Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1851 - Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick is published in the US by Harper & Brothers, New York - after it was first published on October 18, 1851 by Richard Bentley, London
1889 - Pioneer woman Journalist Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to beat travel around the world in less than 80 days
1918 - Czechoslovakia becomes a republic
1922 - The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) begins radio service in the United Kingdom
1969 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon
1971 - Mariner program: Mariner 9 reaches Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet
1972 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 1,000 (1,003.16) for the first time
1982 - The leader of Poland’s outlawed Solidarity movement, Lech Walesa, is released from 11 months of internment near the Soviet border
2003 - Discovery of 90377 Sedna

Births
1719 - Leopold Mozart, Austrian musician, father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1765 - Robert Fulton, American inventor (d. 1815)
1771 - Marie François Xavier Bichat, French anatomist and physiologist
1805 - Fanny Mendelssohn, composer and pianist (d. 1847)
1840 - Claude Monet, French impressionist painter (d. 1926)
1891 - Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine 1923 (d. 1941)
1896 - Mamie Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States (d. 1979)
1900 - Aaron Copland, American composer (d. 1990)
1907 - Astrid Lindgren, Swedish writer (d. 2002)
1929 - McLean Stevenson, actor (d. 1996)
1930 - Edward White, American astronaut (d. 1967)
1935 - King Hussein of Jordan (d. 1999)
1947 - P. J. O’Rourke, writer

Deaths
1832 - Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Declaration of Independence signer, US Senator (b. 1732)
1915 - Booker T. Washington, inventor
1916 - H.H. “Saki” Munro, British writer (b. 1870)