1860 ~ Birthday of Billy the Kid, Outlaw.

1869 ~ The "Cutty Sark" was launched. It is the last example of a Clipper ship.

1887 ~ Birthday of Boris Karloff, Actor.

1888 ~ Birthday of Harpo Marx, Comedian.

1943 ~ U.S. Marines seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese.

1955 ~ Death of Shemp Howard, actor, comedian (The Three Stooges)

1963 ~ The first episode of the science fiction TV series "Doctor Who" aired on the BBC.

1993 ~ Rachel Whiteread won both the Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the K Foundation art award for the worst artist of the year.

2001 ~ Convention on Cybercrime is signed in Budapest, Hungary.

2002 ~ Sectarian violence force the Miss World contest to move to London from Nigeria.

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Eudaimonia

1963 ~ The first episode of the science fiction TV series "Doctor Who" aired on the BBC.

And a fine show 49 years later.

This show has scared the crap out of 3 generations, in a good way.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

I rather liked "The Fires of Pompeii" when it revealed that the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius was caused by aliens called Pyroviles living under it.

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Eudaimonia

1642 ~ Abel Tasman became the first European to discover the island of Tasmania.

1859 ~ British naturalist Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species", a book which argues that organisms gradually evolve through natural selection.

1868 ~ Birthday of Scott Joplin, Musician.

1941 ~ Birthday of Pete Best, original drummer of The Beatles.

1947 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve citations of contempt of Congress against the so-called Hollywood 10 after they refused to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

1963 ~ Death of Lee Harvey Oswald, assassination suspect.

1974 ~ Death of U Thant, Burmese diplomat and UN Secretary-General.

1989 ~ The Velvet Revolution: The leadership of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia resigned.

1991 ~ Death of Freddie Mercury, musician (Queen).

1998 ~ America Online announced it would acquire Netscape Communications.

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Eudaimonia

1844 ~ Birthday of Karl Benz, Engineer.

1867 ~ Alfred Nobel patented dynamite.

1913 ~ Birthday of Lewis Thomas, Physician & Essayist.

1952 ~ Birthday of Imran Khan, Pakistani test cricketer.

1968 ~ Death of Upton Sinclair, Journalist, Politician, Writer.

1974 ~ Death of U Thant, Burmese UN Secretary-General.

1986 ~ The Iran-Contra affair became public knowledge.

1998 ~ The Turkish government led by PM Mesut Yilmaz collapsed after losing a no-confidence motion over corruption allegations.

1999 ~ Six-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez was rescued by a pair of sport fishermen off the coast of Florida.

2009 ~ The 2009 Saudi Arabian Floods: Following freak rains swamp the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia during the Hajj pilgrimage.

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Eudaimonia

1939 ~ Birthday of Tina Turner, the Queen of Rock & Roll.

1942 ~ President Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning in December.

1951 ~ Birthday of Cicciolina, Italian Porn Actress and politician.

1968 ~ Cream played their farewell concert.

1976 ~ The Band played their farewell concert.

1981 ~ Birthday of Aurora Snow, Porn Actress.

1981 ~ Death of Max Euwe, World Chess Champion.

1983 ~ £25m in gold was stolen from a warehouse near Heathrow airport.

2003 ~ Last ever flight by Concorde.

2008 ~ Ten coordinated terrorist attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists killed 164 and injured more than 250 people in Mumbai (Bombay), India.

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Eudaimonia

8 BC ~ Death of Horace, poet. Remembered for, among other things, “Carpe Diem” (seize the day).

1095 ~ Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont.

1895 ~ Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he died.

1942 ~ Birthday of Jimi Hendrix, musician.

1946 ~ Indian P.M. Jawaharlal Nehru appealed to the U.S. and the USSR to start nuclear disarmament, stating that such an action would "save humanity from the ultimate disaster".

India would later develop its indigenous nuclear WMD.

1973 ~ The U.S. Senate confirmed President-to-be Gerald Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro Agnew, who'd resigned.

1977 ~ Birthday of Mika Tan, Porn actress.

1978 ~ Birthday of Shy Love, Porn actress.

1979 ~ Birthday of Danielle Foxxx, Porn actress.

1990 ~ John Major followed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the UK.

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Eudaimonia

1811 ~ Beethoven's Piano Concerto #5, the "Emperor Concerto," premiered at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

1820 ~ Birthday of Friedrich Engels, social philosopher.

1943 ~ President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met in Tehran during World War II.

1954 ~ Death of Enrico Fermi, Physicist.

1969 ~ The Rolling Stones released the classic album Let It Bleed.

1969 ~ Birthday of Lexington Steele, Porn Actor.

1994 ~ Death of Jeffrey Dahmer, serial killer.

1994 ~ Death of Jerry Rubin, social activist.

1994 ~ Norway voted to reject membership in the European Union for the second time.

2000 ~ The eighth tar drop fell in the University of Queensland pitch drop experiment.

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Eudaimonia

1643 ~ Death of Claudio Monteverdi, Composer.

1832 ~ Birthday of Louisa May Alcott, Writer.

