Today in History

In Madras, India, a suicide bomber kills the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

The U.S. National Guard mobilizes to quell disturbances at Ohio State University.

Governor John Patterson declares martial law in Montgomery, Alabama.

The U.S. Eighth Army counterattacks to drive the Communist Chinese and North Koreans out of South Korea.

Mary Bourke Robinson, first woman president of Ireland (1990-1997).

The first U.S. ship, the S.S. Robin Moor, is sunk by a U-boat.

British forces attack German General Erwin Rommel‘s 7th Panzer Division at Arras, slowing his blitzkrieg of France.

Charles Lindbergh lands in Paris completing the first solo air crossing of the Atlantic.

Robert Creeley, poet.

Andrei Sakharov, Russian physicist.

Raymond Burr, actor (Perry Mason).

Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel, artist.

Marcel Breuer, Hungarian-born architect.

Armand Hammer, American entrepreneur and industrialist.

The American Red Cross is founded by Clara Barton.

Glenn Hammond Curtiss, aviation pioneer.

Frances Densmore, ethnomusicologist.

The siege of the Confederate Port Hudson, Louisiana, begins.

Willem Einthoven, physiologist, inventor of the electrocardiogram.

Grace Hoadley Dodge, philanthropist, helped organize the YWCA.

Henri Rousseau, French painter.

The Democratic party holds its first national convention.

Paris is divided into 48 zones.

Present-day Martha’s Vineyard is first sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.

The Reformation is officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland.

Philip II, king of Spain and Portugal.

Christopher Columbus dies.

King Henry VI is killed in the Tower of London. Edward IV takes the throne.

Sixteen year old Otto III is crowned the Roman Emperor.

Plato, Greek philosopher.