
1611 – The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson’s fourth voyage set Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay; they were never heard from again.
1713 – The French residents of Acadia were given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada.
1812 – War of 1812: Great Britain revoked the restrictions on American commerce, thus eliminating one of the chief reasons for going to war.
1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called the “Type-Writer”.
1888 – Frederick Douglass was first African-American to be nominated for US Vice President.
1917 – In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retired 26 batters in a row after replacing Babe Ruth, who had been ejected for punching the umpire.
1926 – The College Board administered the first SAT exam.
1938 – The Civil Aeronautics Act was signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States.
1940 – Adolf Hitler went on a three-hour tour of the architecture of Paris with architect Albert Speer and sculptor Arno Breker in his only visit to the city.
1942 – World War II: Germany’s latest fighter aircraft, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, was captured intact when the pilot mistakenly lands at a Royal Air Force base in Wales.
1960 – The United States Food and Drug Administration declared Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world.
1969 – IBM announced that effective January 1970 it would price its software and services separately from hardware thus creating the modern software industry.
1970 – Singer Chubby Checker was arrested for marijuana possession.
1972 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman were taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.
1973 – A fire at a house in Hull, England, which killed a six-year-old boy was passed off as an accident; it later emerged as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by serial arsonist Peter Dinsdale.
1974 – First extraterrestrial message sent from Earth into space.
1975 – Rocker Alice Cooper fell off a stage in Vancouver and broke six ribs.
1976 – CCN Tower in Toronto, tallest free-standing structure at the time opened.
1979 – Charlie Daniels Band released “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”.
1979 – “My Sharona” single released by The Knack.
1979 – Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America” became No. 1 album in the US featuring “Take the Long Way Home”.
1980 – First solar-powered coast-to-coast two-way radio conversation.
1985 – A terrorist bomb exploded at Narita International Airport near Tokyo. An hour later, the same group detonated a second bomb aboard Air India Flight 182, bringing the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard.
1989 – Movie “Batman” premiered directed by Tim Burton, starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson.
1991 – Sonic the Hedgehog was released in North America on the Sega Genesis platform, beginning the popular video game franchise.
1993 – Lorena Gallo Bobbitt cut off John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis while he slept.
2004 – Bob Dylan accepted an honorary doctorate of music degree from the University of St Andrews, Scotland’s oldest university.
2013 – Nik Wallenda became the first man to successfully walk across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope.
2014 – Claude Monet’s Water Lilies was sold at auction for $54 million.
2016 – Led Zeppelin was cleared of stealing the riff from “Stairway to Heaven” from band Spirit in a Los Angeles court.
2016 – The United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union, by 52% to 48%.
2018 – Twelve boys and an assistant coach from a soccer team in Thailand were trapped in a flooding cave, leading to an 18-day rescue operation.
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