Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
The Leonids are visible each year around this day
1292 - (Julian calendar) John Balliol becomes King of Scotland
1558 - Elizabethan era begins: Queen Mary I of England dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I of England
1603 - English explorer, writer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh went on trial for treason
1800 - The United States Capitol building in Washington, DC holds its first session of Congress
1820 - Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica (the Palmer Peninsula was later named after him)
1839 - Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio opens in Milan
1856 - American Old West: On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired in the Gadsden Purchase
1869 - In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony
1871 - The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the state of New York
1962 - In Washington, DC, US President John F. Kennedy dedicates Dulles International Airport
1968 - NBC preempts the final 1:05 minutes of a very close NFL football match between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders with Heidi, prompting an outrage amongst sport fans
1970 - Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and was released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft
1970 - Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse
2003 - Arnold Schwarzenegger is inaugurated Governor of California

Births
1717 - Jean le Rond d’Alembert, mathematician (d. 1783)
1790 - August Ferdinand Möbius, mathematician (d. 1868)
1906 - Soichiro Honda, automobile pioneer (d. 1992)
1925 - Charles Mackerras, conductor
1938 - Gordon Lightfoot, singer
1960 - RuPaul, actor

Deaths
1796 - Catherine the Great of Russia
1917 - Auguste Rodin, sculptor
1929 - Herman Hollerith, statistician
1940 - Eric Gill, sculptor, typographer and writer