Today in History

SpaceX launches the first private spacecraft, Falcon 1.

Afghanistan’s former president (1986-92) Mohammad Najibullah tortured and murdered by the Taliban.

Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat sign an interim agreement concerning settlement on the Gaza Strip.

Roy Lichtenstein’s pop art work Whaam!, depicting in comic-book style a US jet shooting down an enemy fighter, is exhibited for the first time; it will become one of the best known examples of pop art.

Military coup in Damascus ends the Egypt-Syria union known as the United Arab Republic that was formed Feb. 1, 1958.

Jennifer Rush, singer, songwriter (“The Power of Love”).

Explorer VI, the U.S. satellite, takes the first video pictures of earth.

France ratifies a new constitution.

Winston “Win” Percy, three-time British Touring Car Champion, regarded by many as the World’s Number One Touring Car Driver

Stuart Kauffman, theoretical biologist renowned for his work in studying the origin of life and origins of molecular organization.

Koko Taylor, blues singer.

Brigitte Bardot, French actress.

Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin when he notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory; it remained for Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to isolate the active ingredient, allowing the “miracle drug” to be developed in the 1940s.

Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2).

Ethel Rosenberg, who, with her husband Julius, became one of the first American civilians executed for espionage.

Race riots in Harriston, Mississippi, kill 10 people.

W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues” is published.

Al Capp, cartoonist who created the “Li’l Abner” comic strip.

A woman is placed under arrest for smoking a cigarette on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Ed Sullivan, television host.

Colonel Ronald Mackenzie raids a war camp of Comanche and Kiowa at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, slaughtering 2,000 of their horses.

Union General William Rosecrans blames his defeat at Chickamauga on two of his subordinate generals. They are later exonerated by a court of inquiry.

Friedrich Engels, socialist who collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

The Anglo-Russian-Austrian Alliance of St. Petersburg, which is directed against France, is signed.

Samuel de Champlain and his colonists return to France from Port Royal Nova Scotia.

James of Aragon retakes Valencia, Spain, from the Arabs.

King Henry of England defeats his brother Robert at the Battle of Tinchebrai and reunites England and Normandy.

William, Duke of Normandy, soon to be known as William the Conqueror invades England.

The Emperor Lothar dies in Gaul, and his kingdom is divided between his three sons.

On landing in Egypt, Pompey is murdered on the orders of Ptolemy.