Today in History

California voters remove Democratic governor Gray Davis from office in the state’s first successful recall of a sitting governor (only the second successful recall of a governor in US history); a Republican candidate, bodybuilder/actor Arnold Schwarzenegger wins the election to replace Davis 17 days later.

US invasion of Afghanistan in reaction to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 begins; it will become the longest war in US history.

Fox News Channel begins broadcasting.

The Great Flood of 1993 on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers ends, the worst US flood since 1927.

Four Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) hijackers seize the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and demand the release of 50 Palestinians held by Israel.

Hua Guofeng, premier of the People’s Republic of China, succeeds the late Mao Zedong as chairman of the Communist Party of China.

A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor (later called Sellafield) north of Liverpool, England, spreads radioactive iodine and polonium through the countryside and into the Irish Sea. Livestock in the immediate area were destroyed, along with 500,000 gallons of milk. At least 30, and possibly as many as 1,000, cancer deaths were subsequently linked to the accident.

Yo Yo Ma, cellist.

Vladimir Putin, former prime minister and current (2013) president of Russia.

East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, is formed.

Prisoner uprising at Birkenau concentration camp.

Thomas Keneally, novelist, author of Schindler’s Ark, the basis for the film Schindler’s List.

Leroi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka), playwright.

Desmond Tutu, South African religious leader.

In attempting to find ways to lower the cost of the automobile and make it more affordable to ordinary Americans, Henry Ford took note of the work of efficiency experts like Frederick Taylor, the "father of scientific management." The result was the assembly line that reduced the time it took to manufacture a car, from 12 hours to 93 minutes.

Helen MacInnes, writer.

Heinrich Himmler, Nazi leader.

Nils Bohr, physicist whose model of atomic structure helped establish quantum theory.

French Minister of the Interior Leon Gambetta escapes besieged Paris by balloon, reaching the French provisional government in Tours.

James Whitcomb Riley, poet.

Delegates from nine of the American colonies meet in New York to discuss the Stamp Act Crisis and colonial response to it.

William Billings, composer.

In the last great clash of galleys, the Ottoman navy is defeated at Lepanto, Greece, by a Christian naval coalition under the overall command of Spain’s Don Juan de Austria.