On This Day…

1778 – Captain James Cook anchors at Alaska

1941 – “The Maltese Falcon” directed by John Huston and based off Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel of the same name, starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, premieres in New York City

1971 – American tennis star Billie Jean King becomes the first female athlete to win $100,000 in prize money in a single year.

1983 – Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson release “Say, Say, Say” in the UK

1990 – After four decades of Cold War division and with pressure from the German chancellor Helmut Kohl, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to a unified Germany within NATO, leading to Germany’s reunification this day in 1990.

1995 – One of the most sensational trials in U.S. history ended as a jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

2004 – American actress Janet Leigh—who was best remembered for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, died at the age of 77.

2018 – First exomoon, moon outside the solar system, discovered 8,000 years away (size of Neptune) by astronomers at Columbia University.

Via Britannica / On This Day