Birthdays
- 1685 George Berkeley, Irish philosopher/bishop of Cloyne
- 1922 Jack Kerouac, American Beat writer (On the Road, Mexico Blues), born in Lowell, Massachusetts (d. 1969)
- 1932 Andrew Young, US ambassador to UN (1977-79)/(Mayor-D-Atlanta)
- 1947 Mitt Romney, 70th Republican Governor of Massachusetts and presidential candidate, born in Detroit, Michigan
- 1948 James Taylor, vocalist/guitarist (Up on the Roof), born in Boston, Massachusetts
Events
- 1455 First record of Johannes Gutenberg‘s Bible, letter dated this day by Enea Silvio Piccolomini refers to the bible printed a year before
- 1642 Abel Tasman is the 1st European to sight New Zealand, viewing the north-west coast of the South Island
- 1664 New Jersey becomes an English colony
- 1848 2nd Republic established in France
- 1913 Foundation stone of the Australian capital in Canberra laid
- 1917 A German submarine sinks an unarmed US merchant ship, the ‘Algonquin’ on the same day that US President Woodrow Wilson gives executive order to arm US merchant ships
- 1930 Mohandas Gandhi begins 200m (300km) march protesting British salt tax
- 1933 FDR conducts his 1st “fireside chat”
- 1938 Nazi Germany invades Austria (Anschluss)
- 1947 US President Harry Truman introduces Truman-doctrine to fight communism
- 1951 Communist troops driven out of Seoul
- 1956 Dow Jones closes above 500 for 1st time (500.24)
- 1999 Former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO
- 2012 China records its highest trade deficit in over a decade
