Today in History

Northern Rock Bank suffers the UK’s first bank run in 150 years.

Major League Baseball players strike over a salary cap and other proposed changes, forcing the cancellation of the entire postseason and the World Series.

Joe Kittinger, a former USAF fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, becomes the first person to pilot a gas balloon solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Amy Winehouse, singer-songwriter; her five Grammy wins (out of six nominations) for her Back to Black album (2006) tied the existing record for most wins by a female artist in a single night; won Brit Award for Best British Female Artist (2007).

Bachir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, is killed along with 26 others in a bomb blast in Beirut.

Nur Muhammad Taraki, president and former prime minister of Afghanistan, is assassinated in a coup in which prime minister Hafizullah Amin seizes power.

Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes the first native-born American saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

Operation Attleboro, designed as a training exercise for American troops, becomes a month-long struggle against the Viet Cong.

Wendy Thomas (Melinda “Wendy” Thomas Morse), namesake, mascot and spokesperson for the Wendy’s chain of fast-food restaurants.

Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia form OPEC.

Geraldine Brooks, Australian-American journalist and author; her novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2005).

Marc Reisner, author and environmentalist best known for his book Cadillac Desert, a history of water management in the Western portion of the US.

German troops abandon the Salerno front in Italy..

Ferid Murad, Albanian-American physician and pharmacologist, is co-winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on nitroglycerin’s effects the cardiovascular system.

Kate Millet, feminist writer, author of Sexual Politics.

Allan Bloom, writer (The Closing of the American Mind).

Constance Baker Motley, first African-American woman to be appointed a federal judge.

Russian Premier Pyotr Stolypin is mortally wounded in an assassination attempt at the Kiev opera house.

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as the 26th President of the United States upon the death of William McKinley, who was shot eight days earlier.

Hal B. Wallis, film producer (The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca).

Margaret Sanger, birth-control advocate and founder of Planned Parenthood.

Charles Dana Gibson, illustrator, creator of the ‘Gibson Girl.’

Lord Robert Cecil, one of the founders of the League of Nations and its president from 1923 to 1945.

At the battles of South Mountain and Crampton’s Gap, Maryland Union troops smash into the Confederates as they close in on what will become the Antietam battleground.

Hamlin Garland, author who wrote about the Midwest in novels such as A Son of the Middle Border and The Book of the American Indian.

The Allies land at Eupatoria on the west coast of Crimea.

Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist who studied dogs’ responsiveness.

U.S. forces under Gen. Winfield Scott capture Mexico City, virtually bringing the two-year Mexican War to a close.

Francis Scott Key writes the words to the “Star Spangled Banner” as he waits aboard a British launch in the Chesapeake Bay for the outcome of the British assault on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.

Napoleon Bonaparte‘s invasion of Russia reaches its climax as his Grande Armee enters Moscow–only to find the enemy capital deserted and burning, set afire by the few Russians who remained.

Louis XVI swears his allegiance to the French constitution.

Russian forces under Aleksandr Suvorov successfully storm a Turkish fort at Hirsov, Turkey.

Baron Friedrich von Humboldt, German naturalist and explorer who made the first isothermic and isobaric maps.

Henry VIII‘s forces take Boulogne, France.

Dante Alighieri dies of malaria just hours after finishing writing Paradiso.

Zangi of the Near East is murdered. The Sultan Nur ad-Din, his son, pursues the conquest of Edessa.