On This Day

[Raistlin]

1492 - Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer, sighted Watling Island in the Bahamas. He believed that he had found Asia while attempting to find a Western ocean route to India. The same day he claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain.

1792 - The first monument honoring Christopher Columbus was dedicated in Baltimore, MD.

1810 - Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig married Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The royalty invited the public to attend the event which became an annual celebration that later became known as Oktoberfest.

1860 - Inventor Elmer Sperry was born on this day. He held patents on more than 400 inventions. The most important being the Sperry Automatic Pilot.

1892 - In celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Columbus landing the original version of the Pledge of Allegiance was first recited in public schools.

1895 - In Newport, RI, the first amateur golf tournament was held.

1915 - Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt criticized U.S. citizens who identified themselves by dual nationalities.

1915 - British nurse Edith Cavell was executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium during World War I.

1920 - Construction of the Holland Tunnel began. It opened on November 13, 1927. The tunnel links Jersey City, NJ and New York City, NY.

1933 - John Dillinger, bank robber, escaped from a jail in Allen County, OH. The sheriff was killed by his gang as they helped Dillinger escape.

1933 - The U.S. Department of Justice acquired Alcatraz Island from the U.S. Army.

1937 - "Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons" debuted on radio.

1938 - Filming began on "The Wizard of Oz."

1942 - During World War II, Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that Italian nationals in the United States would no longer be considered enemy aliens.

1945 - Private First Class Desmond T. Doss was presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor for outstanding bravery as a medical corpsman. He was the first conscientious objector in American history to win the award.

1950 - The Kefauver Crime Commission convened in New York to investigate interstate organized crime.

1960 - Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded a shoe on his desk during a dispute at a U.N. General Assembly.

1961 - The first video memoirs by a U.S. president were made. Walter Cronkite interviewed Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1964 - The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 into orbit around the Earth. It was the first space flight to have a multi-person crew and the first flight to be performed without space suits.

1972 - During the Vietnam War, a racial brawl broke out aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. Nearly 50 sailors were injured.

1976 - China announced that Hua Guo-feng was named to succeed the late Mao Tse-tung as chairman of the Communist Party.

1984 - An attempt on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's life was unsuccessful, but did take the lives of five people. The bomb had been planted by the I.R.A.

1988 - Federal prosecutors announced that the Sundstrand Corp. would pay $115 million dollars to settle with the Pentagon for overbilling airplane parts over a five-year period.

1989 - The U.S. House of Representatives approved a statutory federal ban on the destruction of the American flag.

1993 - The play "Mixed Emotions" opened at the John Golden Theatre.

1994 - Haitian military leader Raoul Cedras was granted political asylum by Panama.

1994 - The Magellan space probe ended its four-year mission to Venus for the purpose of mapping.

1997 - The St. Francis Basilica and 15th-century bell tower above Foligno city hall in Italy were damaged by 3 earthquakes.

1998 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Online Copyright Bill.

1999 - Rob Reiner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 - In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup that toppled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Supreme Court ruled that the coup was legal but insisted that a civilian government be restored within three years.

2000 - In Aden, Yemen, the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer, experienced a large explosion while refueling. The explosion was the result of a terrorist attack using a small boat. 17 crewmembers were killed and at least 39 were injured.

2000 - In Denver, CO, the U.S. District Court denied Timothy McVeigh's request for a new trial.

2001 - A special episode of America's Most Wanted was aired that focused on 22 wanted terrorists. The show was specifically requested by U.S. President George W. Bush.

2001 - A car bomb exploded in Madrid, Spain, that injured 17 people. Basque separatists claimed responsibility.

2002 - In Bali, Indonesia, over 180 people were killed and over 300 were injured when a bomb was detonated in a nightclub district.

2006 - The Dow Jones industrial average advanced over 11,900 for the first time.

[Raistlin]

54 A.D. - The Roman emperor Claudius I died after being poisoned by his wife, Agrippina.

1775 - The U.S. Continental Congress ordered the construction of a naval fleet.

1792 - The cornerstone of the Executive Mansion was laid in Washington, DC. The building became known as the White House in 1818.

1812 - American forces were defeated at the Battle of Queenstown Heights. The British victory effectively ended an further U.S. invasion of Canada.

1843 - B'nai B'rith, the Jewish organization, was founded by Henry Jones and eleven others in New York City, NY.

1854 - The state of Texas ratified a state constitution.

1924 - The play "The Guardsman" opened in New York City, NY.

1943 - During World War II, Italy signed an armistice with the Allies and declared war on Germany.

1944 - American troops entered Aachen, Germany, during World War II.

1944 - During World War II, British and Greek advance units landed at Piraeus.

1951 - In Atlanta, GA, a football with a rubber covering was used for the first time. Georgia Tech beat Louisiana State 25-7.

1953 - An ultrasonic burglar alarm was patented by Samuel Bagno.

1957 - Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra introduced the Ford Edsel on an hour long special.

1960 - The World Series ended on a home run for the first time. Bill Mazeroski's homerun allowed the Pirates to beat the Yankees.

1962 - "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opened on Broadway.

1967 - The first game of the new American Basketball Association was played.

1977 - Four Palestinians hijacked an Lufthansa airliner to Somalia. They demanded the release of members of the Red Army Faction.

1981 - Egyptian voters elected Vice President Hosni Mubarak as the new president one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.

1984 - Jesse Jackson appeared on "Saturday Night Live."

1989 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush called for an overthrow of the Panamanian ruler Manuel Antonio Noriega.

1990 - Le Duc Tho died at the age of 79. He was a co-founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

1992 - A commercial flight record was set by an Air France supersonic jetliner for circling the Earth in 33 hours and one minute.

1995 - Walt Disney World Resort admitted its 500-millionth guest.

1998 - The National Basketball Association (NBA) canceled regular season games, due to work stoppage, for first time in its 51-year history.

1999 - The U.S. Senate rejected the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

2010 - Near Copiapó, Chile, 33 miners were trapped underground in San José Mine. The miners were rescued after 69 days underground.

[Raistlin]

1066 - The Battle of Hastings occurred in England. The Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II of England.

1568 - Mary, Queen of Scots, went on trial in England. She was accused of conspiring against Queen Elizabeth I. Mary was beheaded the following February.

1644 - William Penn was born. Penn was the colonist that founded the Pennsylvania colony for Quakers.

1879 - Thomas Edison signed an agreement with Jose D. Husbands for the sale of Edison telephones in Chile.

1887 - Thomas Edison and George E. Gouraud reached an agreement for the international marketing rights for the phonograph.

1890 - Dwight David 'Ike' Eisenhower was born. He became the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War II and eventually the 34th U.S. President.

1912 - Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning in Milwaukee, WI. Roosevelt's wound in the chest was not serious and he continued with his planned speech. William Schrenk was captured at the scene of the shooting.

1922 - Lieutenant Lester James Maitland set a new airplane speed record when he reached a speed of 216.1 miles-per-hour.

1926 - The book "Winnie-the-Pooh," by A.A. Milne, made its debut.

1928 - The first televised wedding took place in Des Plains, IL. James Fowlkes and Cora Dennison were married in a radio studio.

1930 - Ethel Merman debuted on Broadway in "Girl Crazy."

1933 - Nazi Germany announced that it was withdrawing from the League of Nations.

1934 - "Lux Radio Theater" began airing on the NBC Blue radio network.

1936 - The first SSB (Social Security Board) office opened in Austin, TX. From this point, the Board's local office took over the assigning of Social Security Numbers.

1943 - The Radio Corporation of America finalized the sale of the NBC Blue radio network. Edward J. Noble paid $8 million for the network that was renamed American Broadcasting Company.

1944 - German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel committed suicide rather than face execution after being accused of conspiring against Adolf Hitler and the execution that would follow.

1944 - During World War II, the Second British Parachute Brigade liberated the city of Athens.

1947 - Over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California, pilot Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket plane and became the first person to break the sound barrier.

1954 - C.B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments", starring Charlton Heston, began filming in Egypt. The epic had a cast of 25,000 people.

1960 - U.S. presidential candidate John F. Kennedy first suggested the idea of a Peace Corps.

1961 - "How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying" opened on Broadway.

1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis began when U.S. reconnaissance aircrafts photographed Soviet construction of intermediate-range missile sites in Cuba.

1964 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in America. He was the youngest person to receive the award.

1968 - The first live telecast to come from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7.

1970 - Anwar el-Sadat became president of Egypt following the death of President Nasser.

1979 - The first national homosexual rights march took place in Washington, DC, involving over 100,000 people.

1984 - George ‘Sparky’ Anderson became the first baseball manager to win 100 games and a World Series in both leagues. (MLB)

1986 - Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev charged that the U.S. wanted to "bleed the Soviet Union economically" with the arms race in space.

1987 - Jessica McClure, 18 months old, fell down an abandoned well in Midland, TX. The rescue took 58 hours.

1992 - In Russia, Andrei Chikatilo, was sentenced to death after being convicted of 52 serial killings.

1993 - In Haiti, Justice Minister Guy Malary was assassinated by gunmen who were supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

1995 - An armed gunman seized control of bus of tourists in Moscow's Red Square. The next day commandos stormed the bus freeing the four remaining hostages and killing the gunman.

1998 - The FBI charged Eric Robert Rudolph with 6 bombings including the 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta. Rudolph was not in custody at the time the charges were filed.

1998 - Kendall Francois pled innocent on charges of killing eight women in New York.

2000 - A Saudi Arabian Airlines flight was hijacked just after takeoff from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. The plane was taken to Baghdad, Iraq, where the two men surrendered peacefully after negotiations.

2001 - Toys "R" Us introduced the new version of Geoffrey the giraffe in a 60-second commercial before WABC-TV aired Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove."

Disney movies, music and books

2002 - Britain stripped power from the Catholic and Protestant politicians of Northern Ireland. Britain resumed sole responsibility for running Northern Ireland. 1066 - The Battle of Hastings occurred in England. The Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II of England.

1568 - Mary, Queen of Scots, went on trial in England. She was accused of conspiring against Queen Elizabeth I. Mary was beheaded the following February.

