1856 ~ Birthday of H. Rider Haggard, Author.

1874 ~ Death of Howard Staunton, English chess master, and inspiration for the standard for tournament chess pieces.

1940 ~ WWII: France forced to sign armistice with Germany.

1941 ~ WWII: Germany invaded the USSR.

1969 ~ Death of Judy Garland, Singer & Actress.

1976 ~ Canadian House of Commons voted to abolish capital punishment.

1986 ~ Diego Maradona scored both the Hand of God goal and the Goal of the Century against England during the FIFA World Cup in Mexico City.

1987 ~ Death of Fred Astaire, Dancer & Actor.

1978 ~ Discovery of the first satellite of Pluto, Charon.

2008 ~ Death of George Carlin, Comedian.

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1314 ~ Scotland regained its independence in the Battle of Bannockburn, when Scotland's King Robert I defeated the English.

1519 ~ Death of Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara.

1896 ~ Birthday of Jack Dempsey, Heavyweight boxer.

1910 ~ Japan invaded Korea.

1915 ~ Birthday of Fred Hoyle, cosmologist and science fiction author.

1948 ~ Communist forces cut off all land and water routes between West Germany and West Berlin, prompting the U.S. to organize the Berlin Airlift.

1947 ~ Birthday of Mick Fleetwood, Musician (Fleetwood Mac).

1957 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.

1985 ~ STS-51-G Discovery completed its mission, with Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as the Payload Specialist.

1997 ~ The Roswell Incident debunked by the USAF.

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1876 ~ Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out in the Battle of Little Big Horn.

1894 ~ Birthday of Hermann Oberth, Physicist & one of the founding fathers of Rocketry and Astronautics.

1903 ~ Birthday of George Orwell, Writer.

1950 ~ The Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea.

1975 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Kramnik, Russian chess player.

1991 ~ Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.

1993 ~ Kim Campbell became the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

1997 ~ An unmanned cargo ship crashed into Russia's Mir space station, knocking out half of the station's power and rupturing a pressurized laboratory.

1997 ~ Death of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, French Explorer, Scientist & Inventor.

1998 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 unconstitutional.

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1824 ~ Birthday of Lord Kelvin, Physicist. In 1900, he gave a lecture titled Nineteenth-Century Clouds over the Dynamical Theory of Heat and Light. Talk about prescient!

1898 ~ Birthday of Willy Messerschmitt, Aircraft Designer.

1933 ~ Birthday of Claudio Abbado, Conductor.

1934 ~ Initial flight of the first practical helicopter, the Focke-Wulf 61. You must scroll down a bit through the Hanna Reitsch page to get to the FW-61 entry, but her write up of her experience it is an interesting read.

1959 ~ Queen Elizabeth and President Eisenhower inaugurated the St Lawrence Seaway.

1963 ~ President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he offered American solidarity to the citizens of West Germany: "Ich bin ein Berliner".

1964 ~ The Beatles released the album A Hard Day's Night.

1997 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment, and thus unconstitutional.

2003 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas.

2007 ~ Death of Liz Claiborne, Belgian born fashion designer.

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1829 ~ Death of James Smithson, English scientist and philanthropist.

1838 ~ Birthday of Paul von Mauser, Weapon Designer.

1880 ~ Birthday of Helen Keller, spokeswoman for the Deaf and Blind.

1905 ~ Mutiny on the battleship Potemkin.

1950 ~ The U.S. decided to send armed forces to fight in the Korean War.

1954 ~ The world's first nuclear power station went on line in Obninsk, near Moscow.

1957 ~ First British Smoking Causes Lung Cancer report released.

1967 ~ The world's first ATM installed in Enfield, London.

1984 ~ Pierre Trudeau won the Albert Einstein Peace Prize.

2001 ~ Death of Jack Lemmon, Actor & Film Director.

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1838 ~ Birthday of Paul von Mauser, Weapon Designer.

A giant among armourers.

I own and use a Mauser G98 which is a minimum 94 years old (max 113) which saw action in 3 wars.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

I just looked it up. A good piece of gear, as my brother would say!

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As close to an antique as I'll ever own, and it still goes bang.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

1577 ~ Birthday of Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish Baroque Painter.

