1475 ~ Birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian artist.

1806 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet.

1836 ~ After a 13 day seige, the Mexican army commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna captured the Alamo.

1857 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court.

1869 ~ Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

1888 ~ Death of Louisa May Alcott, Novelist.

1926 ~ Birthday of Alan Greenspan, American economist.

1957 ~ The former UK colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana.

1982 ~ Death of Ayn Rand, Author.

1987 ~ 197 people died when a car ferry capsized just outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.

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I hope his b'day cake was still fresh.

1274 ~ Death of Thomas Aquinas, Philosopher.

1850 ~ U.S. Senator Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.

1875 ~ Birthday of Maurice Ravel, Composer.

1867 ~ Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone (patent # 174,464).

1965 ~ In Selma, Alabama, State troopers and local law enforcement forcefully broke up a group of 600 civil rights marchers.

1967 ~ Death of Alice B. Toklas, inspiration for a million brownies.

1969 ~ Golda Meir elected Prime Minister of Israel.

1999 ~ Death of Stanley Kubrick, Film Director.

2004 ~ An investiture ceremony was held for V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church's first openly homosexual bishop.

2006 ~ Apple was granted the patent to the iPod.

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1714 ~ Birthday of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Composer. Not to be confused with his father Johann Sebastian Bach.

1862 ~ The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) was launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

1869 ~ Birthday of Hector Berlioz, Composer.

1917 ~ Death of Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German aircraft manufacturer.

1917 ~ The first stage of the Russian Revolution, the February Revolution started in St. Petersburg.

1942 ~ Death of José Raúl Capablanca, Cuban chess player.

1950 ~ The Soviet Union claimed to have an atomic bomb.

1959 ~ George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party in Arlington, Virginia.

1983 ~ President Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire.

2001 ~ The wreck of Bluebird, Donald Campbell's speedboat, was recovered.

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1454 ~ Birthday of Amerigo Vespucci, Explorer & Cartographer.

1934 ~ Birthday of Yuri Gagarin, Cosmonaut, first human in space.

1943 ~ Birthday of Bobby Fischer, chess player.

1945 ~ A fire storm in Tokyo, caused by incendiary bombs from American bombers killed over 100,000 people.

1954 ~ CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow critically reviewed Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-Communism campaign on "See It Now”.

1959 ~ The debut of the Barbie doll.

1967 ~ Stalin's daughter defected to the West.

1990 ~ Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Clyde Wells confirmed he would rescind Newfoundland's approval of the Meech Lake Accord, effectively killing the Accord.

1996 ~ Death of George Burns, Actor.

2005 ~ The final broadcast by Dan Rather on CBS Evening News.

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1913 ~ Death of Harriet Tubman, American abolitionist.

1949 ~ Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, also known as “Axis Sally”, was convicted in Washington, D.C., of treason.

1957 ~ Birthday of Osama bin Laden, Terrorist.

1965 ~ Neil Simon's play ''The Odd Couple'' opened on Broadway.

1969 ~ James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tenn., to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

1977 ~ Astronomers discovered rings around Uranus.

1977 ~ Death of E. Power Biggs, English-born organist.

1982 ~ The U.S. placed an embargo on Libyan oil because of Libya’s support of terrorist groups.

1985 ~ Death of Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet leader.

1993 ~ Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic.

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Astronomers discovered rings around Uranus.

Not mine.

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1941 ~ President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill.

1955 ~ Death of Alexander Fleming, Biologist.

1959 ~ Birthday of Nina Hartley, American porn star.

1968 ~ Death of John Wyndham, Author.

1985 ~ Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader.

1993 ~ Janet Reno was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, becoming the first female U.S. Attorney General.

1996 ~ John Howard became the twenty-fifth Prime Minister of Australia.

1997 ~ Paul McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

2004 ~ Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid, Spain, killed 191 people and wounded at least 1,800 in an attack linked to al-Qaida.

2006 ~ Death of Slobodan Milošević, President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia.

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1912 ~ The Girl Scouts (née Girl Guides) were started in the U.S.

1913 ~ Canberra officially named.

1922 ~ Birthday of Jack Kerouac, Writer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Harry Harrison, Science Fiction author.

1938 ~ Anschluss: German troops occupied Austria; annexation declared the following day.

1947 ~ The “Truman Doctrine” established.

1953 ~ Birthday of Ron Jeremy, Porn actor.

1987 ~ ”Les Misérables” opened on Broadway.

1994 ~ The Church of England ordained its first female priests.

1999 ~ Death of Sir Yehudi Menuhin, violinist.

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1781 ~ The planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel.

1855 ~ Birthday of Percival Lowell, Astronomer.

1868 ~ The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson began in the U.S. Senate.

1906 ~ Death of Susan B. Anthony, civil rights and women's suffrage activist.

1925 ~ A law in Tennessee, the Butler Act, was passed, prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

1938 ~ Death of Clarence Darrow, Attorney.

1947 ~ The musical “Brigadoon” opened on Broadway.

1954 ~ Viet Minh forces begin the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ against the French.

1964 ~ Kitty Genovese was murdered in an incident which shocked the world and prompted investigation into the Bystander effect.

1979 ~ The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousted Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat in Grenada.

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1681 ~ Birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann, German Composer.

1804 ~ Birthday of Johann Strauss Sr.

1879 ~ Birthday of Albert Einstein, physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1921.

1883 ~ Death of Karl Marx, political theorist.

1900 ~ The Gold Standard Act was ratified, placing U.S. currency on the gold standard.

1942 ~ First successful use of penicillin to treat a patient.

1943 ~ The SS under the command Sturmbannführer Amon Goth began the 'liquidation' of the Kraków Ghetto.

1964 ~ A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

1984 ~ Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, was wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

1985 ~ Birthday of Eva Angelina, Porn actress.

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A bit of trivia. Penicillin was first discovered by the British doctor Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928. Many years later he visited Peoria, Illinois, because of the research and experiments being done there by many of Peoria's scientists at the Northern Regional Research Laboratory (NRRL). It was in Peoria, at the NRRL, that the mass production of penicillin took place.

44 B.C. ~ Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators.

1877 ~ The first Test cricket match, between England and Australia.

1898 ~ Death of Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist.

1906 ~ Rolls-Royce Ltd. was registered.

1937 ~ Death of H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer.

1966 ~ Addressing a joint session of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American's right to vote.

1975 ~ Birthday of Veselin Topalov, Bulgarian chess player, FIDE World Chess Champion 2005 - 2006.

1990 ~ British journalist Farzad Bazoft was executed for spying.

1991 ~ Germany formally regained complete independence after World War II.

2004 ~ Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest "planet" in the Solar system so far observed.

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Interestingly, Howard Florey and co came to America looking for medical facilities capable of mas-producing the new drug. It was not with-held until patents had been set in stone, as this was deemed unethical at the time. Patents PF, not patients.

It was a US Department of Agriculture lady who found that canteloupe (rockmelons for us OZ folk) yielded significantly greater amounts of the drug.

Florey was vilified by a group of society who blamed him and his wonder-drug for allowing the population explosion to occur.

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And rightly so! How wicked can you get?!?!? Saving the lives of all those people who should have died!

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