In 1770, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart.
In 1859, Colonel Edwin L. Drake drilled the first successful oil well in the United States near Titusville, Pa.
In 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa blew up. Tidal waves resulting from the cataclysmic explosions in Indonesia's Sunda Strait claimed 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra.
In 1908, Lyddon B. Johson, the 36th President of the United States, was born near Stonewall, Texas.
In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in Paris, outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of disputes.
In 1945, American troops began landing in Japan following the surrender of the Japanese government.
In 1962, the United States launched the "Mariner 2" space probe, which flew past Venus the following December.
In 1967, Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, was found dead in his London flat from an apparent accidental overdose of sleeping pills.
In 1975, Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia's 3,000-year-old monarchy, died in Addis Ababa at the age of 83 almost a year after he was overthrown in a military coup.
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Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mother Teresa (1910)
Actress-comedian Martha Raye (1916)
Actor Tommy Sands (1937)
Musician Daryl Dragon (1942)
Actress Tuesday Weld (1943)
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"We are so constituted, that if we insist upon being as sure as is conceivable, in every step of our course, we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar."
