Today:
1057 – King Macbeth of Scotland was killed at the Battle of Lumphanan by forces loyal to Malcolm Canmore, who later became King Malcolm III. The real Macbeth had ruled Scotland for 17 years.
1519 – Panama City was founded by Spanish conquistador Pedro Arias Dávila. It became an important base for Spanish expeditions and trade along the Pacific coast of the Americas.
1534 – Ignatius of Loyola and six companions took vows in Paris that eventually led to the founding of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits.
1914 – The Panama Canal officially opened to commercial traffic when the cargo ship SS Ancon made the first official transit. The canal dramatically shortened shipping routes between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
1935 – Entertainer Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. Rogers was one of America’s most popular humorists and personalities of the era.
1945 – Emperor Hirohito’s recorded announcement accepting the Allied terms of surrender was broadcast to the Japanese people. It was the first time most Japanese citizens had ever heard their emperor’s voice and marked the effective end of World War II.
1947 – India gained independence from British rule after nearly two centuries of British control. Jawaharlal Nehru became the country’s first prime minister.
1965 – The Beatles performed at Shea Stadium in New York before more than 55,000 fans. The concert became one of the most famous events of Beatlemania and a landmark in the development of large-scale stadium concerts.
1969 – The Woodstock Music and Art Fair began on a dairy farm near Bethel, New York. More than 400,000 people attended the three-day festival, which became one of the defining cultural events of the 1960s.
1977 – The “Wow!” signal, an unusually strong narrowband radio signal apparently originating from deep space, was detected by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope. Astronomer Jerry Ehman famously wrote “Wow!” beside the computer printout, giving the unexplained signal its name.