, twice came close to oblivion.

Benjamin Lee Guinness, Irish brewer.

James Gordon Bennet, editor of the New York Sun, the first tabloid-sized daily newspaper.

France declares war on Britain and the Netherlands.

In Paris, the National Legislative Assembly holds its first meeting.

Lady Marguerite Blessington, English socialite and author who wrote a biography of Lord Byron.

The Times, London’s oldest running newspaper, publishes its first edition.

Pennsylvania becomes the first U.S. state to abolish slavery.

Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star Spangled Banner.”

Oliver Pollock, creates the dollar sign.

British troops depart from their base at the Bouquet River to head toward Ticonderoga, New York.

French minister Charles Gravier advises his Spanish counterpart to support the American rebels against the English.

The British government orders the port of Boston closed.

Phillis Wheatley, a slave from Boston, publishes a collection of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in London.

William Clark, American explorer, led the Corps of Discovery with Meriwether Lewis.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.

The Old Pretender, son of James III, dies.

The Stamp Act goes into effect in the British colonies.

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the U.S. Capitol.

Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to be assassinated.

Madame Tussaud, Swiss-born modeller in wax who founded the world-famous exhibition on London’s Baker Street.

British and Hanoverian armies defeat the French at the Battle of Minden, Germany.

A great earthquake at Lisbon, Portugal, kills over 50,000 people.

Betsy Ross, flag maker.

Thomas Arne’s song “Rule Britannia” is performed for the first time.

Paul Revere, U.S. patriot.

The Abenaki Indians and Massachusetts colonists sign a treaty halting hostilities between the two.

Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are arrested for the supposed practice of witchcraft in Salem, Mass.

Led by Marshall Luxembourg, the French defeat the forces of the Grand Alliance at Fleurus in the Netherlands.

James II’s siege of Londonderry, Ireland, ends in failure. James’ force had suffered some 8,000 casualties to the defenders’ 3,600.

Nathaniel Bacon leads an uprising against English Governor William Berkeley at Jamestown, Virginia, resulting in the settlement being burned to the ground. Bacon’s Rebellion came in response to the governor’s repeated refusal to defend the colonists against the Indians.

The Turkish army is defeated by French and German troops at St. Gotthard, Hungary.

Gottfried Von Leibniz, German philosopher and mathematician.

York, Maine becomes the first incorporated American city.

Nicholas Boileaus, French poet and historian.

The tobacco laws of Virginia are codified, limiting tobacco production to reduce dependence on a single-crop economy.

An English fleet under the Earl of Essex, Lord Howard of Effingham and Francis Vere capture and sack Cadiz, Spain.

The feeble Sultan Mohammed Shah of Persia, hands over power to his 17-year old son Abbas.

Elizabeth I, Queen of England, signs the Warrant of Execution for Mary Queen of Scots.

Sir Francis Drake launches a surprise attack on the heavily fortified city of Santo Domingo in Hispanola.

Maurice of Nassau, the son of William of Orange, becomes the governor of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht.

Edmund Champion and other Jesuit martyrs are hanged at Tyburn, England, for sedition, after being tortured.

William Harvey, English physician and biologist.

The Sea Beggars under Guillaume de la Marck land in Holland and capture the small town of Briel.

Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury.

Sir Edward Coke, English jurist who helped the development of English law with his arguments for the supremacy of common law over royal prerogative.

England and Scotland sign the Peace of Greenwich.

Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII‘s new queen, is crowned.

Michelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling is exhibited for the first time.

Benvunuto Cellini, Italian goldsmith and sculptor.

Philippus Paracelsus, Swiss physician, alchemist, astrologer and “father of toxicology.”

Christopher Columbus convinces Queen Isabella to fund expedition to the West Indies.

Piero de Medici succeeds his father, Cosimo, as ruler of Florence.

Edward III is coronated King of England.

King Albert is murdered by his nephew John, because he refused his share of the Habsburg lands.

Rudolf of Hapsburg is elected emperor in Germany.

Henry I of England dies and the crown is passed to his nephew Stephen of Bloise.

The crusaders under Peter the Hermit reach Constantinople.

The Aghlabid rulers of Ifriqiyah (modern day Tunisia) capture Taormina, Sicily.

Theodosius II succeeds to the throne of Constantinople.

Alexander the Great decisively shatters King Darius III’s Persian army at Gaugamela (Arbela), in a tactical masterstroke that leaves him master of the Persian Empire.

The Roman emperor, Marcus Didius, is murdered in his palace.

The city of Pompeii is buried by eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

Vespasian, a Roman army leader, is hailed as a Roman emperor by the Egyptian legions.

The first Leap Day is recognized by proclamation of Julius Caesar. Under the old Roman calendar, the last day of February was the last day of the year.

Claudius, Roman Emperor