1305 ~ Execution of William Wallace.

1754 ~ Birthday of King Louis XVI of France.

1833 ~ Slavery was abolished in the English colonies.

1912 ~ Birthday of Gene Kelly, Dancer & Actor.

1926 ~ Death of Rudolph Valentino, Italian actor.

1927 ~ Italian-born anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in Boston.

1962 ~ First live television connection between the United States and Europe, via the Telstar satellite.

1981 ~ Birthday of Carmen Luvana, Porn Actress.

1990 ~ Saddam Hussein appeared on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests”.

1996 ~ Osama bin Laden's fatwa entitled "A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places" was published in Al Quds Al Arabi.

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1456 ~ The printing of the Gutenberg Bible was completed.

1880 ~ Birthday of Joshua Lionel Cowen, inventor of the toy electric train.

1929 ~ Birthday of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader.

1932 ~ Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop.

1939 ~ The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (also known as Nazi-Soviet Pact) was signed.

1960 ~ Birthday of Cal Ripken, Jr., baseball player.

1979 ~ Death of Hanna Reitsch, German test pilot.

1981 ~ Mark Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.

1992 ~ Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida.

2006 ~ "Planet" was redefined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) such that Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

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I suspect if there were folks on Jupiter, their IAU would declare Mercury, Venus and Earth as "Dwarf Planets," too.

Too bad, I always liked the planet ... er ... dwarf planet Pluto.

It's only one small group of astronomers.

We know better.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

I'm with you guys.

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1835 ~ The New York Sun printed The Great Moon Hoax.

1867 ~ Death of Michael Faraday, Scientist.

1875 ~ Matthew Webb became the first man to swim the English Channel.

1894 ~ Shibasaburo Kitasato discovered the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and published his findings in The Lancet.

1900 ~ Birthday of Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, Scientist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1953.

1918 ~ Birthday of Leonard Bernstein, Conductor & Composer.

1944 ~ Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.

1982 ~ Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Neptune.

1987 ~ Birthday of Whitney Stevens, Porn Actress.

1991 ~ Linus Torvalds sent the email announcing his project to create the Linux operating system.

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55 B.C. ~ Julius Caesar invaded Britain.

1071 ~ The Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine Empire at Manzikert.

1498 ~ Michelangelo commissioned to carve the Pieta.

1839 ~ The ship Amistad was captured off Long Island.

1847 ~ Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic.

1910 ~ Birthday of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed.

1920 ~ The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was declared in effect.

1961 ~ The International Hockey Hall of Fame opened in Toronto.

1967 ~ Birthday of Kelly Madison, porn star.

1996 ~ President Clinton signed welfare reform into law under his promise to "end welfare as we know it".

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1776 ~ British forces under General William Howe defeated the Americans under General George Washington in the Battle of Long Island.

1813 ~ Napoleon defeated the Austrians, Russians and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden.

1828 ~ Krakatoa erupted; approximately 36,000 people on the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra drowned.

1896 ~ Anglo-Zanzibar War. Lasting only 45 minutes, it holds the record of being the shortest war in recorded history.

1908 ~ Birthday of Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president.

1939 ~ First jet aircraft flight; a Heinkel He 178, piloted by Erich Warsitz.

1945 ~ American troops began landing in Japan following the surrender of the Japanese government in World War II.

1947 ~ Birthday of Harry Reems, Porn Star (Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, etc.).

1962 ~ The Mariner 2 space probe launched to Venus.

1967 ~ Death of Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles.

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430 ~ Death of Augustine of Hippo, Philosopher, Theologian.

1749 ~ Birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Philosopher, Scientist.

1828 ~ Birthday of Leo Tolstoy, Author. His “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence” influenced Martin Luther King, Jr.

1845 ~ First issue of Scientific American magazine published.

1850 ~ Richard Wagner's opera “Lohengrin” premiered, from which comes the Bridal Chorus, traditionally played at Western weddings, and commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride".

1897 ~ Birthday of Charles Boyer, Actor.

1963 ~ During a civil rights rally in at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech.

1988 ~ Ramstein airshow disaster: 75 people were killed and 346 seriously injured.

1990 ~ Iraq declared Kuwait to be a province of Iraq.

1991 ~ The collapse of the USSR: Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

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1632 ~ Birthday of John Locke, Philosopher.

1896 ~ Chop suey was invented in New York City.

1949 ~ The Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1952 ~ Premiere of John Cage's 4'33" in Woodstock, New York.

1957 ~ Sen. Strom Thurmond, D-S.C., ended the longest filibuster in Senate history after talking for 24 hours, 18 minutes against a civil rights bill.

1966 ~ The Beatles performed their last concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

1981 ~ Birthday of Lanny Barbie, Canadian Porn actress.

1982 ~ Death of Ingrid Bergman, Swedish actress.

1991 ~ The Downfall of the Soviet Union: The Supreme Soviet suspended all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.

2005 ~ Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Louisiana coast, overwhelming the levees protecting New Orleans and causing massive flooding.

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2005 ~ Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Louisiana coast, overwhelming the levees protecting New Orleans and causing massive flooding AND DEATH.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

2011 ~ Hurricane Irene's current death toll: 21

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1862 ~ Confederate armies under Generals Jackson & Longstreet defeated Union forces led by General Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Va.

1871 ~ Birthday of Ernest Rutherford, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908.

1909 ~ Burgess Shale fossils discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.

1918 ~ Birthday of Baseball hall-of-famer Ted Williams.

1940 ~ Death of J.J. Thomson, English physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1906. Prof. Thomson identified the electron as a subatomic particle, the first one to be discovered. In one of the greater ironies of modern physics his son, G.P. Thomson later received the prize for proving that the electron was also, in fact, a wave.

1963 ~ Hotline between U.S. and Soviet leaders went into operation.

1963 ~ Death of Guy Burgess, English-born Soviet spy.

1987 ~ Thurgood Marshall confirmed as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1999 ~ East Timorese voted for independence in a referendum.

2006 ~ Death of Glenn Ford, Canadian-born actor.

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1879 ~ Birthday of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel. This woman knew how to live!

1888 ~ Mary Ann Nichols murdered. She was perhaps the first of Jack the Ripper's victims.

1918 ~ Birthday of Alan Jay Lerner, American composer ( Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady).

1935 ~ Birthday of Frank Robinson, Baseball Player, Manager.

1945 ~ Birthday of Itzhak Perlman, Violinist.

1945 ~ Birthday of Van Morrison, Irish musician (“Brown-Eyed Girl", "Moondance" and "Domino").

1962 ~ Trinidad and Tobago became independent.

1980 ~ Solidarity labor union formed in Poland.

1997 ~ Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris.

2006 ~ Edvard Munch's stolen painting "The Scream" was recovered.

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1653 ~ Birthday of Johann Pachelbel, Composer. Remember the theme music of “Ordinary People”? That’s “Pachelbel's Canon” (which is not really a Canon).

1914 ~ The last Passenger Pigeon died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.

1939 ~ Germany attacked Poland, beginning World War II.

1946 ~ Birthday of Barry Gibb, English singer (Bee Gees).

1967 ~ Death of Ilse Koch, "The Bitch of Buchenwald", Nazi war criminal.

1967 ~ Death of Siegfried Sassoon, English poet.

1972 ~ Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.

1976 ~ Birthday of Jada Fire, Porn actress.

1983 ~ Korean Air Flight KAL-007 was shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft entered Soviet airspace.

1985 ~ A joint American-French expedition located the wreck of the RMS Titanic.

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