Today in History

New Zealand’s Mount Tongariro erupts for the first time since 1897.

Microsoft announces it will invest $150 million in troubled rival Apple Computer, Inc.

Pope John Paul II publishes “Veritatis splendor encyclical,” regarding fundamentals of the Catholic Church’s role in moral teachings.

Tim Berners-Lee publishes the first-ever website, Info.cern.ch.

A melee that became known as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot in New York City leads to NYPD reforms.

Argentina’s ex-president Isabel Peron is freed from house arrest.

Twelve-year-old Marcus Hooper becomes the youngest person to swim the English Channel.

Singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder is in an automobile accident and goes into a four-day coma.

Atlanta Braves’ right fielder Hank Aaron hits his 660th and 661st home runs, setting the Major League record for most home runs by a player for a single franchise.

M. Night Shyamalan, Indian-American screenwriter, director and producer (The Sixth Sense, The Village).

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, outlawing the literacy test for voting eligibility in the South.

Jamaica becomes independent, after 300 years of British rule.

Winston E. Scott, US Navy commander and astronaut.

Paul Tibbets, the commander of Enola Gay, drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It was the second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, that induced the Japanese to surrender.

The Soviet city of Voronezh falls to the German army.

Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob, science fiction and fantasy author (Xanth series).

Andy Warhol, American pop artist.

Richard Hofstadter, historian who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

Ellen Louise Wilson, the first wife of the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, dies of Bright’s disease.

Lucille Ball, American actress and comedian.

The Japanese army in Korea surrounds a Russian army retreating to Manchuria.

William Kemmler becomes the first man to be executed by the electric chair.

Major General George Kenney, commander of the U.S. Fifth Air Force in New Guinea and the Solomons during World War II.

Martha Turner is murdered by an unknown assailant, believed to be Jack the Ripper, in London, England.

Alexander Flemming, Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928.

The CSS Alabama captures the USS Sea Bride near the Cape of Good Hope.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet laureate (1850), wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

John Cabot returns to England after his first successful journey to the Labrador coast.