Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1777 - American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation
1806 - Pike expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains (it was later named Pikes Peak)
1854 - In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is given the needed royal concession by Said
1926 - The NBC radio network opens with 24 stations
1939 - In Washington, DC, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial
1940 - The Warsaw Ghetto, with a population of 400,000 Jews, is sealed off from the outside world by the Nazis
1941 - SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of all homosexuals in Germany, with the exception of certain top Nazi officials
1943 - German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies were to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.” (see Porajmos)
1960 - The Polaris missile is test launched
1966 - Gemini program: Gemini 12 splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean
1971 - Intel releases world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004
1990 - Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38

Births
1397 - Pope Nicholas V (d. 1455)
1738 - William Herschel, astronomer (d. 1822)
1887 - Georgia O’Keeffe, painter (d. 1986)
1889 - King Manuel II of Portugal (d. 1932)
1929 - Ed Asner, actor
1932 - Petula Clark, singer
1937 - Yaphet Kotto, actor (Homicide: Life on the Street)
1940 - Sam Waterston, actor (Law & Order)
1942 - Daniel Barenboim, pianist, conductor
1957 - Kevin Eubanks, musician

Deaths
1280 - Albertus Magnus, German philosopher
1630 - Johannes Kepler, astrologer, astronomer and mathematician
1787 - Christoph Willibald Gluck, composer
1954 - Lionel Barrymore, actor

Holidays & observances
Eastern Orthodoxy - Feast of Saint Philip the Apostle and the beginning of Winter Lent