1644 - William Penn was born. Penn was the colonist that founded the Pennsylvania colony for Quakers.

1879 - Thomas Edison signed an agreement with Jose D. Husbands for the sale of Edison telephones in Chile.

1887 - Thomas Edison and George E. Gouraud reached an agreement for the international marketing rights for the phonograph.

1890 - Dwight David 'Ike' Eisenhower was born. He became the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War II and eventually the 34th U.S. President.

1912 - Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning in Milwaukee, WI. Roosevelt's wound in the chest was not serious and he continued with his planned speech. William Schrenk was captured at the scene of the shooting.

1922 - Lieutenant Lester James Maitland set a new airplane speed record when he reached a speed of 216.1 miles-per-hour.

1926 - The book "Winnie-the-Pooh," by A.A. Milne, made its debut.

1928 - The first televised wedding took place in Des Plains, IL. James Fowlkes and Cora Dennison were married in a radio studio.

1930 - Ethel Merman debuted on Broadway in "Girl Crazy."

1933 - Nazi Germany announced that it was withdrawing from the League of Nations.

1934 - "Lux Radio Theater" began airing on the NBC Blue radio network.

1936 - The first SSB (Social Security Board) office opened in Austin, TX. From this point, the Board's local office took over the assigning of Social Security Numbers.

1943 - The Radio Corporation of America finalized the sale of the NBC Blue radio network. Edward J. Noble paid $8 million for the network that was renamed American Broadcasting Company.

1944 - German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel committed suicide rather than face execution after being accused of conspiring against Adolf Hitler and the execution that would follow.

1944 - During World War II, the Second British Parachute Brigade liberated the city of Athens.

1947 - Over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California, pilot Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket plane and became the first person to break the sound barrier.

1954 - C.B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments", starring Charlton Heston, began filming in Egypt. The epic had a cast of 25,000 people.

1960 - U.S. presidential candidate John F. Kennedy first suggested the idea of a Peace Corps.

1961 - "How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying" opened on Broadway.

1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis began when U.S. reconnaissance aircrafts photographed Soviet construction of intermediate-range missile sites in Cuba.

1964 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in America. He was the youngest person to receive the award.

1968 - The first live telecast to come from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7.

1970 - Anwar el-Sadat became president of Egypt following the death of President Nasser.

1979 - The first national homosexual rights march took place in Washington, DC, involving over 100,000 people.

1984 - George ‘Sparky’ Anderson became the first baseball manager to win 100 games and a World Series in both leagues. (MLB)

1986 - Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev charged that the U.S. wanted to "bleed the Soviet Union economically" with the arms race in space.

1987 - Jessica McClure, 18 months old, fell down an abandoned well in Midland, TX. The rescue took 58 hours.

1992 - In Russia, Andrei Chikatilo, was sentenced to death after being convicted of 52 serial killings.

1993 - In Haiti, Justice Minister Guy Malary was assassinated by gunmen who were supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

1995 - An armed gunman seized control of bus of tourists in Moscow's Red Square. The next day commandos stormed the bus freeing the four remaining hostages and killing the gunman.

1998 - The FBI charged Eric Robert Rudolph with 6 bombings including the 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta. Rudolph was not in custody at the time the charges were filed.

1998 - Kendall Francois pled innocent on charges of killing eight women in New York.

2000 - A Saudi Arabian Airlines flight was hijacked just after takeoff from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. The plane was taken to Baghdad, Iraq, where the two men surrendered peacefully after negotiations.

2002 - Britain stripped power from the Catholic and Protestant politicians of Northern Ireland. Britain resumed sole responsibility for running Northern Ireland.

[Raistlin]

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte began his exile on the remote island of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.

1844 - German philosopher Friedich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born.

1860 - Grace Bedell, 11 years old, wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. The letter stated that Lincoln would look better if he would grow a beard.

1883 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It allowed for individuals and corporations to discriminate based on race.

1892 - The U.S. government announced that the land in the western Montana was open to settlers. The 1.8 million acres were bought from the Crow Indians for 50 cents per acre.

1914 - The Clayton Antitrust Act was passed by the U.S. Congress.

1917 - Mata Hari was executed by a French firing squad. Hari was a Dutch dancer that had spied for Germany.

1931 - "Cat and the Fiddle" opened in New York for the first of 395 performances.

1937 - "To Have and Have Not" by Ernest Hemingway was published for the first time.

1939 - New York Municipal Airport was dedicated. The name was later changed to La Guardia Airport.

1945 - Pierre Laval, the former premier of Vichy France, was executed for treason.

1946 - Hermann Goering, a Nazi war criminal and founder of the Gestapo, poisoned himself just hours before his scheduled execution.

1951 - "I Love Lucy" premiered on CBS-TV.

1953 - "Teahouse of the August Moon" opened on Broadway. It ran for 1,027 performances.

1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis began. It was on this day that U.S. intelligence personnel analyzing data discovered Soviet medium-range missle sites in Cuba. On October 22 U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced that he had ordred the naval "quarantine" of Cuba.

1964 - It was announced that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had been removed from power. He was replaced with Alexei N. Kosygin.

1966 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill creating the Department of Transportation.

1973 - "Tomorrow" debuted on NBC-TV.

1983 - U.S. Marines killed five snipers who had pinned them down in Beirut International Airport.

1984 - The Freedom of Information Act was passed.

1989 - South African officials released eight prominent political prisoners.

1989 - Wayne Gretzky, while playing for the Los Angeles Kings, surpassed Gordie Howe's NHL scoring record of 1,850 career points.

1993 - U.S. President Clinton sent warships to enforce trade sanctions that had been imposed on Haitian military rulers.

1993 - South Africa's President F.W. de Klerk and African National Congress President Nelson Mandela were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end the apartheid system in South Africa.

1997 - British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green broke the land-speed record by driving a jet-powered car faster than the speed of sound.

1997 - The Cassini-Huygens mission was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL. On January 14, 2005, a probe sent back pictures of Saturn's moon Titan during and after landing.

1998 - Typhoon Zeb killed 24 people and drove 100,000 more from their homes when it hit the Philippines.

1998 - The U.N. condemned the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba for the seventh year in a row.

1998 - James Woods received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

2001 - NASA's Galileo spacecraft passed within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io.

[Raistlin]

1777 - American troops defeated British forces in Saratoga, NY. It was the turning point in the American Revolutionary War.

1880 - Founder of the Kraft Food Company, Charles Kraft was born.

1888 - The first issue of "National Geographic Magazine" was released at newsstands.

1917 - The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was formed.

1931 - Al Capone was convicted on income tax evasion and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 1939.

1933 - "News-Week" appeared for the first time at newsstands. The name was later changed to "Newsweek."

1933 - Dr. Albert Einstein moved to Princeton, NJ, after leaving Germany.

1939 - "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" premiered.

1945 - Ava Gardner and Artie Shaw were married.

1945 - Colonel Juan Peron became the dictator of Argentina after staging a coup in Buenos Aires.

1973 - The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) began an oil-embargo against several countries including the U.S. and Great Britain. The incident stemmed from Western support of Israel when Egypt and Syria attacked the nation on October 6, 1973. The embargo lasted until March of 1974.

1978 - U.S. President Carter signed a bill that restored full U.S. citizenship rights to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

1979 - Mother Teresa of India was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1987 - U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

1989 - An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale hit the San Francisco Bay area in California. The quake caused about 67 deaths, 3,000 injuries, and damages up to $7 billion.

1994 - Israel and Jordan initialed a draft peace treaty.

1994 - The Angolan government and rebels agreed to a peace treaty that ended their 19 years of civil war.

1997 - The remains of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara were laid to rest in his adopted Cuba, 30 years after his execution in Bolivia.

2000 - In New York City, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum opened to the public. The 42nd Street location joined Tussaud's other exhibitions already in London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Las Vegas.

2000 - Patrick Roy (Colorado Avalanche) achieved his 448th victory as a goalie in the NHL. Roy passed Terry Sawchuck to become the record holder for career victories.

2001 - Israel's tourism minister was killed. A radical Palestinian faction claimed that it had carried out the assassination to avenge the killing of its leader by Israel 2 months earlier.

2001 - Pakistan placed its armed forces on high alert because of troop movements by India in the disputed territory of Kashmir. India said that the movements were part of a normal troop rotation.

2001 - The U.S. Capitol building was closed because of an outside threat. The Capitol building and all House office buildings were closed for inspection following the discovery of anthrax in a Senate office building.

2001 - Italian priest Giuseppe "Beppe" Pierantoni was kidnapped by the terrorist group the "Pentagon." He was released on April 8, 2002.

2003 - In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration approved a drug, known as memantine, to help people with Alzheimer's symptoms.

2003 - In Taipei, Taiwan, construction crews finished 1,676-foot-tall-building called Taipei 101. The building was planned to open for business in 2004.

2003 - In northwest England, the Carnforth railway station reopened as a heritage center.

[Raistlin]

1469 - Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile. The marriage united all the dominions of Spain.

1685 - King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had established the legal toleration of the Protestant population.

1767 - The Mason-Dixon line was agreed upon. It was the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania.

1842 - Samuel Finley Breese Morse laid his first telegraph cable.

1860 - British troops burned the Yuanmingyuan at the end of the Second Opium War.

1867 - The U.S. took formal possession of Alaska from Russia. The land was purchased of a total of $7 million dollars (2 cents per acre).

1873 - The first rules for intercollegiate football were drawn up by representatives from Rutgers, Yale, Columbia and Princeton Universities.

1892 - The first long-distance telephone line between Chicago, IL, and New York City, NY, was opened.

1898 - The American flag was raised in Puerto Rico only one year after the Caribbean nation won its independence from Spain.

1929 - The Judicial Committee of England’s Privy Council ruled that women were to be considered as persons in Canada.

1931 - Inventor Thomas Alva Edison died at the age of 84.

1943 - The first broadcast of "Perry Mason" was presented on CBS Radio. The show went to TV in 1957.

1944 - Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviets during World War II.

1944 - "Forever Amber", written by Kathleen Windsor, was first published.

