EVENTS
- 1842 – Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois.
- 1862 – Richard Gatling patented his first rapid-fire machine-gun which used revolving barrels rotating around a central mechanism to load, fire, and extract the cartridges.
- 1890 – The first electrified underground railway system was officially opened in London.
- 1924 – Nellie Ross of Wyoming becomes the first woman governor in the US. In addition to being the first woman to be ever elected as a state governor in the US, she was also the first female director of the United States Mint.
- 1942 – During World War II, British troops led by Bernard Montgomery defeated the Germans under Erwin Rommel at El Alamein after a twelve-day battle.
- 1948 – T.S. Eliot wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
- 1952 – US National Security Agency formed. The NSA as it is popularly known is an intelligence organization that is responsible for monitoring and collecting signal intelligence around the world. The agency was preceded by the Armed Forces Security Agency.
- 1956 – Soviet Russian troops moved in to crush an uprising in Hungary.
- 1979 – About 500 young Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Iran, and took 90 hostages, including 52 Americans that they held captive for 444 days.
- 1980 – Ronald Reagan defeats incumbent US President Jimmy Carter by a wide margin.
- 1995 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated as he left a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
- 2003 – The largest-ever solar flare is recorded.
- 2008 – Barack Obama is elected. The first African-American to be elected President of the United States, Obama is the 44th person to occupy the Oval Office. He succeeded President George W. Bush and he has been elected to the office twice.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1879 – American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) was born in Oologah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) (“All I know is what I read in the newspapers,” he once joked. He was killed in an airplane crash with aviator Wiley Post near Point Barrow, Alaska.
- 1916 – Walter Cronkite (News anchor)
- 1933 – Charles K. Kao (Chinese physicist, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1946 – Laura Bush (First Lady of the United States)
- 1951 – Traian Băsescu (Romanian politician, 4th President of Romania)
- 1957 – Tony Abbott (Australian politician)
- 1960 – Kathy Griffin (American comedian, actress)
- 1961 – Ralph Macchio (Actor)
- 1961 – Jeff Probst (Host of Survivor)
- 1969 – Sean Diddy Combs (Rapper)
- 1969 – Matthew McConaughey (Actor)
DEATHS
- 1847 – Felix Mendelssohn (German pianist, composer, conductor)
- 1924 – Gabriel Fauré (French pianist, composer, educator)
- 1995 – Yitzhak Rabin (Israeli politician, 5th Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 2008 – Michael Crichton (American author, screenwriter, director, producer)
- 2015 – René Girard (French historian, critic, philosopher)