This Day in History
1581: Sir Francis Drake and his men complete their round-the-world voyage.
1841: Pres. William Henry Harrison dies after only 1 month in office.
1862: The Peninsular Campaign, a Civil War attempt by Union forces to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, VA, begins.
1947: The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is created by the United Nations for the purpose of promoting international cooperation in developing techniques and principles of air navigation and transport.
1949: A treaty is signed authorizing NATO.
1964: All five songs at the top of U.S. charts are by the Beatles.
1968: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot and killed by James Earl Ray in Memphis, TN.
1969: CBS cancels a popular but controversial TV show starring the Smothers Brothers.
1979: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former president and prime minister of Pakistan, is executed by the military government, which has removed him from power.
2002: Angola's decades-long civil war ends with the signing of a cease-fire at the National Assembly in Luanda.
2003: U.S. military forces encircle the Iraqi city of Baghdad and gain control of the airport.
2004: Shiite militias begin an uprising in cities across Iraq following the arrest of an aide to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Today's Birthdays
1792: Thaddeus Stevens, American politician (Danville, VT; died 1868)
1802: Dorothea Dix, social reformer (Hampden, ME; died 1887)
1884: Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese admiral during World War II (Nagaoko, Honshu, Japan; died 1943)
1888: Tris Speaker, baseball player (Hubbard, TX; died 1958)
1896: Robert Sherwood, playwright/author (New Rochelle, NY; died 1955)
1913: Jules Léger, Canadian diplomat and governor-general (Saint-Anicet, Québec, Canada; died 1980)
1914: Marguerite Duras, writer (Gia Dinh, Indochina; died 1996). Frances Langford, singer/actress (Lakeland, FL; died 2005)
1915: Muddy Waters, blues singer/guitarist (Rolling Fork, MS; died 1983)
1921: Elizabeth Wilson, actress (Grand Rapids, MI)
1924: Gil Hodges, baseball player/manager (Princeton, IN; died 1972)
1928: Maya Angelou, author/poet (St. Louis, MO)
1932: Richard G. Lugar, senator (Indianapolis, IN). Anthony Perkins, actor (New York, NY; died 1992)
1938: A. Bartlett Giamatti, literature professor/university president and baseball commissioner (Boston, MA; died 1989)
1946: Craig T. Nelson, actor (Spokane, WA)
1948: Richard Parsons, Time Warner CEO (New York, NY)
1950: Christine Lahti, actress (Royal Oak, MI)
1960: Hugo Weaving, actor (Nigeria)
1964: Anthony Clark, comedian (Lynchburg, VA)
1965: Robert Downey Jr., actor (New York, NY)
1966: Nancy McKeon, actress (Westbury, NY)
1979: Heath Ledger, actor (Perth, Australia)
1979: Natasha Lyon, actress (New York, NY)
1991: Jamie Lynn Spears, actress (McComb, MS)