1950 - Connie Mack announced that he was going to retire after 50 seasons as the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.

1956 - NFL commissioner Bert Bell disallowed the use of radio-equipped helmets by NFL quarterbacks.

1958 - The first computer-arranged marriage took place on Art Linkletter's show.

1961 - Henri Matiss' "Le Bateau" went on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was discovered 46 days later that the painting had been hanging upside down.

1967 - The American League granted permission for the A's to move to Oakland. Also, new franchises were awarded to Kansas City and Seattle.

1968 - Two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were suspended by the U.S. Olympic Committee for giving a "black power" salute during a ceremony in Mexico City.

1969 - The U.S. government banned artificial sweeteners due to evidence that they caused cancer.

1970 - Quebec's minister of labor was found strangled to death after eight days of being held captive by the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ).

1971 - After 34 years, the final issue of "Look" magazine was published.

1977 - A German special forces team stormed a hijacked Lufthansa airliner and killed all four hijackers and freed 86 hostages. The Palestinian hijackers had demanded the release of members of the Red Army Faction.

1977 - Reggie Jackson tied Babe Ruth's record for hitting three homeruns in a single World Series game. Jackson was only the second player to achieve this.

1983 - General Motors agreed to hire more women and minorities for five years as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

1985 - South African authorities hanged black activist Benjamin Moloise. Moloise had been convicted of murdering a police officer.

1989 - Egon Krenz became the leader of East Germany after Erich Honecker was ousted. Honeker had been in power for 18 years.

1989 - The space shuttle Atlantis was launched on a mission that included the deployment of the Galileo space probe.

1990 - Iraq made an offer to the world that it would sell oil for $21 a barrel. The price level was the same as it had been before the invasion of Kuwait.

1997 - A monument honoring U.S. servicewomen, past and present, was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.

2001 - In New York, four defendants were convicted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

2001 - It was announced that a New Jersey letter carrier and an employee in the office of CBS news anchorman Dan Rather's office had tested positive for skin anthrax.

2006 - Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7.0.

[Raistlin]

1765 - In the U.S., The Stamp Act Congress met and drew up a declaration of rights and liberties.

1781 - British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to U.S. General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia. It was to be the last major battle of the American Revolutionary War.

1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte's French forces began their retreat out of Russia after a month of chasing the retreating Russian army.

1885 - Charles Merrill, founder of Merrill-Lynch, was born.

1914 - In the U.S., government owned vehicles were first used to pick up mail in Washington, DC.

1915 - The U.S. recognized General Venustiano Carranza as the president of Mexico. The U.S. imposed embargo to all parts of Mexico except where Carranza was in control.

1933 - Basketball was introduced to the 1936 Olympic Games by the Berlin Organization Committee.

1937 - "Woman's Day" was published for the first time.

1937 - "Big Town" made its debut on CBS.

1943 - The Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers began in Russia during World War II. Delegates from the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, the U.S., and China met to discuss war aims and cooperation between the nations.

1944 - The play "I Remember Mama" opened on Broadway. Marlon Brando made his debut with his appearance.

1944 - The U.S. Navy announced that black women would be allowed into Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES).

1950 - The United Nations forces entered the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

1951 - U.S. President Truman singed an act officially ending the state of war with Germany.

1959 - Patty Duke, at the age of 12, made her Broadway debut in "The Miracle Worker." The play lasted for 700 performances.

1960 - The United States imposed an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.

1969 - U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew referred to anti-Vietnam War protesters "an effete corps of impudent snobs."

1974 - The news program "Weekend" debuted on NBC.

1977 - The Concorde made its first landing in New York City.

1983 - The U.S. Senate approved a bill establishing a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

1984 - Four U.S. employees of the CIA were killed in El Salvador when their plane crashed.

1987 - The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 508 points. It was the worst one-day percentage decline, 22.6%, in history.

1989 - The Guilford Four were cleared of all charges and released after 14 years in prison. The charges were from the 1975 IRA bombings of public houses in Guildford and Woolrich, England.

1989 - The U.S. Senate rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that barred the desecration of the American flag.

1993 - Benazir Bhutto was returned to the premiership of Pakistan.

1998 - In Washington, DC, Microsoft went on trial to defend against an antitrust case.

1998 - Fires in Nigeria swept through villages killing 500 people.

1998 - Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson got his boxing license back after he had lost it for biting Evander Holyfield's ear during a fight.

2001 - Two U.S. Army Rangers were killed in a helicopter crash in Pakistan. The deaths were the first American deaths of the military campaign in Afghanistan.

2001 - It was reported that a New Jersey postal worker and a New York Post employee had tested positive for skin anthrax.

2002 - In York, PA, former mayor Charlie Robertson was acquitted and two other men were convicted in the shotgun murder of a young black woman during race riots in 1969.

2003 - In London, magician David Blaine emerged from a clear plastic box that had been suspended by a crane over the banks of the Thames River. He survived only on water for 44 days. Blaine had entered the box on September 5.

2006 - The Dow Jones industrial average ended the day at 12,011.73. It was the first close above 12,000.

[Raistlin]

1740 - Maria Theresa became the ruler of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia with the death of her father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI.

1774 - The new Continental Congress, the governing body of America’s colonies, passed an order proclaiming that all citizens of the colonies "discountenance and discourage all horse racing and all kinds of gaming, cock fighting, exhibitions of shows, plays and other expensive diversions and entertainment."

1803 - The U.S. Senate approved the Louisiana Purchase.

1818 - The U.S. and Great Britain established the boundary between the U.S. and Canada to be the 49th parallel.

1827 - The Battle of Navarino took place during the Greek War for Independence.

1873 - A Hippodrome was opened in New York City by showman Phineus T. (P.T.) Barnum.

1892 - The city of Chicago dedicated the World's Columbian Exposition.

1903 - A joint commission ruled in favor of the U.S. concerning a dispute over the boundary between Canada and the District of Alaska.

1910 - A baseball with a cork center was used in a World Series game for the first time.

1930 - "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" debuted on NBC radio.

1935 - Mao Zedong arrived in Hanoi after his Long March that took just over a year. He then set up the Chinese Communist Headquarters.

1942 - Pierre Laval told the French labor that they must serve in Germany.

1944 - Allied forces invaded the Philippines.

1944 - During World War II, the Yugoslav cities of Belgrade and Dubrovnik were liberated.

1947 - Hollywood came under scrutiny as the House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged Communist influence within the motion picture industry.

1952 - The Mau Mau uprising against white settlers began in Kenya.

1955 - "No Time for Sergeants" opened on Broadway.

1957 - Walter Cronkite began hosting "The 20th Century." The show aired until January 4, 1970.

1967 - Seven men were convicted in Meridian, MS, on charges of violating the civil rights of three civil rights workers. Of the men convicted one was a Ku Klux Klan leader and another was a sheriff's deputy.

1968 - Jackie Lee Bouvier Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis.

1976 - More than 70 people were killed when the Norwegian tanker Frosta collided with the ferryboat George Prince on the Mississippi River.

1979 - The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston was dedicated.

1984 - The U.S. State Department reduced the number of Americans assigned to the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

1986 - American mercenary Eugene Hasenfus was formally charged by the Nicaraguan government on several charges including terrorism.

1993 - Attorney General Janet Reno warned the TV industry to limit the violence in their programs.

1995 - Britain, France and the U.S. announced a treaty that banned atomic blasts in the South Pacific.

2003 - A 40-year-old man went over Niagara Falls without safety devices and survived. He was charged with illegally performing a stunt.

2009 - European astronomers discover 32 exoplanets.

[Raistlin]

1797 - "Old Ironsides," the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, was launched in Boston's harbor.

1805 - The Battle of Trafalgar occurred off the coast of Spain. The British defeated the French and Spanish fleet.

1849 - The first tattooed man, James F. O’Connell, was put on exhibition at the Franklin Theatre in New York City, NY.

1858 - The Can-Can was performed for the first time in Paris.

1879 - Thomas Edison invented the electric incandescent lamp. It would last 13 1/2 hours before it would burn out.

1917 - The first U.S. soldiers entered combat during World War I near Nancy, France.

1918 - Margaret Owen set a typing speed record of 170 words per minute on a manual typewriter.

1925 - The photoelectric cell was first demonstrated at the Electric Show in New York City, NY.

1925 - The U.S. Treasury Department announced that it had fined 29,620 people for prohibition (of alcohol) violations.

1927 - Construction began on the George Washington Bridge.

1944 - During World War II, the German city of Aachen was captured by U.S. troops.

1945 - Women in France were allowed to vote for the first time.

1950 - Chinese forces invaded Tibet.

1959 - The Guggenheim Museum was opened to the public in New York. The building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

1966 - In south Wales, 140 people were killed by a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and several houses.

1967 - Thousands of demonstrators marched in Washington, DC, in opposition to the Vietnam War.

1980 - The Philadelphia Phillies won their first World Series.

1983 - The Pentagon reported that 2,000 Marines were headed to Grenada to protect and evacuate Americans living there.

1986 - Pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon claimed that they had abducted American writer Edward Tracy. He was not released until August of 1991.

1986 - The U.S. ordered 55 Soviet diplomats to leave. The action was in reaction to the Soviet Union expelling five American diplomats.

1988 - Former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife, Imelda, were indicted in New York on fraud and racketeering charges. Marcos died before his trial and Imelda was acquitted in 1990.

1991 - Jesse Turner, an American hostage in Lebanon, was released after nearly five years of being imprisoned.

1993 - The play "The Twilight of the Golds" opened.

1994 - North Korea and the U.S. signed an agreement requiring North Korea to halt its nuclear program and agree to inspections.

1994 - Rosario Ames, the wife of CIA agent Aldrich Ames, was sentenced to five years in prison for her role in her husband's espionage.

1998 - 68 people were arrested in Indonesia for the killing spree that left nine suspected murderers dead.

1998 - The New York Yankees set a major league baseball record of 125 victories for the regular and postseason combined.

1998 - Cancer specialist Dr. Jane Henney became the FDA's first female commissioner.

2003 - The U.S. Senate voted to ban what was known as partial birth abortions.

