Today in History

The United States turns over complete responsibility of the Demilitarized Zone to South Vietnamese units.

American and British forces make an amphibious landing on Sicily.

Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the attic above her father’s office in an Amsterdam warehouse.

David Hockney, painter.

June Jordan, poet and author.

Oliver Sachs, neurologist and author (Awakenings).

Mathilde Krim, geneticist, founder of the AIDS foundation.

Minor White, abstract photographer.

The Commonwealth of Australia is established by an act of British Parliament, uniting the separate colonies under a federal government.

Dorothy Thompson, journalist, writer and radio commentator.

Samuel Eliot Morison, biographer and historian.

Confederate cavalry led by John Morgan captures Tompkinsville, Kentucky.

Franz Boas, anthropologist.

U.S. President Zachary Taylor dies in office at the age of 65. He is succeeded by Millard Fillmore.

Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine.

The Swedish navy captures one third of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Svensksund in the Baltic Sea.

In Versailles, the French National Assembly declares itself the Constituent Assembly and begins to prepare a French constitution.

Ann Radcliffe, English novelist.

General Edward Braddock is killed by French and Indian troops.

Emperor Rudolf II grants Bohemia freedom of worship.

Maurice of Saxony is mortally wounded at Sievershausen, Germany, while defeating Albert of Brandenburg-Kulmbach.

Avitus, the Roman military commander in Gaul, becomes Emperor of the West.

Hadrian, Rome’s new emperor, makes his entry into the city.