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Today in History

• 1567 - Mary Queen of Scots is deposed and replaced by her 1 year old son King James VI.
• 1832 - Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass.
• 1847 - After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown - Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep Yankees out of the Shenandoah Valley.
• 1901 - O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.
• 1910 - James MacGillivray publishes first account of Paul Bunyan in the Detroit News.
• 1911 - Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu "the Lost City of the Incas".
• 1923 - The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in the First World War.
• 1929 - The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it was first signed in Paris on , 1928 by most leading world powers).
• 1931 - A fire at a home for aged people in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania kills 48 people.
• 1935 - The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• 1943 - World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, those of the Americans by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.
• 1956 - At New York City's Copacabana Club, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together which started on , 1946.
• 1959 - At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, US vice-president Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev have a "kitchen debate."
• 1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
• 1974 - Watergate Scandal: The United States Supreme Court unanimously rule that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
• 1983 - George Brett, batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident".
• 2001 - Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, was sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, and became the only monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.
• 2001 - The Taiwan Solidarity Union is established.
• 2002 - James Traficant is expelled from the United States House of Representatives on a vote of 420 to 1.

 

Today's Birthdays

• 1853 - William Gillette, actor and author (d. 1937)
• 1898 - Amelia Earhart, American aviator (d. 1937 (disappeared))
• 1942 - Chris Sarandon, actor
• 1947 - Robert Hays, actor
• 1951 - Lynda Carter, actress
• 1965 - Kadeem Hardison, actor
• 1968 - Laura Leighton, actress
• 1970 - Jennifer Lopez, actress, singer
• 1981 - Gauge, actress
• 1982 - Anna Paquin, actress