2003 - North Korea rejected U.S. President George W. Bush's offer of a written pledge not to attack in exchange for the communist nation agreeing to end its nuclear weapons program.

[Raistlin]

1746 - The College of New Jersey was officially chartered. It later became known as Princeton University.

1797 - Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first recorded parachute jump. He made the jump from about 3,000 feet.

1836 - Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first constitutionally elected president of the Republic of Texas.

1844 - This day is recognized as "The Great Disappointment" among those who practiced Millerism. The world was expected to come to an end according to the followers of William Miller.

1879 - Thomas Edison conducted his first successful experiment with a high-resistance carbon filament.

1883 - The New York Horse show opened. The first national horse show was formed by the newly organized National Horse Show Association of America.

1907 - The Panic of 1907 began when depositors began withdrawing money from many New York banks.

1934 - Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, the notorious bank robber, was shot and killed by Federal agents in East Liverpool, OH.

1939 - The first televised pro football game was telecast from New York. Brooklyn defeated Philadelphia 23-14.

1950 - The Los Angeles Rams set an NFL record by defeating the Baltimore Colts 70-27. It was a record score for a regular season game.

1954 - The Federal Republic of Germany was invited to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

1959 - "Take Me Along" opened on Broadway.

1962 - U.S. President Kennedy went on radio and television to inform the United States about his order to send U.S. forces to blockade Cuba. The blockade was in response to the discovery of Soviet missile bases on the island.

1968 - Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft had orbited the Earth 163 times.

1975 - Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was discharged after publicly declaring his homosexuality. His tombstone reads " "A gay Vietnam Veteran. When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."

1979 - The ousted Shah of Iran, Mohammad Riza Pahlavi was allowed into the U.S. for medical treatment.

1981 - The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization was decertified by the federal government for its strike the previous August.

1983 - At the Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia, an armed man crashed a truck through front gates and demanded to speak with U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1986 - U.S. President Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 into law.

1991 - The European Community and the European Free Trade Association agreed to create a free trade zone of 19 nations by the year 1993.

1995 - The 50th anniversary of the United Nations was marked by a record number of world leaders gathering.

1995 - British writer Sir Kingsley Amis died at the age of 73.

1998 - The United Nations announced that over 2 million children had been killed in war as innocent victims since 1987.

1998 - Pakistan's carpet weaving industry announced that they would begin to phase out child labor.

1999 - China ended its first-ever human rights conference in which it defied Western definitions of civil liberties.

1999 - The U.N. Security Council voted to send 6,000 troops to Sierra Leone to oversee a peace plan that had been signed in July.

2008 - The iTunes music Store reached 200 million applications downloaded.

2010 - The Internation Space Station set the record (3641 days) for the longest continuous human occupation of space. It had been continously inhabited since November 2, 2000.

[Raistlin]

1618 - Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded under a sentence that had been brought against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I.

1652 - The Massachusetts Bay Colony proclaimed itself to be an independent commonwealth.

1682 - William Penn landed at what is now Chester, PA. He was the founder of Pennsylvania.

1863 - The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded.

1901 - Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President McKinley, was electrocuted.

1911 - American newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer died.

1923 - Turkey formally became a republic after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The first president was Mustafa Kemal, later known as Kemal Ataturk.

1929 - America's Great Depression began with the crash of the Wall Street stock market.

1940 - The first peacetime military draft began in the U.S.

1945 - The first ballpoint pens to be made commercially went on sale at Gimbels Department Store in New York at the price of $12.50 each.

1956 - Israel invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula during the Suez Canal Crisis.

1956 - "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" premiered on NBC. The show replaced "The Camel News Caravan."

1959 - General Mills became the first corporation to use close-circuit television.

1960 - Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) won his first professional fight.

1964 - Three men stole the star of India and other gems from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The men were later convicted of the crime.

1966 - The National Organization for Women was founded.

1969 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered an immediate end to all school segregation.

1973 - O.J. Simpson, of the Buffalo Bills, set two NFL records. He carried the ball 39 times and he ran 157 yards putting him over 1,000 yards at the seventh game of the season.

1974 - U.S. President Gerald Ford signed a new law forbidding discrimination in credit applications on the basis of sex or marital status

1985 - It was announced that Maj. Gen. Samuel K. Doe had won the first multiparty election in Liberia.

1989 - A public mourning, involving over 20,000 East Berliners, was observed with a minute of silence for the people who had been killed while trying to flee over the Berlin Wall.

1990 - The U.N. Security Council voted to hold Saddam Hussein's regime liable for human rights abuses and war damages during its occupation of Kuwait.

1991 - The U.S. Galileo spacecraft became the first to visit an asteroid (Gaspra).

1991 - Trade sanctions were imposed on Haiti by the U.S. to pressure the new leaders to restore the ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.

1992 - Depo Provera, a contraceptive, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

1993 - A group of U.S. athletes were attacked by skinheads in Germany.

1994 - Francisco Martin Duran fired more than two dozen shots at the White House while standing on Pennsylvania Ave. Duran was later convicted of trying to kill U.S. President Clinton.

1995 - Palestinians swore revenge for the assassination of Dr. Fathi Shakaki.

1995 - Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers became the NFL's career leader in receiving yards with 14,040 yards.

1996 - An auction was held to sell the artwork that had been stolen by the Nazis during the German occupation of Austria during World War II.

1998 - South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemned both apartheid and violence committed by the African National Congress.

1998 - The space shuttle Discovery blasted off with John Glenn on board. Glenn was 77 years old. In 1962 he became the first American to orbit the Earth.

1998 - A Turkish Airlines flight was hijacked and ordered to fly to the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. The plane had 39 people on board.

1998 - In Freehold, NJ, Melissa Drexler was sentenced to 15 years in prison for strangling her baby after giving birth in the bathroom at her senior prom.

1998 - In London, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman accepted a substantial settlement from the Express Newspapers for an article that was run on October 5, 1997. The article claimed that both were homosexual and their marriage was a sham to cover the truth.

1998 - James Orr was sentenced to 3 years probation and ordered to do 100 hours of community service for slamming Farrah Fawcett's head to the ground and choking her during a fight.

1998 - A dance hall in Goteborg, Sweden, was gutted with fire killing 60 people. 173 were also injured in the fire.

1998 - The oldest known copy of Archimedes' work sold for $2 million at a New York auction.

2001 - KTLA broadcasted the first coast to coast HDTV network telecast.

[Raistlin]

42 B.C. - Marcus Junius Brutus committed suicide after his defeat at the Battle of Philippi. He was a leading conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar.

1864 - During the U.S. Civil War, Union forces led by Gen. Samuel R. Curtis defeated the Confederate forces in Missouri that were under Gen. Stirling Price.

1869 - John (William) Heisman was born. He is recognized as one of the greatest innovators of the game of football.

1910 - Blanche S. Scott became the first woman to make a public solo airplane flight in the United States.

1915 - The first U.S. championship horseshoe tourney was held in Kellerton, IA.

1915 - Approximately 25,000 women demanded the right to vote with a march in New York City, NY.

1929 - In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged starting the stock-market crash that began the Great Depression.

1930 - J.K. Scott won the first miniature golf tournament. The event was held in Chattanooga, TN.

1942 - During World War II, the British began a major offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein, Egypt.

1944 - During World War II, the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

1946 - The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time.

1956 - Hungarian citizens began an uprising against Soviet occupation. On November 4, 1956 Soviet forces enter Hungar and eventually suppress the uprising.

1956 - NBC broadcasted the first videotape recording. The tape of Jonathan Winters was seen coast to coast in the U.S.

1958 - Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He was forced to refuse the honor due to negative Soviet reaction. Pasternak won the award for writing "Dr. Zhivago".

1962 - During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. naval "quarantine" of Cuba was approved by the Council of the Organization of American States (OAS).

1962 - The U.S. Navy reconnaissance squadron VFP-62 began overflights of Cuba under the code name "Blue Moon."

1971 - The U.N. General Assembly voted to expel Taiwan and seat Communist China.

1973 - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon agreed to turn over the subpoenaed tapes concerning the Watergate affair.

1978 - China and Japan formally ended four decades of hostility when they exchanged treaty ratifications.

1980 - The resignation of Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin was announced.

1983 - At Beirut International Airport, a suicide bomber destroyed a U.S. Marine compound and killed 241 U.S. Marines and sailors. 58 French paratroopers were killed in a near-simultaneous attack.

1984 - "NBC Nightly News" aired footage of the severe drought in Ethiopia.

1985 - U.S. President Reagan arrived in New York to address the U.N. General Assembly.

1989 - In Boston, MA, Charles Stuart claimed he and his pregnant wife, Carol, had been shot in their car by a black robber. Carol Stuart and her prematurely delivered baby died. Charles Stuart later died, an apparent suicide, after he was implicated in the murder of his wife and child.

1989 - Hungary became an independent republic, after 33 years of Soviet rule.

1992 - Japanese Emperor Akihito became the first Japanese emperor to stand on Chinese soil.

1992 - A former French health official was sentenced to four years in prison for allowing 1,200 hemophiliacs to receive AIDS-tainted blood.

1993 - Joe Carter (Toronto Blue Jays) became only the second player to end the World Series with a homerun.

1995 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President Bill Clinton agree to a joint peacekeeping effort in the war-torn Bosnia.

1996 - The civil trial of O.J. Simpson opened in Santa Monica, CA. Simpson was later found liable in the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

1998 - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a breakthrough in a land-for-peace West Bank accord.

1998 - Japan nationalized its first bank since World War II.

1998 - Dr. Barnett Slepian, a doctor who performed legal abortions, was killed at his home in suburban Buffalo, NY, by sniper fire through his kitchen window. James Kopp was charged with second-degree murder.

[Raistlin]

1512 - Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were first exhibited to the public.

1604 - "Othello," the tragedy by William Shakespeare, was first presented at Whitehall Palace in London.

1611 - "The Tempest," Shakespeare's romantic comedy, was first presented at Whitehall Palace in London.

1755 - At least 60,000 people were killed in Lisbon, Portugal by an earthquake, its aftershocks and the ensuing tsunami.

