Today in History

Suicide bombers blow up an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya.

South Ossetia declares independence from Georgia.

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces it will give up its monopoly on political power.

Republican Robert Dole is elected Senate majority leader.

Operation Morvarid (Iran-Iraq War); Iranian Navy destroys over 70% of Iraqi Navy.

East Timor declares independence from Portugal.

The Anglican Church ordains the first two women as priests.

Cape Canaveral is renamed Cape Kennedy.

Jon Stewart, satirist, writer, director, author, television host, comedian; host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central.

Ernie Davis becomes the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy.

In Korea, 200,000 Communist troops launch attack on UN forces.

Dr. Edwin Land’s first Polaroid cameras go on sale in Boston.

Rita Mae Brown, novelist.

Sir Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt meet at Tehran, Iran, to hammer out war aims.

The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise departs from Pearl Harbor to deliver F4F Wildcat fighters to Wake Island. This mission saves the carrier from destruction when the Japanese attack.

The Soviet Union scraps its nonaggression pact with Finland.

Spanish leader Francisco Franco blockades the Spanish coast.

The German Reich declares all men ages 18 to 45 as army reservists.

Berry Gordy, Jr., recording executive.

The forerunner of the Grand Ole Opry, called the WSM Barn Dance, opens in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lady Astor is elected the first woman in Parliament.

Vyes Theriault, French-Canadian author.

Claude Levi-Strauss, French anthropologist.

Alberto Moravia, Italian novelist (The Conformist, Conjugal Love).

The British are victorious over the Boers at Modder River.

The Modoc War of 1872-73 begins in northern California when fighting breaks out between Modoc Chief Captain Jack and a cavalry detail led by Captain James Jackson.

Mt. Etna in Sicily violently erupts.

The Confederate Congress admits Missouri to the Confederacy, although Missouri has not yet seceded from the Union.

William Blake, English poet.

Natchez Indians massacre most of the 300 French settlers and soldiers at Fort Rosalie, Louisiana.

John Bunyan, English preacher and writer who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress.

Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan, having discovered a strait at the tip of South America, enters the Pacific.