1712 ~ Birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Franco-Swiss Philosopher.

1880 ~ The Australian bushranger Ned Kelly was captured at Glenrowan.

1914 ~ Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophia were killed by a Serbian nationalist, the casus belli of World War I.

1919 ~ The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I.

1926 ~ Birthday of Mel Brooks, Filmmaker.

1992 ~ Death of Mikhail Tal, eighth World Chess Champion.

1996 ~ The Citadel voted to admit women, ending a 153-year-old men-only policy at the South Carolina military school.

2001 ~ Death of Mortimer Adler, Philosopher & co-founder of Great Books of the Western World.

2004 ~ The U.S.-led coalition transferred sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government.

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1861 ~ Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poet. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”

1895 ~ Death of Thomas Henry Huxley, Scientist. "Darwin's Bulldog"

1922 ~ France granted 1 km² at Vimy Ridge "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada, the free use of the land exempt from all taxes".

1963 ~ Birthday of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Violinist.

1971 ~ Birthday of Kaitlyn Ashley, Porn Actress.

1974 ~ Isabel Peron is sworn in as first female president for Argentina.

1995 ~ U.S. Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with Russian space station Mir.

1995 ~ The Sampoong Department Store collapse disaster.

2003 ~ Death of Katharine Hepburn, Actress.

2007 ~ Apple released the iPhone.

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Samuel Colt, inventor of the Colt revolver, born today in 1814. Great idea dm....this could be fun and informative! I love trivial facts! Seems to suggest, be grateful for where you live!

1905 ~ During his annus mirabilis, Albert Einstein published the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies (PDF) in which he introduced special relativity.

That must have been an exciting period to be a physicist!

1908 ~ Tunguska impact event occurred in Siberia.

1934 ~ Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany took place.

1936 ~ ''Gone with the Wind'' by Margaret Mitchell published.

1943 ~ Birthday of Florence Ballard, American Singer (The Supremes).

1971 ~ The crew of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft died when the landing capsule depressurized after separating from the main craft.

1990 ~ East and West Germany merged their economies.

1997 ~ The UK returns sovereignty over Hong Kong to the PRC.

2003 ~ Death of Buddy Hackett, American comic.

2007 ~ Death of Ingmar Bergman, Swedish Film-maker.

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1646 ~ Birthday of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German Mathematician & Philosopher.

1863 ~ The American Civil War battle of Gettysburg began.

1916 ~ On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 18,000 British soldiers were killed, and 40,000 wounded.

1925 ~ Death of Erik Satie, French Composer.

1963 ~ The British Government admitted that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent.

1980 ~ "O Canada" became the national anthem of Canada.

2000 ~ Death of Walter Matthau, Actor.

2004 ~ Cassini-Huygens was successfully inserted into orbit around Saturn.

2004 ~ Death of Marlon Brando, Actor.

2007 ~ Smoking in England is banned in all public indoor spaces.

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1906 ~ Birthday of Hans Bethe, German-born Physicist., awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1967.

1937 ~ Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.

1947 ~ Something the Army Air Force later said was a weather balloon crashed near Roswell, N.M. Eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.

1961 ~ Death of Ernest Hemingway, Author, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1954.

1964 ~ President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

1966 ~ France began nuclear weapons testing at Moruroa in the South Pacific.

1977 ~ Death of Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born novelist.

1982 ~ Larry Walters attached 45 helium balloons to a lawn chair and ascended into history and to a height of 11,000 feet.

1989 ~ Death of Andrei Gromyko, Soviet politician.

1997 ~ Death of Jimmy Stewart, Actor.

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1863 ~ The final day of the battle of Gettysburg.

1883 ~ Birthday of Franz Kafka, Czech-born German author.

1935 ~ Death of André Citroën, Automobile Pioneer.

1938 ~ World speed record, 126 mph, set for a steam railway locomotive, by the Mallard.

1962 ~ Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.

1969 ~ Death of Brian Jones, English musician (The Rolling Stones).

1969 ~ A test flight of the Soviet N1 rocket ended in a spectactular failure.

1971 ~ Death of Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors.

1986 ~ Death of Rudy Vallee, Singer, Actor, Bandleader, & Entertainer.

1988 ~ USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf.

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