1765 - The British Parliament enacted The Stamp Act in the American colonies. The act was repealed in March of 1766 on the same day that the Parliament passed the Declaratory Acts which asserted that the British government had free and total legislative power of the colonies.

1800 - U.S. President John Adams became the first president to live in the White House when he moved in.

1848 - The first medical school for women, founded by Samuel Gregory, opened in Boston, MA. The Boston Female Medical School later merged with Boston University School of Medicine.

1856 - The first photography magazine, Daguerreian Journal, was published in New York City, NY.

1861 - Gen. George B. McClellan was made the general-in-chief of the American Union armies.

1864 - The U.S. Post Office started selling money orders. The money orders provided a safe way to payments by mail.

1870 - The U.S. Weather Bureau made its first meteorological observations using 24 locations that provided reports via telegraph.

1879 - Thomas Edison executed his first patent application for a high-resistance carbon filament (U.S. Pat. 223,898).

1894 - "Billboard Advertising" was published for the first time. It later became known as "Billboard."

1894 - Russian Emperor Alexander III died.

1904 - The Army War College in Washington, DC, enrolled the first class.

1911 - Italy used planes to drop bombs on the Tanguira oasis in Libya. It was the first aerial bombing.

1936 - Benito Mussolini made a speech in Milan, Italy, in which he described the alliance between Italy and Nazi Germany as an "axis" running between Berlin and Rome.

1937 - "Hilltop House" was aired for the first time on CBS Radio.

1937 - "Terry and the Pirates" debuted on NBC Radio.

1940 - "A Night in the Tropics" was released. It was the first movie for Abbott and Costello.

1944 - "Harvey," by Mary Chase, opened on Broadway.

1947 - The famous racehorse Man o' War died.

1949 - In Washington, 55 people were killed when a fighter plane hit an airliner.

1950 - Two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate U.S. President Harry Truman. One of the men was killed when they tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington, DC.

1950 - Charles Cooper became the first black man to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

1952 - The United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

1954 - Algeria began to rebel against French rule.

1959 - Jacques Plante, of the Montreal Canadiens, became the first goalie in the NHL to wear a mask.

1962 - "The Lucy Show" premiered.

1963 - The USSR launched Polyot I. It was the first satellite capable of maneuvering in all directions and able to change its orbit.

1968 - The movie rating system of G, M, R, X, followed by PG-13 and NC-17 went into effect.

1973 - Leon Jaworski was appointed the new Watergate special prosecutor in the Watergate case.

1979 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged all Iranians to demonstrate on November 4 and to expand their attacks against the U.S. and Israel. On November 4, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 63 Americans hostage.

1981 - The U.S. Postal Service raised the first-class letter rate to 20 cents.

1985 - In the village of Ignacio Aldama, 22 members of a Mexican anti-narcotics squad were killed by alleged drug traffickers.

1987 - Deng Xiaoping retired from China's Communist Party's Central Committee.

1989 - Tens of thousands of refugees to fled to the West when East Germany reopened its border with Czechoslovakia.

1989 - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announced the end of a cease-fire with the Contra rebels.

1993 - The European Community's treaty on European unity took effect.

1995 - In Dayton, OH, the Bosnian peace talks opened with the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia present.

1998 - Nicaraguan Vice President Enrique Bolanos announced that between 1,000 and 1,500 people were buried in a 32-square mile area below the slopes of the Casita volcano in northern Nicaragua by a mudslide caused by Hurricane Mitch.

1998 - Iridium inaugurated the first handheld, global satellite phone and paging system.

[Raistlin]

1721 - Peter the Great (Peter I), ruler of Russia, changed his title to emperor.

1776 - During the American Revolutionary War, William Demont, became the first traitor of the American Revolution when he deserted.

1783 - U.S. Gen. George Washington gave his "Farewell Address to the Army" near Princeton, NJ.

1867 - "Harpers Bazaar" magazine was founded.

1883 - Thomas Edison executed a patent application for an electrical indicator using the Edison effect lamp (U.S. Pat. 307,031).

1889 - North Dakota and South Dakota were admitted into the union as the 39th and 40th states.

1895 - In Chicago, IL, the first gasoline powered car contest took place in America.

1917 - British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed support for a "national home" for the Jews of Palestine.

1920 - The first commercial radio station in the U.S., KDKA of Pittsburgh, PA, began regular broadcasting.

1921 - Margaret Sander's National Birth Control League combined with Mary Ware Denetts Voluntary Parenthood League to form the American Birth Control League.

1930 - Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

1930 - The DuPont Company announced the first synthetic rubber. It was named DuPrene.

1937 - The play "I'd Rather be Right" opened in New York City.

1947 - Howard Hughes flew his "Spruce Goose," a huge wooden airplane, for eight minutes in California. It was the plane's first and only flight. The "Spruce Goose," nicknamed because of the white-gray color of the spruce used to build it, never went into production.

1948 - Harry S. Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey for the U.S. presidency. The Chicago Tribune published an early edition that had the headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." The Truman victory surprised many polls and newspapers.

1959 - Charles Van Doren, a game show contestant on the NBC-TV program "Twenty-One" admitted that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

1960 - In London, the novel "Lady Chatterly's Lover," was found not guilty of obscenity.

1962 - U.S. President Kennedy announced that the U.S.S.R. was dismantling the missile sites in Cuba.

1963 - South Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem was assassinated in a military coup.

1966 - The Cuban Adjustment Act allows 123,000 Cubans to apply for permanent residence in the U.S.

1979 - Joanna Chesimard, a black militant escaped from a New Jersey prison, where she'd been serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper.

1983 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a bill establishing a federal holiday on the third Monday of January in honor of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1984 - Velma Barfield became the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962. She had been convicted of the poisoning death of her boyfriend.

1985 - The South African government imposed severe restrictions on television, radio and newspaper coverage of unrest by both local and foreign journalists.

1986 - The 12-by-16-inch celluloid of a poison Apple from Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"" was purchased for $30,800.

1986 - American hostage David Jacobson was released after being held in Lebanon for 17 months by Shiite Muslims kidnappers.

1989 - Carmen Fasanella retired after 68 years and 243 days of taxicab service in Princeton, NJ.

1992 - Magic Johnson retired from the NBA again, this time for good because of fear due to his HIV infection.

1993 - The U.S. Senate called for full disclosure of Senator Bob Packwood's diaries in a sexual harassment probe.

1993 - Christie Todd Whitman was elected the first woman governor of New Jersey.

1995 - The play "Sacrilege" opened.

1995 - The U.S. expelled Daiwa Bank Ltd. for allegedly covering up $1.1 billion in trading losses.

1998 - U.S. President Clinton gave his first in-depth interview since the White House sex scandal to Black Entertainment Television talk show host and political commentator Tavis Smiley.

2001 - The computer-animated movie "Monsters, Inc." opened. The film recorded the best debut ever for an animated film and the 6th best of all time.

2003 - In the U.S., the Episcopal Church diocese consecrated the church's first openly gay bishop.

[Raistlin]

1507 - Leonardo DaVinci was commissioned by the husband of Lisa Gherardini to paint her. The work is known as the Mona Lisa.

1631 - The Reverend John Eliot arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was the first Protestant minister to dedicate himself to the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity.

1793 - Stephen F. Austin was born. He was the principal founder of Texas.

1796 - John Adams was elected the 2nd U.S. President.

1839 - The first Opium War between China and Britain erupted.

1892 - The first automatic telephone went into service at LaPorte, IN. The device was invented by Almon Strowger.

1900 - The first automobile show in the United States opened at New York's Madison Square Garden.

1903 - Panama proclaimed its independence from Columbia.

1934 - The first race track in California opened under a new pari-mutuel betting law.

1941 - U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Grew warned that the Japanese may be planning a sudden attack on the U.S.

1952 - Frozen bread was offered for sale for the first time in a supermarket in Chester, NY.

1953 - The Rules Committee of organized baseball restored the sacrifice fly. The rule had not been used since 1939.

1957 - Sputnik II was launched by the Soviet Union. It was the second manmade satellite to be put into orbit and was the first to put an animal into space, a dog named Laika.

1973 - The U.S. launched the Mariner 10 spacecraft. On March 29, 1974 it became the first spacecraft to reach the planet Mercury.

1975 - "Good Morning America" premiered on ABC-TV.

1979 - Five members of the Communist Workers' Party are shot to death in broad daylight at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Greensboro, NC. Eight others were wounded.

1986 - The Ash-Shiraa, pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, first broke the story of U.S. arms sales to Iran to secure the release of seven American hostages. The story turned into the Iran-Contra affair.

1987 - China told the U.S. that it would halt the sale of arms to Iran.

1991 - Israeli and Palestinian representatives held their first-ever face-to-face talks in Madrid, Spain.

1992 - Carol Moseley-Braun became the first African-American woman U.S. senator.

1994 - Susan Smith of Union, SC, was arrested for drowning her two sons. Nine days earlier Smith had claimed that the children had been abducted by a black carjacker.

1995 - U.S. President Clinton dedicated a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery to the 270 victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

1998 - Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, died at the age of 83.

1998 - A state-run newspaper in Iraq urged the country to prepare for to battle "the U.S. monster."

1998 - Minnesota elected Jesse "The Body" Ventura, a former pro wrestler, as its governor.

2003 - In Kabul, Afghanistan, a post-Taliban draft constitution was unveiled.

[Raistlin]

1842 - Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in Springfield, IL.

1846 - The patent for the artificial leg is granted to Benjamin Palmer.

1880 - James and John Ritty patented the first cash register.

1922 - In Egypt, Howard Carter discovered the entry of the lost tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen.

1924 - Nellie T. Ross of Wyoming was elected America's first woman governor so she could serve out the remaining term of her late husband, William B. Ross.

1939 - During World War II, the U.S. modified its neutrality stance with the Neutrality Act of 1939. The new policy allowed cash-and-carry purchases of arms by belligerents.

1939 - At the 40th National Automobile Show the first air-conditioned car was put on display.

1942 - During World War II, Axis forces retreated from El Alamein in North Africa. It was a major victory for the British.

1956 - Soviet forces enter Hungary in order to supress the uprising that had begun on October 23, 1956.

