Today in History
Today in History
1486 Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York.
1701 Frederick III, the elector of Brandenburg, becomes king of Prussia.
1778 Captain James Cook discovers the Hawaiian Islands, naming them the ‘Sandwich Islands’ after the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich.
1836 Jim Bowie arrives at the Alamo to assist its Texas defenders.
1862 John Tyler, former president of the U.S., is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
1902 The Isthmus Canal Commission in Washington shifts its support from Nicaragua to Panama as a favored canal site.
1910 Aviator Eugene Ely performs his first successful take off and landing from a ship in San Francisco.
1916 The Russians force the Turkish 3rd Army back to Erzurum.
1942 General MacArthur repels the Japanese in Bataan. The United States takes the lead in the Far East war criminal trials.
1945 The German Army launches its second attempt to relieve the besieged city of Budapest from the advancing Red Army.
1948 Ghandi breaks a 121-hour fast after halting Muslem-Hindu riots.
1962 The United States begins spraying foliage with herbicides in South Vietnam, in order to reveal the whereabouts of Vietcong guerrillas.
1964 Plans are disclosed for the World Trade Center in New York.
1978 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) isolate the cause of Legionnaire’s disease.
1991 Iraq starts firing Scud missiles at Israeli cities.
Born
1782 Daniel Webster, congressman from New Hampshire, Massachusetts senator, and secretary of state before the Civil War.
1813 Joseph Glidden, inventor.
1858 Daniel Hale Williams, physician who performed the first open heart surgery, founder of Chicago’s Provident Hospital.
1882 A.A. [Alan Alexander] Milne, novelist, humorist and journalist (Winnie the Pooh).
1892 Oliver Hardy, film comedian, one half of Laurel and Hardy.
1904 Cary Grant, U.S. film actor (Gunga Din, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, North by Northwest).
History
