On This Day…

1770 – British explorer Captain James Cook first sights Australia
1775 - American Revolution begins in Lexington, Massachusetts. The “Shot Heard Round the World” took place in Concord later that day
1909 - Joan of Arc receives beatification by the Roman Catholic Church.
1993 – After a 51-day standoff with U.S. federal agents, some 80 members of the millennialist Branch Davidian religious group perished in a fire at their compound near Waco, Texas.
1995 - Oklahoma City bombing – a truck bomb at Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building kills 168 & injures 500.
2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected to succeed Pope John Paul II, who had died some two weeks earlier; Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI.
2011 – Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba’s central committee after 45 years of holding the title. 

Film & TV:
1934 – Shirley Temple appears in her 1st movie, “Stand Up & Cheer” 

Music:
1774 – CW Glucks opera “Iphigenia in Aulis” premieres in Paris 

Sport:
1897 – 1st Boston Marathon (B.A.A. Road Race), won by John J. McDermott in 2:55:10; the world’s oldest annual marathon inspired by success of the first marathon at the 1896 Summer Olympics 

Via Britannica / On This Day