1900        J.F. Pickering patented his airship.

1903        Pope Leo XIII celebrated 25 years as the Pope.

1909        F.T. Marinetti (1876-1944), Italian poet,

published the 1st Futurist Manifesto in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro.

It included statements such as “We want to glorify war – the only cure

for the world…” and We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of

energy and fearlessness.”

1920       Robert E. Peary (63), US pole explorer (North

Pole, 6/4/1909), died.

1924       Pierre Lacau, the French Director of Antiquities,

was authorised by the Egyptian Cabinet to reopen the tomb of

Tutankhamun and resume work. Howard Carter refuses its offer to

continue his work under Egyptian control wrote Virgil’s biography: “Virgil Thompson: Composer on the Aisle.”

1938        Anthony Eden (1897-1977) resigned as British

foreign secretary in a dispute with PM Neville Chamberlain. He said

Chamberlain was appeasing Germany.

1938       Hitler demanded self-determination for Germans in

Austria and Czechoslovakia. As Hitler’s quest for Lebensraum (“living

space”) expanded into Czechoslovakia, thousands of Czechoslovakian

soldiers and airmen escaped to participate in the liberation of their

country.

1942        Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of

Japanese Americans on the West Coast.

1942        Lt. Edward O’Hare downed five out of nine Japanese

bombers that were attacking the carrier Lexington, which earned him

the Congressional Medal of Honor

1947       Lord Louis Mountbatten was appointed  the last

viceroy of India.

1960     English archeologist Charles Leonard Woolley

(b.1880), best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia, died.

He was knighted by King George V in 1935.

1961     Percy Aldridge Grainger (78), Australian-US

composer, pianist, died.

1962     U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr.,

became the first American to orbit the earth. Launched from Cape

Canaveral, Fla., Glenn made three 90-minute orbits of the earth in

Friendship 7, radioing down to Earth, “Oh, that view is tremendous!”

The mission also provided important information about what it was like

for an astronaut to be weightless for a long period of time. When the

ship’s automatic altitude control system began to fail, Glenn, a

decorated World War II pilot, took manual control for the rest of the

flight. During Friendship 7’s approach to Earth, Glenn saw some

flaming material breaking off the capsule, but the parachute opened

and the capsule landed safely in the Atlantic Ocean. It was some time

later that NASA mission control determined that the sparks were

crystallized water vapor released by Friendship 7’s air-conditioning

system. Friendship 7’s flight lasted four hours and 56 minutes.

1967       Elvis Presley released his album “How Great Thou

Art.” The song “How Great Thou Art” is a Christian hymn based on a

Swedish poem written by Carl Gustav Boberg (1859-1940) in Sweden in

1885.

1991       Quincy Jones’ “Back on the Block” was named album

of the year at the 33rd Annual Grammy Awards.

1993        Ferrucio Lamborghini (76), Italian auto-designer

(Lamborghini, Miura), died.

1994      Pope John Paul II demanded juristic discrimination

of homosexuals.

1995       An American Marine, Sgt. Justin A. Harris, died in

a helicopter crash during the evacuation of United Nations forces from

Somalia.

1996       Gangsta rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg and his former

bodyguard were acquitted of murder in the 1993 shooting death of an

alleged gang member.

1999        Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India rode

to Pakistan by bus to meet with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for 2 days

of talks.

2003       Former Air Force Master Sgt. Brian Patrick Regan

was convicted in Alexandria, Va., of offering to sell U.S.

intelligence to Iraq and China but acquitted of attempted spying for

Libya. Regan was later sentenced to life without parole.

2005       In Florida Jeff Gordon won his third Daytona 500.

Gordon was born in Vallejo, California, and raised in Pittsboro,

Indiana.

2006        Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus (84), a former

Vatican bank chief linked to a huge Italian banking scandal in the

1980s, was found dead in his home in Sun City, Ariz.

2007        Nigeria’s court of appeal ruled that President

Olusegun Obasanjo had no legal power to sack of his deputy president

for having joined an opposition party.

2009      Christopher Nolan (43), an Irish poet and

novelist, died in Dublin. He had refused to let cerebral palsy get in

the way of his writing. Using a “unicorn stick” strapped to his

forehead to tap the keys of a typewriter, Nolan laboriously wrote out

messages and, eventually, poems and books as well. His autobiography,

“Under the Eye of the Clock: The Life Story of Christopher Nolan,” won

the prestigious Whitbread Award in 1988.

2010       Alexander Haig (b.1924), a former US Secretary of

State and four-star general, died of complications from an infection.

He had served as a top adviser to three presidents and had sought the

Republican presidential nomination for the 1988 elections.

2011        In Burkina Faso Justin Zongo died while in police

custody. The student’s death sparked months of protests that left at

least six dead. In August three policemen faced charges of aggravated

assault related to his death.

2014       Guantanamo Bay prisoner Ahmed al-Darbi (39) of

Saudi Arabia pleaded guilty to war crimes charges for helping plan the

suicide bombing of an oil tanker off Yemen in 2002 that killed a

crewman and wounded a dozen others.

2014        Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was convicted

on 20 counts accepting bribes.