1965 - Lee Ann Roberts Breedlove became the first woman to exceed 300 mph when she went 308.5 mph.

1970 - Former King Peter II of Yugoslavia died in Denver, CO. He was the first European king or queen to die and to be buried in the U.S.

1979 - Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 63 Americans hostage (90 total hostages). The militants, mostly students, demanded that the U.S. send the former shah back to Iran to stand trial. Many hostages were later released, but 52 were held for the next 14 months.

1981 - The second scheduled flight of the space shuttle Columbia was canceled with only 31 seconds left in the countdown.

1984 - Nicaragua held its first free elections in 56 years.

1985 - Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko announced he was returning to the Soviet Union. He had charged that he had been kidnapped by the CIA.

1989 - About a million East Germans filled the streets of East Berlin in a pro-democracy rally.

1990 - Iraq issued a statement saying it was prepared to fight a "dangerous war" rather than give up Kuwait.

1991 - Ronald Reagan opened his presidential library in Simi Valley, CA. The dedication ceremony was attended by President Bush and former U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald R. Ford and Richard M. Nixon. It was the 1st gathering of 5 U.S. chief executives.

1995 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 73 years old, was assassinated by right-wing Israeli Yigal Amir after attending a peace rally.

1999 - Cristina Saralegui received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 - The United Nations imposed economic sanctions against the Taliban that controlled most of Afghanistan. The sanctions were imposed because the Taliban had refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, who had been charged with masterminding the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2001 - Hurrican Michelle hit Cuba destroying crops and thousands of homes. The United States made the gesture of sending humanitarian aid. On December 16, 2001, Cuba received the first commercial food shipment from the U.S. in nearly 40 years.

2010 - Microsoft's Kinect was launched worldwide.

[Raistlin]

1637 - Anne Hutchinson, the first female religious leader in the American colonies, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy.

1665 - "The London Gazette" was first published.

1811 - The Shawnee Indians of chief Tecumseh were defeated by William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Wabash (or (Tippecanoe).

1837 - In Alton, IL, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy was shot to death by a mob (supporters of slavery) while trying to protect his printing shop from a third destruction.

1874 - The Republican party of the U.S. was first symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly.

1876 - The cigarette manufacturing machine was patented by Albert H. Hook.

1877 - "The Sorcerer" was performed for the first time of 178 total performances.

1893 - The state of Colorado granted its women the right to vote.

1895 - The last spike was driven into Canada's first transcontinental railway in the mountains of British Columbia.

1914 - The "New Republic" magazine was printed for the first time.

1916 - Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

1917 - Russia's Bolshevik Revolution took place. The provisional government of Alexander Kerensky was overthrown by forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

1918 - During World War I, a false report through the United Press announced that an armistice had been signed.

1929 - The Museum of Modern Art in New York City opened to the public.

1932 - "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" was broadcast for the first on CBS Radio.

1933 - Voters in Pennsylvania eliminated sports from Pennsylvanian "Blue Laws."

1940 - The middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state collapsed during a windstorm. The suspension bridge had opened to traffic on July 1, 1940.

1944 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first person to win a fourth term as president.

1963 - The comedy "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" premiered in Hollywood.

1963 - Elston Howard, of the New York Yankees, became the first black player to be named the American League's Most Valuable Player.

1965 - The "Pillsbury Dough Boy" debuted in television commercials.

1967 - Carl Stokes was elected the first black mayor Cleveland, OH, becoming the first black mayor of a major city.

1967 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1967 - The U.S. Selective Service Commission announced that college students arrested in anti-war demonstrations would lose their draft deferments.

1973 - New Jersey became the first U.S. state to permit girls to play on Little League baseball teams.

1973 - The U.S. Congress over-rode President Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive's power to wage war without congressional approval.

1983 - A bomb exploded in the U.S. Capitol. No one was injured.

1985 - The Colombian army stormed the country's Palace of Justice. The siege claimed the lives of 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court Justices. The Palace had been seized by leftist guerrillas belonging to the April 19 Movement.

1987 - Tunisia's president Habib Bourguiba was overthrown. He had been president since the country's independence in 1956.

1988 - Sugar Ray Leonard knocked out Donnie LaLonde.

1989 - L. Douglas Wilder won the governor's race in Virginia, becoming the first elected African-American state governor in U.S. history.

1989 - David Dinkins was elected and become New York City's first African-American mayor.

1989 - Richard Ramirez, convicted of California's "Night Stalker" killings, was sentenced to death.

1991 - Magic Johnson (NBA) announced that he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, and that he was retiring from basketball.

1991 - Pro- and anti-Communists rallies took place in Moscow on the 74th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

1991 - Actor Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee Wee Herman, pled no contest to charges of indecent exposure. Reubens had been arrested in Sarasota, FL, for exposing himself in a theater.

1995 - In a Japanese courtroom, three U.S. military men admitted to the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl.

1999 - Tiger Woods became the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win four straight tournaments.

2000 - Hillary Rodham Clinton made history as the first president's wife to win public office. The state of New York elected her to the U.S. Senate.

2001 - The new .BIZ domain extension was officially launched.

2001 - After a 16-month stoppage the Concorde resumed flying commercially.

[Raistlin]

1656 - Edmond Halley was born. Halley, an astronomer-mathmatician, was the first to calculate the orbit that was named after him. The comet makes an appearance every 76 years.

1793 - The Louvre Museum, in Paris, opened to the public for the first time.

1805 - The "Corps of Discovery" reached the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was lead by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. The journey had begun on May 14, 1804, with the goal of exploring the Louisiana Purchase territory.

1880 - French actress Sarah Bernhardt made her American stage debut in "Adrienne Lecouvreur" in New York City.

1887 - Doc Holliday died at the age of 35. The gun fighting dentist died from tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Glenwood Springs, CO.

1889 - Montana became the 41st U.S. state.

1895 - Wilhelm Roentgen while experimenting with electricity discovered the scientific principle involved and took the first X-ray pictures.

1910 - William H. Frost patented the insect exterminator.

1923 - Adolf Hitler made his first attempt at seizing power in Germany with a failed coup in Munich that came to be known as the "Beer-Hall Putsch."

1933 - The Civil Works Administration was created by executive order by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The organization was designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed people in the U.S.

1939 - "Life With Father" premiered on Broadway in New York City.

1942 - The U.S. invaded Morocco and Algeria.

1942 - During World War II, Operation Torch began as U.S. and British forces landed in French North Africa.

1950 - During the Korean conflict, the first jet-plane battle took place as U.S. Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown shot down a North Korean MiG-15.

1954 - The American League approved the transfer of the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team to Kansas City, MO.

1956 - After turning down 18,000 names, the Ford Motor Company decided to name their new car the "Edsel," after Henry Ford's only son.

1959 - Elgin Baylor of the Minneapolis Lakers, scored 64 points and set a National Basketball Association scoring record.

1965 - The soap opera "Days of Our Lives" debuted on NBC-TV.

1966 - Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote.

1966 - Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California.

1979 - The program, "The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage", premiered on ABC-TV. The show was planned to be temporary, but it evolved into "Nightline" in March of 1980.

1979 - U.S. Senators John Warner (R-VA) and Mac Mathias (R-MD) introduced legislation to provide a site on the National Mall for the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1980 - Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California announced that they had discovered a 15th moon orbiting the planet Saturn.

1981 - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek asserted that Egypt was "an African State" that was "neither East nor West".

1985 - A letter signed by four American hostages in Lebanon was delivered to The Associated Press in Beirut. The letter, contained pleas from Terry Anderson, Rev. Lawrence Jenco, David Jacobsen and Thomas Sutherland to President Reagan to negotiate a release.

1986 - Vyacheslav M. Molotov died at age 96. During World War II, Molotov ordered the mass production of bottles filled with flammable liquid later called the "Molotov cocktail."

1987 - A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, at a ceremony honoring Britain's war dead. Eleven people were killed.

1990 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered more troop deployments in the Persian Gulf, adding about 150,000 soldiers to the multi-national force fighting against Iraq.

1991 - The European Community and Canada imposed economic sanctions on Yugoslavia in an attempt to stop the Balkan civil war.

1992 - About 350,000 people rallied in Berlin against racist violence.

1993 - Five Picasso paintings and other artwork were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Sweden. The works were valued at $52 million.

1997 - Chinese engineers diverted the Yangtze River to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.

2000 - In Florida, a statewide recount began to decide the winner of the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

2000 - Waco special counsel John C. Danforth released his final report that absolved the government of wrongdoing in the 1993 seige of the Branch Davidian compound in Texas.

2001 - The "Homage to Van Gogh: International Artists Pay Tribute to a Legend" exhibit opened at the Appleton Museum of Art in Florida.

[Raistlin]

1775 - The U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress. The Marines went out of existence after the end of the Revolutionary War in April of 1783. The Marine Corps were formally re-established on July 11, 1798. This day is observed as the birth date of the United States Marine Corps.

1801 - The U.S. state of Tennessee outlawed the practice of dueling.

1871 - Henry M. Stanley, journalist and explorer, found David Livingstone. Livingston was a missing Scottish missionary in central Africa. Stanley delivered his famous greeting: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

1879 - Western Union and the National Bell Telephone Company reached a settlement over various telephone patents.

1917 - 41 suffragists were arrested in front of the White House.

1919 - The American Legion held its first national convention, in Minneapolis, MN.

1928 - Michinomiya Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan.

1951 - Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began when Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, NJ, called his counterpart in Alameda, CA.

1954 - The Iwo Jima Memorial was dedicated in Arlington, VA.

1957 - 102,368 people attended the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams game. The crowd was the largest regular-season crowd in NFL history.

1969 - "Sesame Street" made its debut on PBS.

1970 - The Great Wall of China opened for tourism.

1975 - The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution that equated Zionism with racism. The resolution was repealed in December of 1991.

1975 - The Edmund Fitzgerald, an ore-hauling ship, and its crew of 29 vanished during a storm in Lake Superior.

1976 - The Utah Supreme Court gave approval for Gary Gilmore to be executed, according to his wishes. The convicted murderer was put to death the following January.

