558 – In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses. Justinian I immediately orders the dome rebuilt.
1664 – Louis XIV of France inaugurates The Palace of Versailles.
1697 – Stockholm’s royal castle, dating back to medieval times, is destroyed by fire in the 18th century and is replaced by the current Royal Palace.
1824 – Beethoven’s 9th (Chorale) Symphony, premieres in Vienna
1888 – George Eastman patents “Kodak box camera”
1912 – Columbia University approves plans for awarding the Pulitzer Prize in several categories The award is established by Joseph Pulitzer
1915 – Lusitania sunk by German submarine; 1198 lives lost
1943 – Dutch men 18-35 obliged to report to labor camps
1952 – The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.
1960 – USSR announces Francis Gary Powers confessed to being a CIA spy
1982 – IBM releases PC-DOS version 1.1
1998 – Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for $40 billion and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history.
2012 – Vladimir Putin sworn in for third six year term as President of Russia
Birthdays
1826 – Varina Howell Davis, First lady (Confederacy), died in 1905
Varina Anne Banks Howell Davis was the only First Lady of the Confederate States of America, and the longtime second wife of President Jefferson Davis. She moved to the Presidential Mansion in Richmond, Virginia, in mid-1861, and lived there for the remainder of the American Civil War. She died in New York.
1840 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Votkinsk, Russia, composer (1812 Overture, Swan Lake), (d. 1893)
1909 – Edwin Land, inventor of instant photography and started Polaroid
Deaths
973 – Otto I the Great, Holy Roman Emperor (962-973), dies at 60
1166 – Willem I, the Bad, king of Sicily (1154-66)
1825 – Antonio Salieri, Italian composer, dies in Vienna at 74
1896 – H. H. Holmes [Herman Webster Mudgett], American serial killer executed by hanging at 34
1915 – Alfred G Vanderbilt, , dies aboard Lusitania
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