Today in History

Amnesty International, a human rights organization, is founded.

Melody, the first animated 3-D cartoon in Technicolor, premiers.

Maeve Binchy, Irish writer (Circle of Friends, The Copper Beach).

Fred Chappell, poet and novelist.

Stephen Birmingham, novelist and biographer.

May Swenson, poet.

Herb Shriner, radio humorist.

Walker Percy, writer (The Moviegoer, Love in the Ruins).

Patrick White, Australian writer (The Tree of Man, The Eye of the Storm).

T-Bone Walker, blues guitarist and singer.

Ian Fleming, British novelist, created the character James Bond.

Britain annexes the Orange Free State in South Africa.

Jim Thorpe, American athlete.

The Paris commune is suppressed by troops from Versailles.

The 54th Massachusetts, a regiment of African-American recruits, leaves Boston, headed for Hilton Head, South Carolina.

The French army launches a flanking attack on the Austrian army in Northern France.

Congress authorizes Indian removal from all states to the western Prairie.

P. G. T. Beauregard, Confederate general during the American Civil War.

Jean Agassiz, naturalist and educator.

Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned in Milan, Italy.

Thomas Moore, Irish poet.

William Pitt the Younger, prime minister of England (1783-1801).

Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, French inventor of the execution device which bears his name.

A solar eclipse interrupts a battle outside Sardis in western Turkey between Medes and Lydians. The battle ends in a draw.