1977 - The Major Indoor Soccer League was officially organized in New York City.

1980 - CBS News anchor Dan Rather claimed he had been kidnapped in a cab. It turned out that Rather had refused to pay the cab fare.

1982 - Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev died of a heart attack at age 75. He was suceeded by Yuri V. Andropov.

1982 - In Washington, DC, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened to visitors.

1984 - The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1986 - Camille Sontag and Marcel Coudari, two Frenchmen were released by the captors that held them in Lebanon.

1988 - The U.S. Department of Energy announced that Texas would be the home of the atom-smashing super-collider. The project was cancelled by a vote of the U.S. Congress in Oct. 1993.

1990 - Chandra Shekhar was sworn in as India's new prime minister.

1991 - Robert Maxwell was buried in Israel, five days after his body was recovered off the Canary Islands.

1993 - John Wayne Bobbitt was acquitted on the charge of marital sexual assault against his wife who sexually mutilated him. Lorena Bobbitt was later acquitted of malicious wounding her husband.

1993 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Brady Bill, which called for a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases.

1994 - U.S. officials announced that it planned to stop enforcing the arms embargo against the Bosnian government the following week. The U.N. Security Council was opposed to lifting the ban.

1994 - Iraq recognized Kuwait's borders in the hope that the action would end trade sanctions.

1995 - Nigeria's military rulers hanged playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa along with several other anti-government activists.

1995 - In Katmandu, Nepal, searchers rescued 549 hikers after a massive avalanche struck the Himalayan foothills. The disaster left 24 tourists and 32 Nepalese dead.

1996 - Dan Marino (Miami Dolphins) became the first quarterback in NFL history to pass for more than 50,000 yards.

1997 - WorldCom Inc. acquired MCI Communication Corporation. It was the largest merger in U.S. history valued at $37 billion.

1997 - A jury in Virginia convicted Mir Aimal Kasi of the murder of two CIA employees in 1993.

1997 - A judge in Cambridge, MA, reduced Louise Woodward's murder conviction to manslaughter and sentenced the English au pair to time served. She had served 279 days in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen.

1998 - At the White House, "The Virtual Wall" website (www.thevirtualwall.org) was unveiled. The site allows visitors to experience The Wall through the Internet.

1999 - Ted Danson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

2001 - The World Trade Organization approved China's membership.

2001 - The musical "Lady Diana - A Smile Charms the World" opened in Germany.

2004 - Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) was awarded the "Man for Peace" prize in Rome at the opening of a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

[Raistlin]

1620 - The Mayflower Compact was signed by the 41 men on the Mayflower when they landed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod. The compact called for "just and equal laws.

1831 - Nat Turner, a slave and educated minister, was hanged in Jerusalem, VA, after inciting a violent slave uprising.

1851 - The telescope was patented by Alvan Clark.

1868 - The first indoor amateur track and field meet was held by the New York Athletic Club.

1880 - Australian outlaw and bank robber Ned Kelly was hanged at the Melbourne jail at age 25.

1887 - Labor Activists were hanged in Illinois after being convicted of being connected to a bombing that killed eight police officers.

1889 - Washington became the 42nd state of the United States.

1918 - World War I came to an end when the Allies and Germany signed an armistice. This day became recognized as Veteran's Day in the United States.

1918 - Poland was reestablished shortly after the surrender of Germnay.

1920 - The body of an unknown British soldier was buried in Westminster Abbey. The service was recorded with the first electronic recording process developed by Lionel Guest and H.O. Merriman.

1921 - The Tomb of the Unknowns was dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia by U.S. President Harding.

1938 - Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on network radio.

1940 - The Jeep made its debut.

1942 - During World War II, Germany completed its occupation of France.

1946 - The New York Knickerbockers (now the Knicks) played their first game at Madison Square Garden.

1952 - The first video recorder was demonstrated by John Mullin and Wayne Johnson in Beverly Hills, CA.

1965 - The government of Rhodesia declared its independence from Britain. The country later became known as Zimbabwe.

1965 - Walt Disney announced a project in Florida.

Disney movies, music and books

1966 - The U.S. launched Gemini 12 from Cape Kennedy, FL. The craft circled the Earth 59 times before returning.

1972 - The U.S. Army turned over its base at Long Bihn to the South Vietnamese army. The event symbolized the end of direct involvement in the Vietnam War by the U.S. military.

1975 - Civil war broke out when Angola gained independence from Portugal.

1981 - Stuntman Dan Goodwin scaled the outside of the 100-story John Hancock Center in Chicago in about six hours.

1981 - The U.S.S. Ohio was commissioned at the Electric Boat Division in Groton, CT. It was the first Trident class submarine.

1984 - The Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. died in Atlanta at age 84.

1984 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan accepted the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a gift to the nation from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

1984 - Gary Coleman, at age 13, underwent his second kidney transplant in Los Angeles. He had his first transplant at age 5.

1986 - Sperry Rand and Burroughs merged to form "Unisys," becoming the second largest computer company.

1987 - Vincent Van Gogh's "Irises" was sold for a then record 53.9 million dollars in New York.

1988 - Police in Sacramento, CA, found the first of seven bodies buried on the grounds of a boardinghouse. Dorothea Puente was later charged in the deaths of nine people, convicted of three murders and sentenced to life in prison.

1990 - Stormie Jones, the world's first heart-liver transplant recipient, died at a Pittsburgh hospital at age 13.

1991 - The U.S. stationed its first diplomat in Cambodia in 16 years to help the nation arrange democratic elections.

1992 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin told U.S. senators in a letter that Americans had been held in prison camps after World War II. Some were "summarily executed," but others were still living in his country voluntarily.

1992 - The Church of England voted to ordain women as priests.

1993 - Walt Disney Co. announced plans to build a U.S. history theme park in a Virginia suburb of Washington.

1993 - In Washington, DC, the Vietnam Women's Memorial was dedicated to honor the more than 11,000 women who had served in the Vietnam War.

1994 - In Gaza, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at an Israeli military checkpoint killing three soldiers.

1996 - The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund unveiled "The Wall That Heals." The work was a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that would tour communities throughout the United States.

1997 - The Eastman Kodak Company announced that they were laying off 10,000 employees.

1997 - Roger Clemens (Toronto Blue Jays) became the third major league player to win the Cy Young Award four times.

1998 - Jay Cochrane set a record for the longest blindfolded skywalk. He walked on a tightrope between the towers of the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas, NV. The towers are 600 feet apart.

1998 - Vincente Fernandez received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - Israel's Cabinet ratified a land-for-peace agreement with the Palestinians.

2002 - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pledged $100 million to fight AIDS in India.

[Raistlin]

1558 - Elizabeth I ascended the English throne upon the death of Queen Mary Tudor.

1603 - Sir Walter Raleigh went on trial for treason.

1796 - Catherine the Great of Russia died at the age of 67.

1798 - Irish nationalist leader Wolfe Tone committed suicide while in jail awaiting execution.

1800 - The U.S. Congress held its first session in Washington, DC, in the partially completed Capitol building.

1869 - The Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas.

1880 - The first three British female graduates received their Bachelor of Arts degrees from London University.

1903 - Russia's Social Democrats officially split into two groups - Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

1904 - The first underwater submarine journey was taken, from Southampton, England, to the Isle of Wight.

1913 - The steamship Louise became the first ship to travel through the Panama Canal.

1913 - In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm banned the armed forces from dancing the tango.

1922 - Siberia voted for union with the U.S.S.R.

1962 - Washington's Dulles International Airport was dedicated by U.S. President Kennedy.

1968 - NBC cut away from the final minutes of a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game to begin a TV special, "Heidi," on schedule. The Raiders came from behind to beat the Jets 43-32.

1970 - The Soviet Union landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon, the Lunokhod 1. The vehicle was released by Luna 17.

1973 - U.S. President Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, FL, "people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."

1979 - Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

1988 - Benazir Bhutto became the first woman leader of an Islamic country. She was elected in the first democratic elections in Pakistan in 11 years.

1990 - A mass grave was discovered by the bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand. The bodies were believed to be those of World War II prisoners of war.

1990 - The Soviet government agreed to change the country's constitution.

1997 - 62 people were killed by 6 Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt. The attackers were killed by police.

1997 - Mario Lemieux was voted into the NHL Hall of Fame.

2001 - "Toys "R" Us Times Square - The Center of the Toy Universe" opened in New York City.

2006 - Sony's PlayStation 3 went on sale in the United States.

2010 - Reasearchers trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms. It was the first time humans had trapped antimatter.

[Raistlin]

1477 - William Caxton produced "Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres," which was the first book to be printed in England.

1820 - Captain Nathaniel Palmer became the first American to sight the continent of Antarctica.

1865 - Samuel L. Clemens published "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" under the pen name "Mark Twain" in the New York "Saturday Press."

1883 - The U.S. and Canada adopted a system of standard time zones.

1903 - The U.S. and Panama signed a treaty that granted the U.S. rights to build the Panama Canal.

1916 - Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I, called off the Battle of the Somme in France. The offensive began on July 1, 1916.

1928 - The first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon premiered in New York. It was Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie," starring Mickey Mouse.

Disney movies, music and books

1936 - Germany and Italy recognized the Spanish government of Francisco Franco.

1942 - "The Skin of Our Teeth," by Thornton Wilder opened on Broadway.

1951 - Chuck Connors (Los Angeles Angels) became the first player to oppose the major league draft. Connors later became the star of the television show "The Rifleman."

1959 - William Wyler's "Ben-Hur" premiered at Loew's Theater in New York City's Times Square.

1966 - U.S. Roman Catholic bishops did away with the rule against eating meat on Fridays.

1969 - Apollo 12 astronauts Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. and Alan L. Bean landed on the lunar surface during the second manned mission to the moon.

1976 - The parliament of Spain approved a bill that established a democracy after 37 years of dictatorship.

1978 - In Jonestown, Guyana, Reverend Jim Jones persuaded his followers to commit suicide by drinking a death potion. Some people were shot to death. 914 cult members were left dead including over 200 children.

