366 – The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers, invading the Roman Empire. 1492 – Muhammad XII, the last Emir of Granada, surrenders his city to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabel I of Castile, ending both the Reconquista and centuries of Muslim rule in theIberian peninsula. 1570 – Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s march to Novgorod begins. 1905 – American anarcho-syndicalist union known as the Industrial Workers of the World forms. 1935 – The widely publicized trial of Bruno Hauptmann began in New Jersey as he faced charges of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of famed American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh; he was found guilty and executed. 1942 – World War II: the 28 nations at war with Axis powers pledge to make no separate peace deals. 1947 – Mahatma Gandhi begins march for peace in East-Bengali. 2004 – NASA’s spacecraft Stardust collected dust grains from the comet Wild 2, and the cometary material was later revealed to contain the amino acid glycine, an essential building block of life.
Births & Deaths:1861 – Frederick William IV, king of Prussia from 1840, died at SanssouciPalace on this day. 1896 – DzigaVertov, a Soviet motion-picture director whose kino-glaz(“film-eye”) theory had international impact on the development of documentaries and cinema realism during the 1920s, was born. 1904 – American actress, fan dancer, and bubble dancer Sally Rand was born in Elkton, Missouri.
Music: 1843 – Richard Wagner’s opera “The Flying Dutchman” premieres in Dresden.
