Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
218 BC - Battle of the Trebia, Hannibal's first great victory over the Roman Republic
1352 - Innocent VI is elected Pope
1642 - Abel Tasman lands at Mohua Golden Bay becoming the first European in New Zealandhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.italic.gif
1776 - North Carolina’s Constitution is ratified
1787 - New Jersey is the third state to ratify the United States Constitution
1865 - Slavery is abolished in the United States, with the passing of the 13th Amendment
1894 - Women in South Australia become the first in Australia to gain the right to vote and to be elected to Parliament
1912 - Piltdown Man “discovered”
1926 - The Makropulos Affair, an opera by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček, premiered in Brno, the Czech Republic.
1966 - Saturn’s moon Epimetheus was discovered by Richard L. Walker, and then lost for 12 years
1973 - The Soyuz 13 was launched
1997 - HTML 4.0 is released by the World Wide Web Consortium
2002 - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is the second Lord of the Rings movie to open in theaters

Births
1786 - Carl Maria von Weber, German composer (d. 1826)
1870 - Saki, writer (d. 1916)
1886 - Ty Cobb, American baseball player (d. 1961)
1917 - Ossie Davis, actor
1939 - Michael Moorcock, science fiction author
1943 - Keith Richards, British guitarist (the Rolling Stones)
1946 - Steven Spielberg, movie director
1946 - Steve Biko, South African anti-apartheid activist (d. 1977)
1961 - Brian Orser, figure skater

Deaths
821 - Theodulf, bishop of Orléans (b. c.760)
1936 - Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist (b. 1857)
1995 - Konrad Zuse, German engineer and computing pioneer (b. 1910)