1597 1st Dutch East India Company ships return from the Far East
1619 1st known African Americans in English North America (approx. 20) land at Point Comfort (Fort Monroe), Virginia. They are then sold or traded into servitude.
1741 Alaska first sighted by Danish explorer Vitus Bering at head of Russian expedition
1866 President Andrew Johnson formally declares US Civil War over
1905 Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen forms the first chapter of T’ung Meng Hui, a union of all secret societies determined to bringing down the Manchus (Qing dynasty)
1968 During the night 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia in response to the Prague Spring
1993 Oslo Peace Accords signed, after secret negotiations in Norway, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month
Historical Events Today
Today in Film & TV
1951 12th Venice Film Festival: “Rashomon” directed by Akira Kurosawa wins the Golden Lion
Today in Music
1882 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” debuts in Moscow
Today in Sport
1920 American Professional Football Association forms; Jim Thorpe installed as president; later to become the National Football League (NFL)
2000 PGA Championship Men’s Golf, Valhalla GC: Tiger Woods becomes first since Ben Hogan (1953) to win 3 majors in a calendar year; wins back-to-back PGA titles in 3-hole playoff with Bob May
1940 British PM Churchill says of Royal Air Force, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”
1888 Longest US men’s single tennis tournament match Palmer Presbrey defeats T S Tailer, 19-21, 8-6, 6-1, 6-4, an 80 game 1st-round contest
Famous Weddings
1836 English novelist (Vanity Fair) William Makepeace Thackeray (25) marries Isabella Gethin Shawe (20)
1939 “Rebecca” actress Joan Fontaine (21) weds actor Brian Aherne (37)
1992 British “Police” singer Sting (41) weds British actress Trudie Styler (38) at an 11th century chapel in Wiltshire, England
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