- 1586: Sir Thomas Herriot introduced potatoes to England from
                 Colombia.
               - 1621: Galileo invented the telescope.
               - 1639: The first annulment by court decree was passed.
               - 1775: The first official U.S. flag raising took place aboard naval
                 vessel Alfred.
               - 1818: Illinois was admitted as the 21st state of the union.
               - 1828: Andrew Jackson was elected the 7th President of the United
                 States.
               - 1835: The first fire insurance policy was issued by Manufacturer
                 Mutual Fire Insurance Company in Rhode Island.
               - 1868: The trial of ex-Confederate President Jefferson Davis started,
                 marking the first U.S. trial with blacks included in the jury.
               - 1910: Neon lighting, developed by French physicist Georges Claude,
                 made its public debut at the Paris Motor Show.
               - 1922: The first successful technicolor motion picture, "The Tall of
                 the Sea," was shown at the Rialto Theater in New York City.
               - 1923: The first Congressional open session is broadcast via radio
                 in Washington, D.C.
               - 1931: Alka Seltzer made its debut on the market.
               - 1947: The Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened
                 on Broadway. It starred Jessica Tandy as Blanche Dubois and Marlon
                 Brando as Stanley Kowalski.
               - 1950: Paul Harvey began his national radio broadcast.
               - 1961: The Beatles met future manager Brian Epstein for the first
                 time in his Liverpool record store.
               - 1962: Edith Spurlock Sampson was sworn in as the first American
                 black woman judge.
               - 1964: Police arrested some 800 students at the University of
                 California at Berkeley, one day after the students stormed the
                 administration building and staged a massive sit-in.
               - 1964: "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" first aired on television.
               - 1965: The Beatles began their final U.K. concert tour in Glasgow.
               - 1967: The "Twentieth Century Limited," the famed luxury train,
                 completed its final run from New York to Chicago. A team of
                 surgeons in South Africa, headed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard,
                 performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who
                 lived 18 days with the new heart.
               - 1968: Major League Baseball reduced the height of pitcher's mound
                 from 15 inches to 10 inches in an attempt to improve scoring. The
                 strike zone was also reduced from the knees to the shoulders to the
                 top of the knees to the armpits.
               - 1979: Eleven people died when thousands of rock fans jammed the
                 entrances to get to unreserved seats at Riverfront Coliseum in
                 Cincinnati for a concert by The Who.

               *Happy Birthday*
               ----------------
               - Bobby Allison, 61, auto racer, three-time winner of Daytona 500
               - John Backus, 74, Fortran computer language inventor
               - Anna Chlumsky, 18, actress, "My Girl"
               - Brendan Fraser, 30, actor, "George of the Jungle"
               - Jean-Luc Godard, 68, film director, "Breathless"
               - Daryl Hannah, 38, actress, "Blade Runner"
               - Julianne Moore, 37, actress, "Boogie Nights"
               - Jaye P. Morgan, 67, panelist, "The Gong Show"
               - Ozzy Osbourne, 50, Heavy metal singer
               - Mickey Thomas, 49, singer, Jefferson Starship
               - Andy Williams, 68, singer, variety show host
               - Katarina Witt, 33, Olympic figure skater