1890 ~ At West Point, New York, the U.S. Naval Academy defeated the U.S. Military Academy 24-0 in the first Army–Navy football game.

1898 ~ Birthday of C. S. Lewis, Writer.

1944 ~ The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome is performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

1947 ~ The UN passed a resolution calling for Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews.

1975 ~ The name "Micro-soft" (for "microcomputer software") is first used in a letter from Bill Gates to Paul Allen.

1982 ~ Birthday of Krystal Steal, Porn Actress.

1990 ~ The UN Security Council passed Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing military intervention in Iraq if that nation did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991.

2001 ~ Death of George Harrison, musician.

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Eudaimonia

1667 ~ Birthday of Jonathan Swift, Writer & Satirist.

1835 ~ Birthday of Mark Twain, Writer (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court).

1872 ~ First international soccer match played at Hamilton Crescent, Scotland.

1874 ~ Birthday of Sir Winston Churchill, British political leader & Writer.

1936 ~ In London, the Crystal Palace was destroyed in a fire. It had been built for the 1851 Great Exhibition.

1939 ~ Soviet forces crossed the Finnish border in several places and bombed Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the Winter War.

1900 ~ Death of Oscar Wilde, Writer.

1994 ~ The burning Achille Lauro abandoned off east Africa.

1995 ~ President Clinton became the first U.S. chief executive to visit Northern Ireland.

1999 ~ The anti-globalization movement caught police unprepared and forced the cancellation of opening ceremonies of a WTO meeting.

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Eudaimonia

1083 ~ Birthday of Anna Comnena, Byzantine historian.

1824 ~ U.S. presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the House of Representatives was given the task to decide the winner, as stipulated by the Twelfth Amendment.

1835 ~ Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales.

1935 ~ Birthday of Woody Allen, Film Director & Actor & Comedian.

1954 ~ Birthday of Annette Haven, Porn actress.

1955 ~ Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man and was arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws.

1959 ~ The Antarctic Treaty signed, which set aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and banned military activity.

1964 ~ Death of J. B. S. Haldane, Scottish geneticist.

1990 ~ English and French Channel Tunnel workers met beneath the English Channel.

1991 ~ Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.

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Eudaimonia

1814 ~ Death of Marquis de Sade, Writer.

1859 ~ Militant abolitionist leader John Brown was hanged for his October 16th raid on Harper's Ferry.

1942 ~ Manhattan Project: A team led by Enrico Fermi initiate the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

1954 ~ Senator McCarthy was censured for conduct unbecoming to a senator.

1961 ~ Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism.

1971 ~ Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Dubai, and Umm Al Quwain formed the United Arab Emirates.

1981 ~ Birthday of Isabella Soprano, Porn Actress.

1990 ~ Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot and killed in Medellín.

1991 ~ Apple release the first version of QuickTime.

2001 ~ Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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Eudaimonia

1815 ~ Death of John Carroll - First Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S.

1857 ~ Birthday of Joseph Conrad, Writer.

1894 ~ Death of Robert Louis Stevenson, Writer.

1919 ~ Death of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Painter.

1947 ~ ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway.

1967 ~ At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, Lewis Washkansky became the first human to receive a heart transplant. The transplant team was headed by Christiaan Barnard.

1984 ~ Bhopal Disaster: A leak from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed nearly 3,000 people in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.

1989 ~ Formal end of the Cold War.

1999 ~ NASA lost contact with the Mars Polar Lander just before it entered the Martian atmosphere.

1999 ~ Death of Madeline Kahn, Actress & Comedian.

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Eudaimonia

1642 ~ Death of Cardinal Richelieu, French statesman.

1674 ~ Father Jacques Marquette founded a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan which would later grow into the city of Chicago, Illinois.

1679 ~ Death of Thomas Hobbes, political philosopher.

1849 ~ Birthday of Crazy Horse, American Indian leader.

1872 ~ The Mary Celeste was found by the British brig Dei Gratia. The ship had been abandoned for 9 days but was only slightly damaged.

1945 ~ The U.S. Senate approved United States participation in the United Nations.

1976 ~ Death of Benjamin Britten, Composer.

1980 ~ Led Zeppelin announced its breakup.

1981 ~ Birthday of Courtney Cummz, Porn actress.

1998 ~ The second module of the International Space Station (ISS), the Unity Module, was launched.

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Eudaimonia

1791 ~ Death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer.

1890 ~ Birthday of Fritz Lang, film director.

1901 ~ Birthday of Werner Heisenberg, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1932.

1901 ~ Birthday of Walt Disney, film producer.

1909 ~ Foundation of les Canadiens de Montréal.

1926 ~ Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, debuted.

1933 ~ Prohibition ended: The Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. This overturned the 18th Amendment, which had outlawed the inter-state sale of alcohol.

1995 ~ The Sri Lankan armed forces took Jaffna from the Tamil Tigers.

2005 ~ The Civil Partnership Act came into effect in the UK.

2006 ~ Death of David Bronstein, Ukrainian-born chess grandmaster.

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Eudaimonia