1758 - French astronomer Charles Messier mistakenly identifies the Crab Nebula so begins his Messier Catalogue
1909 - World’s first patent for synthetic rubber granted to German chemist Fritz Hofmann
1933 - Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives idea of a nuclear chain reaction
1940 - Four teens, following their dog down a hole near Lascaux, France discover 17,000 year old drawings now known as the Lascaux Cave Paintings
1953 – U.S. senator and future president John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.
1958 - US Supreme Court orders the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas to integrate
1959 - Luna 2 launched by USSR; 1st spacecraft to impact on the Moon
1992 - Mae Jemison is the 1st African American woman to go into space (aboard Endeavour STS-47)
2012 - Excavators announce that they may have found the remains of King Richard III of England under a carpark in Leicester
2015 - Jeremy Corbyn is elected leader of the UK Labour party
2018 - Oldest known human drawing discovered, 73,000 years old, in Blombos Cave, South Africa published in “Nature”
Births & Deaths: 1764 – French composer of the late Baroque period Jean-Philippe Rameau—known for his harpsichord music and famous as a composer of operas, including the masterpiece Pygmalion (1748)—died on this day in 1764.
2003 – Country music legend Johnny Cash—whose craggy baritone, simple poetics, hard-won integrity, and advocacy of the dispossessed transformed him into an American icon—died in Nashville.
2014 – Politician Ian Paisley—who was a militant Protestant leader in the factional conflict that divided Northern Ireland from the 1960s until the early 21st century—died in Belfast.
Film & TV:
1959 – The TV series Bonanza premiered on NBC, and it became one of the longest-running westerns in broadcast history.
1981 - “The Smurfs” animated cartoon series by Hanna-Barbera first broadcasts in North America
Music:
1910 - Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony premieres in Munich with 1028 musicians
Sport:
1992 - Stefan Edberg beats Michael Chang 6-7, 7-5, 7-6, 5-7, 6-4 in the longest match in US Open history (5 hours, 26 minutes)
