In 1514, astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.
In 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Virginia, on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1777, during the American Revolutionary War, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington, the daughter of a militia commander in Dutchess County, New York, rode her horse into the night to alert her father’s men of the approach of British regular troops.
In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was killed by federal troops near Port Royal, Virginia.
In 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at a Georgia pencil factory, was strangled; Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death.
In 1923, Britain’s Prince Albert, Duke of York (the future King George VI), married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey.
In 1933, Nazi Germany’s infamous secret police, the Gestapo, was created.
In 1937, German planes bombed the city of Guernica in Spain.
In 1945, Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France’s Vichy government during World War II, was arrested.
In 1952, the destroyer-minesweeper USS Hobson sank in the central Atlantic after colliding with the aircraft carrier USS Wasp with the loss of 176 crew members.
In 1954 mass trials of Jonas Salk’s anti-polio vaccine began.
In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
In 1968, the U.S. exploded beneath the Nevada desert a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called “Boxcar.”
In 1977, the legendary nightclub Studio 54 had its opening night in New York.
In 1986, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere and spreading over much of Europe.
In 1989, actress-comedian Lucille Ball died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 77.
In 1994, voting began in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president. China Airlines Flight 140, a Taiwanese Airbus A-300, crashed while landing in Nagoya, Japan, killing 264 people; there were seven survivors.
In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
In 2008, police in Amstetten, Austria, arrested Josef Fritzl, freeing his daughter Elisabeth and her six surviving children whom he had fathered while holding her captive in a basement cell for 24 years.
In 2009, the U.S. declared a public health emergency as more possible cases of swine flu surfaced from Canada to New Zealand.
In 2017, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft survived an unprecedented trip between Saturn and its rings, sending back amazing pictures.
In 2018, Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (Cosby was later sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the conviction and released him from prison in June 2021, ruling that the prosecutor in the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.)
In 2020, China’s state-run media said hospitals in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the virus, no longer had any COVID-19 patients.
In 2021, The Census Bureau said Texas and Florida added enough population to gain congressional seats while New York and Ohio saw slow growth and lost political muscle.
In 2022, Russia pounded eastern and southern Ukraine as the U.S. promised to “keep moving heaven and earth” to get Kyiv the weapons it needed to repel the new offensive, despite Moscow’s warnings that such support could trigger a wider war.
TODAY’S SPORTS: In 1941, the organ, now a staple at Major League Baseball stadiums, made its debut at Wrigley Field, during a game in which the Chicago Cubs lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-2.
TODAY’S NUMBER: 93 -- operational nuclear reactors in the United States, more than any other nation.
