Today in History

48 BC Battle of Dyrrhachium: Julius Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat to Pompey near the city of Dyrrachium (in what is now Albania)

1040 Lady Godiva rides naked on horseback through Coventry, according to legend, to force her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes

1778 American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain

1850 Millard Fillmore sworn in as President of US (replacing Taylor)

1862 US begins construction of Central Pacific Railroad

1890 Wyoming becomes 44th state of US (1st with female suffrage)

1892 1st concrete-paved street built (Bellefountaine, Ohio)

1913 World’s official highest recorded temperature at Greenland Ranch, Death Valley, California at 134 °F (56.7 °C)

1918 Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic forms

1929 US issues newer, smaller-sized paper currency

1938 Howard Hughes flies around the world in 91 hours

1940 Battle of Britain begins as Nazi forces attack shipping convoys in the English Channel

1942 Himmler orders sterilization of all Jewish woman in Ravensbruck Camp

1962 Martin Luther King Jr. arrested during demonstration in Georgia

1971 National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) founded in US by women including Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Myrlie Evers-Williams and Gloria Steinem

1985 Coca-Cola Co announces it will resume selling old formula Coke

1985 French foreign intelligence agents blow up the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor, New Zealand to prevent it interfering with French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira is killed.

1991 Boris Yeltsin sworn in as 1st elected President of the Russian Federation

2012 The American Episcopal Church becomes the first to approve a rite for blessing gay marriages

2015 The Confederate flag is taken down for the last time from South Carolina Capitol grounds 1 day after the state legislature ordered it removed.

Movies & TV

1949 1st practical rectangular TV tube announced in Toledo, Ohio

1950 “Your Hit Parade” premieres on NBC (later CBS) TV (broadcast on radio from 1935)

1962 Telstar, 1st geosynchronous communications satellite, launched

1975 Gladys Knight and Pips Summer Series premieres on NBC-TV

1978 World News Tonight premieres on ABC with Max Robinson the first black anchor on a network newscast in the US

1981 Walt Disney’s “Fox & The Hound” released

1981 “Escape from New York” directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell and Donald Pleasence, premieres in the US

Music

1964 The Beatles release “A Hard Day’s Night”, their 3rd studio album

1965 Beatles’ “VI” album goes #1 & stays #1 for 6 weeks

1965 Rolling Stones score their 1st US #1 single “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

1967 Bobbie Gentry records “Ode to Billie Joe” - single goes on to win 4 Grammys

2000 Coldplay release their debut album “Parachutes” (Grammy Award Best Alternative Album 2002)