Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1605 - Gunpowder Plot: A plot by Guy Fawkes to blow up the English Houses of Parliament is foiled when Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, finds Fawkes in a cellar below the Parliament building
1872 - Women’s suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time (she was later fined $100)
1895 - George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile
1912 - U.S. presidential election, 1912: Democratic challenger Woodrow Wilson wins a landslide victory over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft
1917 - St. Tikhon of Moscow was elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church
1930 - Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
1935 - Parker Brothers releases the board game Monopoly
1940 - U.S. presidential election, 1940: Democrat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican challenger Wendell Willkie and becomes the United States’ first third-term president
1968 - U.S. presidential election, 1968: Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace
1979 - The radio news program Morning Edition premieres on National Public Radio
1979 - Ayatollah Khomeini declares the USA to be “the great satan”
1994 - A letter by former US President Ronald Reagan is released that announces he has Alzheimer’s disease
1996 - U.S. presidential election, 1996: Democrat incumbent Bill Clinton defeats Republican challenger Bob Dole to win his second term
1998 - The journal Nature publishes a genetic study showing compelling evidence that Thomas Jefferson fathered his slave Sally Hemings’ son Eston Hemings Jefferson
1999 - Microsoft antitrust case: US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issues a preliminary ruling that softwaremaker Microsoft had “monopoly power”

Births
1742 - Richard Cosway, English artist (d. 1821)
1855 - Léon Teisserenc de Bort, meteorologist (d. 1913)
1863 - James Packard, automobile pioneer (d. 1928)
1912 - Roy Rogers, actor (d. 1998)
1941 - Art Garfunkel, musician
1949 - Armin Shimerman, actor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
1952 - Bill Walton, basketball star, commentator

Deaths
1942 - George M. Cohan, musician, actor, writer, composer
1979 - Al Capp, cartoonist
1989 - Vladimir Horowitz, pianist
1991 - Fred MacMurray, actor

Annual festivals
United Kingdom and New Zealand - Guy Fawkes night (also called Bonfire night; or Fireworks night): Failure of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament in 1605 is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks