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)
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