- 1492: Columbus landed on San Salvador Island.
                - 1520: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan entered the straits
                  which now bear his name in South America.
                - 1797: The USS Constitution was launched. "Old Ironsides" is still
                  commissioned by the Navy.
                - 1824: Portland cement, the modern building material, was patented
                  by Joseph Aspdin in Yorkshire, England.
                - 1858: In Paris, the Can-Can dance was first performed.
                - 1879: Thomas Alva Edison successfully tested an electric
                  incandescent lamp with a carbonized filament at his New Jersey
                  laboratory. It stayed alight for just over 13 hours.
                - 1912: Conductor Sir Georg Solti was born in Hungary (d: Sept. 5,
                  1997). He won record-number Grammy Awards (32).
                - 1915: The first direct transatlantic speech relay by radio
                  telephone was made by the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. from
                  Arlington, Va. to Paris.
                - 1916: The U.S. Army formed the Reserve Officers Training Corps.
                - 1923: The first planetarium was opened at the Deutsche Museum in
                  Munich.
                - 1959: The Guggenheim Museum opened in New York.
                - 1965: Robert B. Woodward was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry.
                - 1966: In Aberfan, Wales, an avalanche of coal, mud and rocks killed
                  144 people, including 116 children in a school.
                - 1975: The Coast Guard Academy first allowed women to enroll.
                - 1976: American Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
                - 1991: U.S. hostage Jesse Turner was released from nearly five years
                  in captivity in Beirut.

                *Happy Birthday*
                ----------------
                - Patti Ann Davis-Reagan, 46, personality/presidential daughter
                - Carrie Fisher, 42, actress/author, "Star Wars'" Princess Leia,
                  "When Harry Met Sally"
                - Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford, 70, former MLB pitcher
                - Ursula K. LeGuin, 69, author/sci-fi writer, "Lathe of Heaven"
                - Benjamin Netanyahu, 47, Israeli prime minister