Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1041 - Empress Zoe of Byzantium elevates her adoptive son to the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire as Michael V
1817 - Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state
1836 - Emory College, now Emory University, is chartered in Oxford, Georgia
1869 - Wyoming grants women the right to vote
1901 - First Nobel Prizes awarded
1906 - Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize
1936 - Edward VIII, the only British monarch to have voluntarily relinquished the throne, signed his instrument of abdication. He reverted to the title of “His Royal Highness Prince Edward of Windsor” the following day
1953 - Dr. Albert Schweitzer is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1965 - The Grateful Dead play their first concert, at the Fillmore in San Francisco.
1975 - Andrei Sakharov wins the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize is accepted by his wife, Yelena Bonner
1978 - Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat win the Nobel Peace Prize
1983 - Lech Wałęsa wins the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize is accepted by his wife, Danuta
1984 - Desmond Tutu wins the Nobel Peace Prize
1986 - Elie Wiesel wins the Nobel Peace Prize
1993 - Shareware version of Doom is released

Births
1787 - Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, educator (d. 1851)
1805 - William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist, journalist (d. 1879)
1815 - Ada Lovelace, first computer programmer (d. 1852)
1822 - César Franck, composer and organist (d. 1890)
1830 - Emily Dickinson, poet (d. 1886)
1851 - Melvil Dewey, librarian, creator of the Dewey Decimal Classification system (d. 1931)
1928 - Dan Blocker, actor (d. 1972)
2003 - Rebeca Martinez, first person to be born with two heads (d. 2004)

Deaths
1896 - Alfred Nobel, chemist, founder of the Nobel Prize (b. 1833)
1928 - Charles Rennie Mackintosh, architect, designer and illustrator (b. 1868)
1941 - Colin Kelly, American airman
1946 - Damon Runyon, writer (b. 1884)
1951 - Algernon Blackwood, writer (b. 1869)
1967 - Otis Redding, singer (b. 1941)
1968 - Thomas Merton, monk and author (b. 1915)
1987 - Jascha Heifetz, Lithuanian violinist (b. 1901)

Holidays & observances
Sweden - Nobel Prize Ceremony, an official flag day