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 – Transatlantic telegraph cable successfully in second attempt comes ashore at Heart’s Content, Newfoundland laid out by Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Eastern steamship (1,686 miles long)
1921 – Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto
1940 – Billboard magazine starts publishing bestseller charts
1953 – Vatican disallows priest holiday work in factory
1960 – US Vice-president Richard Nixon nominated for presidential candidate at Republican convention in Chicago
1977 – John Lennon is granted a green card for permanent residence in US
1990 – Zsa Zsa Gabor begins a 3 day jail sentence for slapping a police officer in Beverly Hills
1992 – Nelson Mandela says a general strike will go ahead to protest for the removal of South African President F. W. de Klerk from power and for free elections
1999 – Tony Hawk is the first skateboarder to land a “900”
2012 – Queen Elizabeth II opens the 30th Olympics in London, United Kingdom (with some help from 007)
2013 – 100 people are killed and 1,500 injured in a crackdown against protesters in Cairo, Egypt
2014 – Liberia shuts down most of its borders with fears about the spread of Ebola epidemic
2017 – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos briefly becomes world’s richest man at $91.4bn overtaking Bill Gates for half a day
2020 – US congressman John Lewis becomes the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda in Washington D.C.
2020 – WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus states that COVID-19 is “easily the most severe” global health emergency the WHO has faced
Film & TV:
1940 – Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Tex Avery, Bob Givens (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series), first debuts in “Wild Hare”
Music:
1982 – Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s musical “Little Shop of Horrors” opens Off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre in NYC
Sport:
1999 – Tony Hawk is the first skateboarder to land a “900” Via Britannica / On This Day
