Historical Events
1566 – Antonio “Michele” Ghislieri is elected Pope Pius V
1894 – William K.L. Dickson captures “Fred Ott’s Sneeze” as a motion picture at Thomas Edison’s Black Mariah Studio, West Orange, New Jersey
1915 – World War I: Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm approves strategic bombing of Britain, but forbids bombing London, fearing his relatives in the royal family might be killed
1966 – Gene Kiniski beats Lou Thesz in St Louis, to become NWA wrestling champion
1991 – Saddam Hussein prepares his troops for what he says will be a long violent war against the US
1991 – “Nia Peeples Party Machine” premieres on TV
Famous Birthdays
1502 – Gregory XIII [Ugo Boncompagni], Italian pope (1572-85) who introduced the Gregorian (New Style) calendar in 1582, born in Bologna, Papal States (d. 1585)
1903 – Alan Napier, British actor (The Sword in the Stone, Batman), born in Birmingham, England (d. 1988)
1907 – Nicanor Zabaleta, Spanish harpist, born in San Sebastián, Spain (d. 1993)
1921 – John Lanigan, Australian operatic tenor (Covent Garden), born in Seddon, Victoria (d. 1996)
1958 – Linda Kozlowski, American actress (Crocodile Dundee), born in Fairfield, Connecticut
1958 – Donna Rice Hughes, American author and speaker, born in New Orleans, Louisiana
Famous Deaths
1537 – Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, Italian ruler of Florence (1532-37), assassinated by his friend and cousin at 26
1901 – James Dunwoody Bulloch, Confederacy’s chief foreign agent in Great Britain during the American Civil War, dies at 77
1943 – Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American physicist, electrical engineer and inventor who developed alternating current and the Tesla Coil, dies at 86
1984 – Alfred Kastler, French physicist (Nobel 1966 – Hertzian resonances within atoms), dies at 81
2001 – James Carr, American soul singer (“To Love Somebody”; “Dark End of the Street”), dies of lung cancer at 58
2021 – Tommy Lasorda, American Baseball Hall of Fame manager (World Series 1981, 88; NL Manager of the Year 1983, 88; LA Dodgers 1976-96), dies of a heart attack at 93