1066: The Battle of Hastings occurred in England. The Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II of England.
1568: Mary, Queen of Scots, went on trial in England. She was accused of conspiring against Queen Elizabeth I. Mary was beheaded the following February.
1644: William Penn was born. Penn was the colonist that founded the Pennsylvania colony for Quakers.
1879: Thomas Edison signed an agreement with Jose D. Husbands for the sale of Edison telephones in Chile.
1887: Thomas Edison and George E. Gouraud reached an agreement for the international marketing rights for the phonograph.
1890: Dwight David 'Ike' Eisenhower was born. He became the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War II and eventually the 34th U.S. President.
1912: Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning in Milwaukee, WI. Roosevelt's wound in the chest was not serious and he continued with his planned speech. William Schrenk was captured at the scene of the shooting.
1922: Lieutenant Lester James Maitland set a new airplane speed record when he reached a speed of 216.1 miles-per-hour.
1926: The book "Winnie-the-Pooh," by A.A. Milne, made its debut.
1928: The first televised wedding took place in Des Plains, IL. James Fowlkes and Cora Dennison were married in a radio studio.
1930: Ethel Merman debuted on Broadway in "Girl Crazy."
1933: Nazi Germany announced that it was withdrawing from the League of Nations.
1934: "Lux Radio Theater" began airing on the NBC Blue radio network.
1936: The first SSB (Social Security Board) office opened in Austin, TX. From this point, the Board's local office took over the assigning of Social Security Numbers.
1943: The Radio Corporation of America finalized the sale of the NBC Blue radio network. Edward J. Noble paid $8 million for the network that was renamed American Broadcasting Company.
1944: German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel committed suicide rather than face execution after being accused of conspiring against Adolf Hitler and the execution that would follow.
1944: During World War II, the Second British Parachute Brigade liberated the city of Athens.
1947: Over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California, pilot Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket plane and became the first person to break the sound barrier.
1954: C.B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments", starring Charlton Heston, began filming in Egypt. The epic had a cast of 25,000 people.
1960: U.S. presidential candidate John F. Kennedy first suggested the idea of a Peace Corps.
1961: "How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying" opened on Broadway.
1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis began when U.S. reconnaissance aircrafts photographed Soviet construction of intermediate-range missile sites in Cuba.
1964: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in America. He was the youngest person to receive the award.
1968: The first live telecast to come from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7.
1970: Anwar el-Sadat became president of Egypt following the death of President Nasser.
1979: The first national homosexual rights march took place in Washington, DC, involving over 100,000 people.
1984: George ‘Sparky’ Anderson became the first baseball manager to win 100 games and a World Series in both leagues. (MLB)
1986: Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev charged that the U.S. wanted to "bleed the Soviet Union economically" with the arms race in space.
1987: Jessica McClure, 18 months old, fell down an abandoned well in Midland, TX. The rescue took 58 hours.
1992: In Russia, Andrei Chikatilo, was sentenced to death after being convicted of 52 serial killings.
1993: In Haiti, Justice Minister Guy Malary was assassinated by gunmen who were supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
1995: An armed gunman seized control of bus of tourists in Moscow's Red Square. The next day commandos stormed the bus freeing the four remaining hostages and killing the gunman.
1998: The FBI charged Eric Robert Rudolph with 6 bombings including the 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta. Rudolph was not in custody at the time the charges were filed.
1998: Kendall Francois pled innocent on charges of killing eight women in New York.
2000: A Saudi Arabian Airlines flight was hijacked just after takeoff from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. The plane was taken to Baghdad, Iraq, where the two men surrendered peacefully after negotiations.
2001: Toys "R" Us introduced the new version of Geoffrey the giraffe in a 60-second commercial before WABC-TV aired Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove."
Disney movies, music and books
2002: Britain stripped power from the Catholic and Protestant politicians of Northern Ireland. Britain resumed sole responsibility for running Northern Ireland.
