1520 Ferdinand Magellan discovers the Strait of Magellan off the tip of South America and north of Tierra del Fuego.
1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (born), English poet and philosopher (died 1834)
1797 In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
1805 Horatio Nelson (died), 1st Viscount Nelson, English navy officer (born 1758)
1805 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar: A British fleet led by Vice Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve. It signals almost the end of French maritime power and leaves Britain’s navy unchallenged until the 20th century.
1833 Alfred Nobel (born), Swedish chemist and engineer, invented dynamite and founded the Nobel Prize (died 1896)
1854 Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.
1892 Opening ceremonies for the World’s Columbian Exposition are held in Chicago, though because construction was behind schedule, the exposition did not open until May 1, 1893.
1912 Georg Solti (born), Hungarian conductor (died 1997)
1921 George Melford’s silent film, The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, premiers.
1921 President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south.
1940 The first edition of the Ernest Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is published.
1956 Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi is captured by the British Army, signalling the ultimate defeat of the Mau Mau Uprising, and essentially ending the British military campaign.
1959 In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens to the public.
1967 Vietnam War: More than 100,000 war protesters gather in Washington, D.C.. A peaceful rally at the Lincoln Memorial is followed by a march to The Pentagon and clashes with soldiers and US Marshals protecting the facility. Similar demonstrations occurred simultaneously in Japan and Western Europe.
1969 Jack Kerouac (died), American author (born 1922)
1979 Moshe Dayan resigns from the Israeli government because of strong disagreements with Prime Minister Menachem Begin over policy towards the Arabs.
1983 The meter is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
1985 Dan White (died), American politician, assassin of George Moscone and Harvey Milk (born 1946)
2012 George McGovern (died), American historian and politician (born 1922)
EO Smith
Latest posts by EO Smith (see all)
- Patriotism - 4 July, 2017
- The Super Sucker Bowl - 10 February, 2017
- Alternative Facts and Science - 24 January, 2017