1990 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered U.S. troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia to guard against a possible invasion by Iraq.
1420 – Construction begins on the dome of Florence Cathedral, designed by Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi
1428 – Valais witch trial proceedings begin in Valais Canton, Switzerland, first organized witch trials
1606 – Possible first performance of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, performed in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace for King James I
1620 – Astronomer Johannes Kepler’s mother arrested for witchcraft
1750 – Slave uprising on Curacao
1760 – Ft Loudon, Tennessee surrenders to Cherokee Indians
1789 – The U.S. War Department was established by the U.S. Congress.
1802 – Napoleon orders re-instatement of slavery on St Domingue (Haiti)
1882 – Hatfields of south West Virginia and McCoys of east Kentucky feud, 100 wounded or die
1927 – Peace Bridge between US and Canada dedicated
1930 – A large mob estimated at 2,000, lynch two young black men Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana
1933 – The Iraqi Government slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Sumail. The day becomes known as Assyrian Martyrs Day.
1934 – The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling striking down the government’s attempt to ban the controversial James Joyce novel “Ulysses.”
1942 – U.S. forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II.
1944 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I)
1947 – The balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, which had carried a six-man crew 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean, crashed into a reef in a Polynesian archipelago.
1950 – Police bar white players-Lou Chirban, Stan Mierko and Frank Dyle, from playing in Negro League
1956 – 51-year-old Satchel Paige (Miami Marlins) wins a game before the largest crowd in minor league history, 57,000 at Miami’s Orange Bowl; International League: Marlins 6-2 v Columbus Jets
1960 – Students stage kneel-in demonstrations in Atlanta churches
1960 – The Cuban Catholic Church condemned the rise of communism in Cuba. Fidel Castro then banned all religious TV and radio broadcasts.
1964 – The U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Johnson broad powers in dealing with reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.
1970 – Shootout at Marin Courthouse in San Rafael, California, kills 4, including the presiding judge
1976 – Scientists in Pasadena, CA, announced that the Viking 1 spacecraft had found strong indications of possible life on Mars.
1981 – After 128 years of publication, “The Washington Star” ceased all operations.
1983 – AT&T employees went on strike.
1988 – Writers guild ends its 6 months strike
1989 – U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia
1990 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered U.S. troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia to guard against a possible invasion by Iraq.
2008 – Beginning of the Russo-Georgian War: Georgia moves troops into self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Tskhinva who are supported by Russia. First European war of the 21st century.
2015 – US Presidential candidate Donald Trump says in a CNN interview that news anchor Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever”
2018 – China bans release of Winnie the Pooh movie “Christopher Robin”, after character used to mock Chinese President Xi Jinping
2019 – Largest single-state immigration raid in Mississippi as nearly 700 people arrested
2019 – Wanda Vazquez becomes Puerto Rico’s third governor in a week after her predecessor Pedro Pierluisi is removed by the supreme court
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