1983 - Argentina announced its ability to produce enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

1985 - Joe Theismann (Washington Redskins) broke his leg after being hit by Lawrence Taylor (New York Giants). The injury ended Theismann's 12 year National Football League (NFL) career.

1987 - The U.S. Congress issued the Iran-Contra Affair report. The report said that President Ronald Reagan bore "ultimate responsibility" for wrongdoing by his aides.

1987 - 31 people died in a fire at King's Cross, London's busiest subway station.

1987 - CBS Inc. announced it had agreed to sell its record division to Sony Corp. for about $2 billion.

1988 - U.S. President Reagan signed major legislation provided the death penalty for drug traffickers who kill.

1991 - Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon freed Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.

1993 - The U.S. House of Representatives joined the U.S. Senate in approving legislation aimed at protecting abortion facilities, staff and patients.

1993 - American Airlines flight attendants went on strike. They ended their strike only 4 days later.

1993 - Representatives from 21 South African political parties approved a new constitution.

1994 - Outside a mosque in the Gaza Strip, 15 people were killed and more than 150 wounded when Palestinian police opened fire on rioting worshipers.

1997 - The FBI officially pulled out of the probe into the TWA Flight 800 disaster. They said the explosion that destroyed the Boeing 747 was not caused by a criminal act. 230 people were killed.

1997 - First Union Corp. announced its purchase of CoreStates Financial Corp. for $16.1 billion. To date it was the largest banking deal in U.S. history.

1999 - 12 people were killed and 28 injured when a huge bonfire under construction collapsed at Texas A&M in College Station, TX.

2001 - Nintendo released the GameCube home video game console in the United States.

[Raistlin]

1794 - The U.S. and Britain signed the Jay Treaty, which resolved the issues left over from the Revolutionary War.

1850 - The first life insurance policy for a woman was issued. Carolyn Ingraham, 36 years old, bought the policy in Madison, NJ.

1863 - U.S. President Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.

1893 - The first newspaper color supplement was published in the Sunday New York World.

1895 - The "paper pencil" was patented by Frederick E. Blaisdell.

1919 - The U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles with a vote of 55 in favor to 39 against. A two-thirds majority was needed for ratification.

1928 - "Time" magazine presented its cover in color for the first time. The subject was Japanese Emperor Hirohito.

1942 - During World War II, Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans along the Don front.

1954 - Two automatic toll collectors were placed in service on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey.

1959 - Ford Motor Co. announced it was ending the production of the unpopular Edsel.

1966 - Sandy Koufax (Los Angeles Dodgers) announced his retirement from major league baseball.

1969 - Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made man's second landing on the moon.

1970 - Hafiz al-Assad seized power in Syria.

1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to set foot in Israel on an official visit.

1979 - Nolan Ryan (Houston Astros) signed a four-year contract for $4.5 million. At the time, Ryan was the highest paid player in major league baseball.

1981 - U.S. Steel agreed to pay $6.3 million for Marathon Oil.

1984 - Almost 500 people died in a firestorm after a series of explosions at a Mexico City petroleum storage plant.

1984 - Dwight Gooden, 20-year-old, of the New York Mets, became the youngest major-league pitcher to be named Rookie of the Year in the National League. (MLB)

1985 - U.S. President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began their summit in Geneva.

1990 - NATO and the Warsaw Pact signed a treaty of nonaggression.

1993 - The U.S. Senate approved a sweeping $22.3 billion anti-crime measure.

1994 - The U.N. Security Council authorized NATO to bomb rebel Serb forces striking from neighboring Croatia.

1997 - In Carlisle, IA, septuplets were born to Bobbi McCaughey. It was only the second known case where all seven were born alive.

1998 - The impeachment inquiry of U.S. President Clinton began.

1998 - Vincent van Gogh's "Portrait of the Artist Without Beard" sold at auction for more than $71 million.

1998 - Michelle Lee received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 - In Istanbul, Turkey, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded a two-day summit after adopting a new arms accord. During the conference, Russia was criticized for its military campaign against Chechnya's separatist movement.

2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush signed the most comprehensive air security bill in U.S. history.

2002 - The oil tanker Prestige broke into two pieces and sank off northwest Spain. The tanker lost about 2 million gallons of fuel oil when it ruptured November 13th and was towed about 150 miles out to sea.

2002 - The U.S. government completed its takeover of security at 424 airports nationwide.

2003 - Eight competing designs for a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center were unveiled.

[Raistlin]

1620 - Peregrine White was born aboard the Mayflower in Massachusetts Bay. White was the first child to be born of English parents in present-day New England.

1789 - New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

1818 - Simon Bolivar formally declared Venezuela independent of Spain.

1873 - Budapest was formed when the rival cities of Buda and Pest were united to form the capital of Hungary.

1889 - Astronomer Edwin Hubble was born. Hubble discovered and developed the concept of an expanding universe. In 1924 he proved the existence of galaxies other than our own.

1901 - The second Hay-Pauncefoot Treaty provided for construction of the Panama Canal by the U.S.

1910 - Francisco I. Madero led a revolution that broke out in Mexico.

1925 - Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Brookline, MA.

1929 - The radio program "The Rise of the Goldbergs," later known as "The Goldbergs," made its debut on the NBC Blue Network.

1943 - During World War II, U.S. Marines began their landing on Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands.

1945 - 24 Nazi leaders went before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.

1947 - Britain's Princess Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh in Westminster Abbey.

1959 - Britain, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Sweden met to create the European Free Trade Association.

1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis ended. The Soviet Union removed its missiles and bombers from Cuba and the U.S. ended its blockade of the island.

1962 - Mickey Mantle was named the American League Most Valuable Player for the third time.

1967 - The Census Clock at the Department of Commerce in Washington, DC, went past 200 million.

1969 - The Nixon administration announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part of a total phase out of the substance.

1970 - The majority in U.N. General Assembly voted to give China a seat, but two-thirds majority required for admission was not met.

1975 - After nearly 40 years of absolute rule Spain's General Francisco Franco died.

1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to address Israel's parliament.

1983 - An estimated 100 million people watched the controversial ABC-TV movie "The Day After." The movie depicted the outbreak of nuclear war.

1986 - Dr. Halfdan Maher, the director of the World Health Organization, announced the first coordinated global effort to fight the disease AIDS.

1987 - Police investigating the fire at King's Cross, London's busiest subway station, said that arson was unlikely to be the cause of the event that took 31 lives.

1988 - Egypt and China announced that they would recognize the Palestinian state proclaimed by the Palestine National Council.

1989 - Over 200,000 people rallied peacefully in Prague, Czechoslovakia, demanding democratic reforms.

1990 - Saddam Hussein ordered another 250,000 Iraqi troops into the country of Kuwait.

1990 - The space shuttle Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, FL, after completing a secret military mission.

1992 - A fire seriously damaged the northwest side of Windsor Castle in England.

1993 - The U.S. Senate passed the Brady Bill and legislation implementing NAFTA.

1994 - The Angolan government and rebels signed a treaty in Zambia to end 19 years of war.

1995 - Princess Diana admitted being unfaithful to Prince Charles in an interview that was broadcast on BBC Television.

1998 - Afghanistan's Taliban militia offered Osama bin Laden safe haven. Osama bin Laden had been accused of orchestrating two U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and later terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.

1998 - Forty-six states agreed to a $206 billion settlement of health claims against the tobacco industry. The industry also agreed to give up billboard advertising of cigarettes.

2001 - The U.S. Justice Department headquarters building was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy building by President George W. Bush. The event was held on what would have been Kennedy's 76th birthday.

[Raistlin]

1620 - The Mayflower reached Provincetown, MA. The ship discharged the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, on December 26, 1620.

1694 - French author and philosopher Jean Francois Voltaire was born. At age 65 he spent only three days writing "Candide."

1783 - The first successful flight was made in a hot air balloon. The pilots, Francois Pilatre de Rosier and Francois Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes, flew for 25 minutes and 5½ miles over Paris.

1789 - North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1871 - M.F. Galethe patented the cigar lighter.

1877 - Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of his phonograph.

1922 - Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the first woman to serve as a member of the U.S. Senate.

1929 - Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali had his first art exhibit.

1934 - The New York Yankees purchased the contract of Joe DiMaggio from San Francisco of the Pacific Coast League.

1942 - The Alaska highway across Canada was formally opened.

1953 - British Natural History Museum authorities announced that "Piltdown Man" was a hoax.

1962 - U.S. President Kennedy terminated the quaratine measures against Cuba.

1963 - U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, arrived in San Antonio, TX. They were beginning an ill-fated, two-day tour of Texas that would end in Dallas.

1973 - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, announced the presence of an 18½-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to the Watergate case.

1979 - The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was attacked by a mob that set the building afire and killed two Americans.

1980 - An estimated 83 million viewers tuned in to find out "who shot J.R." on the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas. Kristin was the character that fired the gun.

1980 - 87 people died in a fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas, NV.

1982 - The National Football League (NFL) resumed its season following a 57-day player's strike.

1985 - Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested after being accused of spying for Israel. He was later sentenced to life in prison.

1986 - U.S. Attorney General Meese was asked to conduct an inquiry of the Iran arms sales.

1987 - An eight-day siege began at a detention center in Oakdale, LA, as Cuban detainees seized the facility and took hostages.

1989 - The proceedings of Britain's House of Commons were televised live for the first time.

1992 - U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, issued an apology but refused to discuss allegations that he'd made unwelcome sexual advances toward 10 women in past years.

1993 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted against making the District of Columbia the 51st state.

1994 - NATO warplanes bombed an air base in Serb-held Croatia that was being used by Serb planes to raid the Bosnian "safe area" of Bihac.

1995 - France detonated its fourth underground nuclear blast at a test site in the South Pacific.

1995 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 5,000-mark (5,023.55) for the first time.

1999 - China announced that it had test-launched an unmanned space capsule that was designed for manned spaceflight.

2000 - The Florida Supreme Court granted Al Gore's request to keep the presidential recounts going.

2001 - Microsoft Corp. proposed giving $1 billion in computers, software, training and cash to more than 12,500 of the poorest schools in the U.S. The offer was intended as part of a deal to settle most of the company's private antitrust lawsuits.

2002 - NATO invited Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.