This Day in History
1799: Napoleon Bonaparte and fellow conspirators seize power and establish a new regime in France.
1918: The German republic is proclaimed after Emperor William II abdicates and flees to the Netherlands.
1924: Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming and Miriam (Ma) Ferguson of Texas are elected the nation's first female governors.
1935: John L. Lewis founds the Congress of Industrial Organizations within the American Federation of Labor.
1938: During Kristallnacht, mobs in Germany destroy thousands of Jewish shops, homes, and synagogues.
1965: A massive electric power failure blacks out most of the northeastern United States and parts of 2 Canadian provinces.
1989: The Berlin Wall dividing East and West Germany is opened. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping resigns his last post in the Communist Party.
2001: The Taliban stronghold of Mazar-e-Sharif falls to Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan.
2005: Suicide bombers strike 3 hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 57 bystanders and injured 300. Al-Qaeda operatives claim responsibility the next day.
Today's Birthdays
1802: Elijah Lovejoy, newspaper publisher and abolitionist (Albion, ME; died 1837)
1818: Ivan Turgenev, writer (Russia; died 1883)
1841: Edward VII, king of Great Britain and Ireland and emperor of India (London, England; died 1910)
1853: Stanford White, architect (New York, NY; died 1906)
1877: Allama Iqbal, poet (Sialkot, Punjab, India now in Pakistan; died 1938)
1913: Hedy Lamarr, actress (Vienna, Austria; died 2000)
1918: Spiro Agnew, 39th vice president of the United States (Baltimore, MD; died 1996)
1923: Dorothy Dandridge, actress/singer (Cleveland, OH; died 1965)
1928: Anne Sexton, poet (Newton, MA; died 1974)
1934: Carl Sagan, astronomer/author (New York, NY; died 1996)
1935: Bob Gibson, baseball pitcher (Omaha, NE)
1936: Mary Travers, singer (Louisville, KY)
1942: Tom Weiskopf, golfer (Massillon, OH)
