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On this day in 1963, some 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., an event that became a high point of the civil rights movement, especially remembered for the famous “I Have a Dream” speech of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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1993: The spacecraft Galileo took pictures of the asteroid Ida.

1914: The first major engagement of the British and German navies during World War I occurred at the Battle of Helgoland Bight.

1850: Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin was performed for the first time, at Weimar, Germany.

1793: The Siege of Toulon in the French Revolutionary Wars began.

476: The fall of the Western Roman Empire was completed as Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the German warrior Odoacer.

Paul Martin

Liberal politician Paul Martin—who, as prime minister of Canada (2003–06), fostered economic growth and introduced progressive social policies but lost power amid a financial scandal in his party—was born this day in 1938.

Titian, the greatest Italian Renaissance painter of the Venetian school, who was once described as “the sun amidst small stars not only among the Italians but all the painters of the world,” died this day in 1576.

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1979: Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

1939: German Ernst Heinrich Heinkel's He 178, a turbojet-powered aircraft, made the first jet flight.

1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed between France and the United States in a series of peacekeeping efforts after World War I.

1776: During the American Revolution, British forces under General William Howe defeated George Washington and the American Continental Army in the Battle of Long Island.

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa

Baptized in Macedonia this day in 1910, Mother Teresa founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor, and later received the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Mount Vesuvius in Italy erupted on this day in 79, destroying the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the excavations of these sites in the mid-18th century precipitated the modern science of archaeology.

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1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) entered into force, following the signing of its treaty four months earlier.

1821: The Treaty of Córdoba was signed, giving Mexico its independence from Spain.

1803: Irish revolutionary James Napper Tandy died in France.

1572: The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, plotted by Catherine de Médicis against the French Huguenots, was carried out by Roman Catholic nobles and other citizens.

410: Alaric, chief of the Visigoths, led an army into Rome, an event that symbolizes the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Ysir 'Araft

Ysir 'Araft

Palestinian leader Ysir 'Araft, believed to have been born this day in Cairo in 1929, was president of the Palestinian Authority (1996–2004), chairman of the PLO (1969–2004), and cowinner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Henry Tudor (the future Henry VII) defeated the Yorkist king Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth Field on this day in 1485, effectively ending the Wars of the Roses and establishing the Tudor dynasty on the English throne.

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1978: Rebel Sandinistas occupied the National Palace in Managua, Nicaragua, holding more than 1,000 hostages for two days, in opposition to the Somoza government.

1973: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon named Henry Kissinger secretary of state.

1851: The first America's Cup was won by the American yacht America in a race around the Isle of Wight.

1642: The English Civil Wars, fought between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians, began when King Charles I formally raised the royal standard at Nottingham.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Born this day in 1908 in France, Henri Cartier-Bresson helped establish photojournalism as an art form, snapping spontaneous though impeccably composed and timed images that captured what he called the “decisive moment.”

On this day in 1808, British General Arthur Wellesley used his “thin red line” of infantry to defeat French General Andoche Junot's forces at the Battle of Vimeiro, leading to British control of Portugal.

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1991: Latvia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

1959: Hawaii became the 50th U.S. state.

1831: Nat Turner began an unsuccessful slave rebellion in the American South that eventually killed 60 people before being stopped by a 3,000-man militia.

Count Basie

Count Basie

American jazz musician Count Basie, who was born this day in 1904, was noted for his spare, economical piano style and is regarded as one of the most important and influential bandleaders in the history of jazz.

The robotic U.S. spacecraft Viking 1, built to explore the surface of Mars, was launched this day in 1975 and nearly one year later landed on Chryse Planitia, a flat lowland region in the northern hemisphere of the planet.

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1968: The Warsaw Pact nations (except Romania and Albania), led by the Soviet Union, invaded Czechoslovakia to put an end to the Prague Spring.

1960: Senegal seceded from the Mali Federation, declaring its full independence.

1940: Leon Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in Mexico.

1914: The German army captured Brussels during the initial German invasion of World War I.

1889: Labour activists closed the entire Port of London in the London Dock Strike.

1865: Austria and Prussia signed the Convention of Gastein, an agreement that temporarily postponed the final struggle between them for hegemony over Germany.

1794: U.S. General “Mad” Anthony Wayne defeated the Northwest Indian Confederation in the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

1741: Danish explorer Vitus Bering, who was working for Russia, encountered Alaska.

Eero Saarinen

Born this day in 1910 in Finland, Eero Saarinen, the son of noted architect Eliel Saarinen, was one of the leaders in a trend toward exploration and experiment in American architectural design in the 1950s.

On this day in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1985–91) and president of the Soviet Union (1990–91), was briefly ousted in a coup by communist hard-liners.

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1960: Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to 10 years' confinement by the Soviet Union for espionage following the U-2 Affair, but he was later released (1962) in exchange for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

1945: A commando force formed by Vo Nguyen Giap, under Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, entered the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

1847: U.S. forces under Major General Winfield Scott began the Battle of Contreras, opening the final campaign of the Mexican War.

1812: The USS Constitution, commanded by Captain Isaac Hull, won a brilliant victory over the British frigate Guerrière in the War of 1812.

1458: Enea Silvio Piccolomini was elected pope as Pius II, following the death of Calixtus III.

1274: Edward I was crowned king of England at Westminster.

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton, inaugural address, January 21, 1993

Bill Clinton—who, as the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), oversaw the country's longest peacetime economic expansion but became, in 1998, only the second president to be impeached—was born this day in 1946.

Genghis Khan—a warrior and ruler of genius who, starting from obscure and insignificant beginnings, brought all the nomadic tribes of Mongolia into a rigidly disciplined military state—died this day in 1227.

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1896: According to lore, more than 200 outlaws from regional gangs gathered at Brown's Hole in the American West, where Butch Cassidy proposed to organize a Train Robbers' Syndicate, which became familiarly known as the Wild Bunch.

1786: The city of Reykjavík was designated the administrative capital of Iceland.

1572: Henry, prince of Béarn (later Henry IV of France), married Margaret of Valois of the French royal house.

1477: Mary of Burgundy married Archduke Maximilian, son of the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand III.

Virginia Dare

On this day in 1587, Virginia Dare was born on Roanoke Island, Virginia—the site of the first attempted English settlement in North America—becoming the first child born of English parents in the New World.

On this day in 1945, Sukarno declared Indonesia's independence from The Netherlands, and, after the Dutch transferred sovereignty four years later, he served as the country's first president (1949–67).

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1978: Ben L. Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman completed the first transatlantic balloon flight, in Double Eagle II.

1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, a rock festival near Bethel, New York, that attracted 450,000 fans, ended.

1896: George Washington Carmack unearthed gold in Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory, Canada, setting off a gold rush into the Klondike valley.

1590: John White returned to Roanoke Island, Virginia, from England and found no trace of the colony (now called the Lost Colony) that he had left there three years earlier.

Sir V.S. Naipaul

Trinidadian writer Sir V.S. Naipaul, who was born this day in 1932, became known for his pessimistic novels set in Third World countries—such as A Bend in the River (1979)—and won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The youngest person ever elected president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández Reyna was sworn in this day in 1996 and soon instituted measures to end corruption and to improve the country's economy.

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1960: The island of Cyprus became an independent republic.

1948: American baseball legend Babe Ruth died at age 53.

1819: A meeting of radicals held on St. Peter's Fields in Manchester, England, was dispersed with violence, an event that became known as the Peterloo Massacre.

963: Nicephorus II Phocas was crowned emperor of the Byzantine Empire in Hagia Sophia by the patriarch Polyeuctus.