- 1633: The Massachusetts Bay Colony formed its first government.
               - 1806: British forces laying siege to the French port of Boulogne
                 used Congreve rockets, invented by Sir William Congreve, the first
                 British use of rocket-propelled missiles.
               - 1856: Chinese police boarded the British vessel Arrow, arrested 12
                 Chinese crewmen on suspicion of piracy and lowered the British
                 flag, leading to the second Anglo-Chinese War.
               - 1871: The Great Fire of Chicago broke out, killing at least 300
                 people and leaving 90,000 homeless. Damage was estimated at over
                 $200 million.
               - 1873: The first women's prison run by women opened at the Indiana
                 Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls.
               - 1892: Sergei Rachmaninoff first performed his "Prelude in
                 C-sharp-Minor" in Moscow.
               - 1896: Dow Jones began reporting the average of selected industrial
                 stocks.
               - 1912: Montenegro declared war on Turkey, beginning the First Balkan
                 War.
               - 1915: The Battle of Loos, one of the fiercest of World War I, ended
                 with virtually no gains for either side. Almost 430,000 French,
                 British and Germans were killed. The British used poison gas for
                 the first time.
               - 1934: Bruno Hauptmann was charged with the murder of Charles A.
                 Lindbergh's infant son.
               - 1970: The Nobel Prize for Literature was won by Russian novelist
                 Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
               - 1982: The Polish parliament dissolved Solidarity and banned all
                 labor unions, formally ending eastern Europe's first experiment in
                 trade union democracy.
               - 1990: The Nobel Prize for medicine was given to two American
                 doctors, Joseph E. Murray and E. Donnall Thomas.
               - 1992: The Nobel Prize for literature was given to West Indies poet
                 Derek Walcott.
               - 1993: The U.N. General Assembly lifted almost all its remaining
                 economic sanctions against South Africa, begun in the 1960s and
                 built up in subsequent years because of Pretoria's policy of racial
                 apartheid.

               *Happy Birthday*
               ----------------
               - Rona Barrett, 62, Hollywood journalist/columnist
               - Matt Biondi, 33, Olympic gold-medal swimmer
               - Matt Damon, 28, actor/writer "Good Will hunting"
               - Chevy Chase, 55, actor/comedian, "National Lampoon's Vacation"
                 series
               - Paul Hogan, 59, actor, "Crocodile Dundee," "Lightning Jack"
               - Jesse Jackson, 57, reverend/politician, civil rights leader
               - Johnny Ramone (Cummings), 47, guitarist and co-founder of the
                 Ramones
               - R. L. Stine, 55, writer, "Goosebumps" books for children
               - Sigourney Weaver, 49, actress, "Alien" series
               - Edward Zwick, 46, director "Courage Under Fire"