Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1528 - Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot on Texas
1789 - Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States
1844 - The Dominican Republic gains its independence from Haiti
1860 - U.S. presidential election, 1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected as the 16th President of the United States, the first Republican to hold that office
1869 - In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first official intercollegiate American football game is played
1888 - U.S. presidential election, 1888: Democrat incumbent Grover Cleveland wins the overall popular vote, but is voted out of office because he loses in the Electoral College to Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison
1900 - U.S. presidential election, 1900: Republican incumbent William McKinley is reëlected by defeating Democrat challenger William Jennings Bryan
1928 - Swedes start a tradition of eating Gustavus Adolphus pastries to commemorate the king
1928 - U.S. presidential election, 1928: Republican Herbert Hoover wins by a wide margin over Democrat Alfred E. Smith
1935 - Before the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Edwin Armstrong presents his paper “A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation” (see: FM radio)
1947 - Meet The Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on 12 September 1948)
1956 - U.S. presidential election, 1956: Republican incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower is reelected by defeating Democrat challenger Adlai E. Stevenson in a rematch of their contest four years earlier
1999 - Australians vote to keep the British queen as their head of state

Births
1814 - Adolphe Sax, saxophone inventor (d.1894)
1854 - John Philip Sousa, composer (d. 1932)
1860 - Ignace Paderewski, composer, politician (d.1941)
1861 - James Naismith, inventor of basketball (d. 1939)
1916 - Ray Conniff, composer, conductor (d.2002)
1946 - Sally Fields, actress
1948 - Glenn Frey, singer (“The Eagles”)
1955 - Maria Shriver, journalist and First Lady of California
1976 - Pat Tillman, American football player (d. 2004)

Deaths
1796 - Catherine the Great of Russia
1893 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer
1991 - Gene Tierney, actress