1559 – King Henry II of France was mortally wounded in a jousting match against Gabriel, comte de Montgomery.

1859 – French acrobat Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

1865 – Eight alleged conspirators in assassination of Lincoln were found guilty.

1882 – Charles J. Guiteau was hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield.

1898 – Winton Motor Carriage Company published the first known automobile ad in Scientific American using the headline “dispense with a horse.”

1905 – Albert Einstein sent the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduced special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik.

1908 – A giant fireball, most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet, flattened 80 million trees near the Stony Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate, Russia, in the largest impact event in recorded history.

1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding appointed former President William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of the United States.

1925 – Charles Jenkins was granted the U.S. patent for Transmitting Pictures over Wireless (early television).

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

1936 – Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone with the Wind” was published.

1937 – The world’s first emergency telephone number, 999, was introduced in London.

1938 – Superman first appeared in DC Comics’ Action Comics Series issue #1.

1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan.

1954 – Largest check deposited: Internal US Treasury check at $4,176,969,623.57.

1956 – A TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collided above the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crash, killing all 128 on board both airliners.

1959 – A United States Air Force F-100 Super Sabre from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, crashed into a nearby elementary school, killing 11 students plus six residents from the local neighborhood.

1971 – The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft were killed when their air supply escaped through a faulty valve.

1975 – Serial killer Ted Bundy victim Shelley Robertson disappeared in Colorado.

1979 – “Good Times” single released by Chic (Billboard Song of the Year 1979).

1992 – “End of the Road” single was released by Boyz II Men (Grammy Award Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best R&B Song 1993, Billboard Song of the Year 1992)

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