Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1095 - The Council of Clermont began. The council was called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land
1307 - According to legend, William Tell shoots an apple off his son’s head
1421 - A seawall at the Zuider Zee dike breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people in the Netherlands
1477 - William Caxton produces Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, the first English book printed on a printing press
1626 - St. Peter’s Basilica is consecrated
1865 - Mark Twain’s story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press
1883 - American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times
1926 - George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”
1928 - Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the second appearances of Cartoon stars Mickey and Minnie Mouse
1929 - 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: Off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula area
1971 - Hard rock band Led Zeppelin release an untitled album, often dubbed “Led Zeppelin IV,” featuring “Rock & Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven” and other classic songs
1985 - Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip by Bill Watterson, was first published
1991 - Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon set Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland free

Births
1786 - Carl Maria von Weber, composer (d. 1826)
1787 - Louis-Jacques Daguerre, inventor, photographer (d. 1851)
1836 - Sir William S. Gilbert, dramatist (d. 1911)
1860 - Ignacy Paderewski, pianist, composer (d. 1941)
1874 - Clarence Day, American author (d. 1935)
1897 - Patrick Blackett, English physicist, 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1974)
1899 - Eugene Ormandy, conductor (d. 1985)
1901 - George Gallup, statistician, opinion pollster (d. 1984)
1906 - George Wald, American chemist, 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1997)
1916 - Amelita Galli-Curci, opera soprano (d. 1963)
1923 - Alan Shepard, astronaut (d. 1998)
1946 - Alan Dean Foster, author

Deaths
1814 - William Jessop, canal and railway engineer
1886 - Chester A. Arthur, 21st President of the United States
1994 - Cab Calloway, band leader

Holidays & observances
In Catholicism, the feast of St. Odo of Cluny, St Romanus of Antioch, St Mawes, and St Rose Philippine Duchesne