Today:
1806: Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was accidentally shot in the leg by a member of his own party while hunting for elk along the Missouri River.
1877: American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Deimos, one of the two moons of Mars. The other moon, Phobos, was discovered just a few days later.
1919: The Weimar Constitution was signed into law, establishing Germany’s first parliamentary democracy after World War I.
1929: Babe Ruth hit his 500th career home run at League Park in Cleveland, becoming the first player in Major League Baseball to reach that milestone.
1934: The first federal prisoners arrived at Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, which was converted from a military prison into a maximum-security penitentiary.
1942: Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received a patent for their frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system. This technology became a foundation for modern wireless communications like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
1952: Prince Hussein was proclaimed King of Jordan after his father, King Talal, was declared mentally unfit to rule. Hussein’s reign would last for nearly 47 years.
1965: The Watts riots began in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, sparked by a traffic stop involving a Black motorist. The six days of unrest resulted in 34 deaths and extensive property damage.
1973: DJ Kool Herc hosted a back-to-school party in the Bronx, New York, where he used two turntables to extend the instrumental “break” of songs. This event is widely considered to be the birth of hip-hop music.
1992: The Mall of America opened in Bloomington, Minnesota. At the time, it was the largest shopping mall in the United States.
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