1586 – Walter Raleigh brings the 1st tobacco to England from Virginia
1689 – Battle of Killicrankie: Jacobite Scottish Highlanders under Viscount Dundee defeat royalist force under General MacKay
1789 – US Congress establishes Department of Foreign Affairs now referred to as the State Department
1866 – Atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid (1,686 miles long)
1909 – The world’s first military airplane completed one of the final qualifying flights for its sale to the U.S. Army Signal Corps by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
1919 – The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 was ignited after a young black man was stoned and drowned in Lake Michigan for swimming in an area reserved for whites.
1921 – Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto
1996 – A pipe bomb exploded in Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta, Georgia, killing 1 person and injuring 111 in the first terrorist attack at the Olympics since the 1972 Games in Munich, West Germany.
Births & Deaths: 1946 – Avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein, whose Paris home was a salon for leading artists and writers, died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
Sport: 1999 – Tony Hawk is the first skateboarder to land a “900”
Music: 1982 – Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s musical “Little Shop of Horrors” opens Off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre in NYC
TV & Film: 1940 – Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Tex Avery, Bob Givens (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series), first debuts in “Wild Hare”