Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1625 - King Charles I is married to the French princess Henrietta Maria de Bourbon
1774 - Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves
1777 - American Revolutionary War: Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army
1798 - Mission San Luis Rey de Francia is founded
1805 - Lewis and Clark Expedition: Scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River
1871 - In Labrador, a hurricane kills 300 people
1881 - The USS Jeannette is crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack
1886 - A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia
1898 - Yukon Territory is formed, with Dawson chosen as its capital
1920 - The United States Postal Service rules that children may not be sent via parcel post
1927 - A ticker-tape parade is held for aviator Charles Lindbergh down 5th Avenue in New York City
1944 - World War II: Germany launches a V1 Flying Bomb attack on England. Only four of the eleven bombs actually hit their targets
1953 - Hungarian Prime Minister Mátyás Rákosi is replaced by Imre Nagy
1966 - The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them
1983 - Pioneer 10 becomes the first manmade object to leave the solar system
1997 - A jury sentences Timothy McVeigh to the death penalty for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing
2004 - A 4 kg meteorite hits the house of Phil and Brenda Archer in Ellerslie, New Zealand, destroying the roof and a couch

Births
1773 - Thomas Young, scientist, polymath, child prodigy
1786 - Winfield Scott, United States general (d. 1866)
1831 - James Clerk Maxwell, physicist (d. 1879)
1865 - William Butler Yeats, poet and dramatist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1923 (d. 1939)
1870 - Jules Bordet, physicist and microbiologist (d. 1961)
1876 - William Sealey Gosset - chemist and statistician (d. 1937)
1892 - Basil Rathbone, actor (d. 1967)
1903 - Harold ‘Red’ Grange, American football player (d. 1991)
1926 - Paul Lynde, actor (d. 1982)
1951 - Richard Thomas, actor

Deaths
1886 - King Ludwig II of Bavaria (b. 1845)
1918 - Mikhail Alexandrovitch Romanov (Grand Duke Michael), Tsar Mikhail II of Russia (b. 1878)
1986 - Benny Goodman, musician (b. 1909)
1998 - Reg Smythe, Andy Capp cartoonist

Holidays & observances
Feast of St Anthony of Padua