In 1792, a highwayman named Nicolas-Jaques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by the guillotine.
In 1859, ground was broken for the Suez Canal.
In 1874, radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy.
In 1980, the White House announced that an attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran had failed, and that eight U.S. servicemen had died in the fiery collision of two aircraft.
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Supreme Court Justice William Brennan (1906)
Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald (1918)
Former Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon (1932)
Actor Al Pacino (1940)
Actress Talia Shire (1946)
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"History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all."