Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1665 - The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published
1783 - A man convicted of forgery is the last to be publicly hanged at London’s Tyburn site
1837 - In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot to death by a mob while he was attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time
1848 - U.S. presidential election, 1848: Zachary Taylor is elected president in the first US presidential election held in every state on the same day
1874 - A cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly, is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party
1885 - In Craigellachie, British Columbia, construction ends on the Canadian Pacific Railway railway extending across Canada
1893 - Colorado women are granted the right to vote
1914 - The first issue of The New Republic magazine is published
1916 - Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives
1918 - The 1918 influenza epidemic spreads to Western Samoa, killing 7542 (about twenty percent of the population) by the end of the year
1940 - In Washington, the middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge’s completion
1944 - U.S. presidential election, 1944: Franklin D. Roosevelt wins reelection over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey to become the only U.S. president to be elected to a fourth term
1963 - The comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World premieres
1963 - Wunder von Lengede: In Germany, 11 miners are rescued from a collapsed mine after 14 days
1965 - The Pillsbury Doughboy makes its first public appearance
1967 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
1989 - In California, convicted murder Richard Ramirez (the “Night Stalker”) is sentenced to death
1991 - Basketball player Magic Johnson announces he tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, and that he was retiring
1996 - NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor
2000 - U.S. presidential election, 2000: Republican Texas Governor George W. Bush defeats Democrat Vice President Al Gore, but the final outcome is not known for over a month because of disputed votes in Florida

Births
1750 - Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg, German poet (d. 1819)
1832 - Andrew Dickson White, co-founder and first president of Cornell University (d. 1918)
1867 - Marie Curie, chemist, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1903 and in chemistry 1911 (d. 1934)
1888 - Sir C. V. Raman, Indian Physicist. Recipient of the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the "Raman" effect (d. 1970)
1903 - Konrad Lorenz, zoologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973 (d. 1989)
1926 - Dame Joan Sutherland, opera singer
1937 - Mary Travers, singer (Peter, Paul and Mary)

Deaths
1837 - Elijah P. Lovejoy, American abolitionist (b. 1809)
1962 - Eleanor Roosevelt, human rights activist, First Lady of the United States
1980 - Steve McQueen, actor