1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage license. They were married in 1582, when he was 18 and she was 25 years old. She outlived her husband by seven years.
1660 – At Gresham College, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society.
1811 – Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.
1814 – The Times of London becomes the first newspaper to be produced on a steam-powered printing press, built by the German team of Koenig & Bauer.
1895 – The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago’s Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.
1909 – Sergei Rachmaninoff makes the debut performance of his Piano Concerto No. 3, considered to be one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical repertoire.
1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Coconut Grove nightclub kills 492 people. The Coconut Grove was a premier nightclub during the post-Prohibition 1930s and 1940s,
1943 – World War II: Tehran Conference: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, to discuss war strategy.
1972 – Last executions in Paris: Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems are guillotined at La Santé Prison.
1979 – Air New Zealand Flight 901, a DC-10 sightseeing flight over Antarctica, crashes into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.
Births
1661 – Edward Hyde, 14th Colonial Governor of New York (d. 1723)
1700 – Nathaniel Bliss, English astronomer and mathematician (d. 1764)
1837 – John Wesley Hyatt, American engineer (d. 1920)
1866 – Henry Bacon, designed the Lincoln Memorial (d. 1924)
1912 – Morris Louis, American painter (d. 1962)
Randy Newman
1943 – Randy Newman, American singer-songwriter and pianist
Political Science or Let’s Drop the Big One
No one likes us-I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful
They don’t respect us-so let’s surprise them
We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them
Asia’s crowded and Europe’s too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada’s too cold
And South America stole our name
Let’s drop the big one
There’ll be no one left to blame us
We’ll save Australia
Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo
We’ll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin’, too
Boom goes London and boom Paris
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We’ll set everybody free
You’ll wear a Japanese kimono babe
And there’ll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let’s drop the big one now
Let’s drop the big one now
Deaths
1680 – Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, Italian painter and architect (b. 1606)
1694 – Matsuo Bashō, Japanese poet and scholar (b. 1644)
1859 – Washington Irving, American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian (b. 1783)
1954 – Enrico Fermi, physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)