An Atlanta real estate lawyer who defended the Ku Klux Klan in the ’70s and ’80s is once again in the news for his claim that “desegregation was a mistake.”
| 97 | To placate the Praetorians of Germany, Nerva of Rome adopts Trajan, the Spanish-born governor of lower Germany. | |
| 1553 | Michael Servetus, who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood, is burned for heresy in Switzerland. | |
| 1612 | A Polish army that invaded Russia capitulates to Prince Dmitri Pojarski and his Cossacks. | |
| 1791 | President George Washington transmits to Congress the results of the first US census, exclusive of South Carolina which had not yet submitted its findings. | |
| 1806 | Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enters Berlin. | |
| 1809 | President James Madison orders the annexation of the western part of West Florida. Settlers there had rebelled against Spanish authority. | |
| 1862 | A Confederate force is routed at the Battle of Georgia Landing, near Bayou Lafourche in Louisiana. | |
| 1870 | The French fortress of Metz surrenders to the Prussian Army. | |
| 1873 | Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applies for a patent on barbed wire. Glidden eventually received five patents and is generally considered to be the inventor of barbed wire. | |
| 1891 | D. B. Downing, inventor, is awarded a patent for the street letter (mail) box. | |
| 1904 | The New York subway officially opens running from the Brooklyn Bridge uptown to Broadway at 145th Street. | |
| 1907 | The first trial in the Eulenburg Affair ends in Germany. | |
| 1917 | 20,000 women march in a suffrage parade in New York. As the largest state and the first on the East Coast to do so, New York has an important effect on the movement to grant all women the vote in all elections. | |
| 1922 | In Italy, liberal Luigi Facta’s cabinet resigns after threats from Mussolini that “either the government will be given to us or we will seize it by marching on Rome.” Mussolini calls for a general mobilization of all Fascists. | |
| 1927 | Fox Movie-tone news, the first sound news film, is released. | |
| 1941 | In a broadcast to the nation on Navy Day, President Franklin Roosevelt declares: “America has been attacked, the shooting has started.” He does not ask for full-scale war yet, realizing that many Americans are not yet ready for such a step. | |
| 1954 | Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the US Air Force. | |
| 1962 | An American U-2 reconnaissance plane is shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Cuba, killing the pilot, Maj. Rudolf Anderson, the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis. | |
| 1962 | Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev offers to remove Soviet missile bases in Cuba if the U.S. removes its missile bases in Turkey. | |
| 1964 | The political career of Reagan is launched when he delivers a speech on behalf of wingnut presidential candidate Goldwater. | |
| 1971 | The Democratic Republic of the Congo is renamed Zaire. | |
| 1986 | The London Stock Exchange rules change as Britain suddenly deregulates financial markets, an event called the Big Bang. | |
| 1988 | US President Ronald Reagan decides to tear down a new US Embassy in Moscow because Soviet listening devices were built into the structure. | |
| 1997 | Stock markets crash around the world over fears of a global economic meltdown. |
A brother of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was arrested in Los
Angeles on suspicion of possessing child pornography, authorities said
Wednesday.
Seventeen-year-old Christian Heath is alleging that he was assaulted at
an Oklahoma towing company but he has video to back up the claim. 
| 1774 | The first Continental Congress, which protested British measures and called for civil disobedience, concludes in Philadelphia. | |
| 1795 | General Paul Barras resigns his commission as head of France’s Army of the Interior to become head of the Directory; his second-in-command becomes the army’s commander—Napoleon Bonaparte. | |
| 1825 | The first boat on the Erie Canal leaves Buffalo, N.Y. | |
| 1881 | Three Earp brothers and Doc Holliday have a shootout with the Clantons and McLaurys at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. | |
| 1905 | Norway signs a treaty of separation with Sweden. Norway chooses Prince Charles of Denmark as the new king; he becomes King Haakon VII. | |
| 1918 | Germany’s supreme commander, General Erich Ludendorff, resigns, protesting the terms to which the German Government has agreed in negotiating the armistice. This sets the stage for his later support for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, who claim that Germany did not lose the war on the battlefield but were “stabbed in the back” by politicians. | |
| 1942 | The Japanese attack Guadalcanal, sinking two U.S. carriers. | |
| 1942 | The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Hornet is sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz Island, in the South Pacific. | |
| 1944 |  |
|
| 1950 | A reconnaissance platoon for a South Korean division reaches the Yalu River. They are the only elements of the U.N. force to reach the river before the Chinese offensive pushes the whole army down into South Korea. | |
| 1955 | The Village Voice is first published, backed in part by Norman Mailer. | |
| 1955 | Ngo Dinh Diem declares himself Premier of South Vietnam. | |
| 1957 | The Russian government announces that Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the nation’s most prominent military hero, has been relieved of his duties as Minister of Defense. Khrushchev accuses Zhukov as promoting his own “cult of personality” and sees him as a threat to his own popularity. | |
| 1958 | The first New York – Paris transatlantic jet passenger service is inaugurated by Pan Am, while the first New York – London transatlantic jet passenger service is inaugurated by BOAC. | |
| 1967 | Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and his wife Farah as Empress. | |
| 1970 | Garry Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury first appears. | |
| 1979 | The President of South Korea, Park Chung-hee, is asssasinated by Kim Jae-kyu, head of the country’s Central intelligence Agency; Choi Kyu-ha is named acting president. | |
| 1994 | Israel and Jordan sign a peace treaty. | |
| 2001 | The USA PATRIOT Act is signed into law by Pres. George W. Bush, greatly expanding intelligence and legal agencies’ ability to utilize wiretaps, records searches and surveillance. | |
| 2002 | Russian Spetsnaz storm the Moscow Theatre, where Chechen terrorists had taken the audience and performers hostage three days earlier; 50 terrorists and 150 hostages die in the assault. |
