EVENTS
- 1746 – Princeton University in New Jersey receives its charter.
- 1779 – First person to jump with a parachute. French balloonist André-Jacques Garnerin jumped out of a balloon over Parc Monceau in Paris using a silk parachute that he made himself.
- 1836 – Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.
- 1883 – The Metropolitan Opera House opens in New York City
- 1884 – International Meridian Conference adopts Greenwich, England as initial longitudinal meridian. 26 countries participated in the conference which was held in Washington, D.C. In addition to making the meridian passing through the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude or 0 degree longitude, the conference also defined a universal day which would “begin for all the world at the moment of mean midnight at the initial meridian, coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that meridian; and is to be counted from zero up to twenty-four hours”.
- 1936 – End of the Long March in China. The Long March, a 6000-mile journey made by members of the Red Army led by Mao Zedong came to an end. The March was undertaken as a way to escape the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek. The end of the March is also known in China as the “union of the three armies”.
- 1957 – François Duvalier takes office. François Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc, became the President of Haiti.
- 1962 – President John F. Kennedy appeared on television to inform Americans of the existence of Russian missiles in Cuba. The President demanded their removal and announced a naval “quarantine” of Cuba. Six days later, the Russians announced they would remove the weapons. In return, the U.S. later removed missiles from Turkey.
- 1979 – The exiled Shah of Iran arrived in the United States for medical treatment. A few weeks later, Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. They demanded the return of the Shah for trial. The U.S. refused. The Shah died of cancer in July of 1980. The hostages were freed in January of 1981.2008 – India Launches its First Lunar Mission. The unmanned space probe called Chandrayaan-1 was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation. The probe successfully landed on the Moon on November 14, 2008, making India the 5th country to land a spacecraft on the Moon.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1734 – Daniel Boone (American Pioneer)
- 1811 – Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was born in Raiding, Hungary (He was a brilliant pianist best known for Hungarian Rhapsody No (2, Liebestraum No (3, and his Faust and Dante symphonies).
- 1844 – Louis Riel (Canadian politician)
- 1870 – Ivan Bunin (Russian author, poet, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1949 – Arsène Wenger (French footballer, manager)
- 1952 – Jeff Goldblum (Actor)
- 1963 – Brian Boitano (Figure Skater)
- 1964 – Toby Mac (Singer – DC Talk)
- 1973 – Ichiro Suzuki (Japanese baseball player)
- 1982 – Heath Miller (Football Player)
- 1985 – Zachary Hanson (Singer – Hanson)
- 1990 – Jonathan Lipnicki (Actor – Jerry McGuire)
DEATHS
- 741 – Charles Martel (Frankish military leader, politician)
- 1906 – Paul Cézanne (French painter)
- 1954 – Jibanananda Das (Bengali poet)
- 1995 – Kingsley Amis (English author, poet, critic)
- 2002 – Richard Helms (American diplomat, 8th Director of Central Intelligence)