Today:
48 BC: Pompey the Great is assassinated in Egypt by order of King Ptolemy XIII.
1066: William the Conqueror lands in England, beginning the Norman conquest.
1542: Portuguese explorer Juan RodrÃguez Cabrillo arrives at what is now San Diego, California, becoming the first European to set foot on the West Coast of the present-day United States.
1781: The American Revolutionary War’s Siege of Yorktown begins in Virginia.
1920: Eight Chicago White Sox players are indicted for allegedly throwing the 1919 World Series in what becomes known as the “Black Sox Scandal.”
1924: Two U.S. Army planes land in Seattle, Washington, completing the first-ever aerial circumnavigation of the world, a journey that took 175 days.
1928: Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin when he notices a mold contaminating a petri dish of bacteria is killing the surrounding germs.
1958: Donati’s comet becomes the first comet to be photographed.
1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat sign the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip at the White House.
2008: SpaceX launches Falcon 1, the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach orbit.