On this date in

1791 The Magic Flute, the last opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, premiered in Vienna.

1846 Boston dentist William Morton became the first person to use ether as an anesthetic.

1888 Jack the Ripper killed this third and fourth victims.

1901 Herbert Cecil Booth patented the vacuum cleaner.

1927 Babe Ruth became the first baseball player to hit 60 homeruns in a single season.

1935 The Hoover Dam was dedicated.

1938 Britain, France, Germany and Italy signed the Munich Agreement which allowed Germany to occupy the Sudetenland.

1946 A military tribunal in Nuremberg found 22 Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.

1947 The World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers became the first to be televised.

1949 The Berlin airlift ended.

1954 The USS Nautilus was commissioned at the world's first nuclear-powered submarine.

1955 James Dean was killed in an automobile accident.

1962 Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers; James Meredith entered the previously segregated University of Mississippi.

1982 Tylenol laced with cyanide killed six people in the Chicago area; the television series "Cheers" premiered.

1984 Mike Witt of the California Angels pitched a perfect game against the Texas Rangers.

1992 George Brett of the Kansas City Royals got his 3,000th career hit.

1993 An earthquake struck India, killing an estimated 10,000 people.

2005 Controversial drawings of Muhummad were printed in a Danish newspaper.

Born on this date:
Industrialist William Wrigley Jr. (1861-1932)
Physicist Hans Geiger (1882-1945)
Director Lewis Milestone (1895-1980)
Businessman-segregationist-governor Lester Maddox (1915-2003)
Drummer Buddy Rich (1917-1987)
Actress Deborah Kerr (1921-2007)
Author Truman Capote (1924-1984)
Baseball player Johnny Podres (1932-2008)
Singer Frankie Lymon (1942-1968)
Musician Marc Bolan (1947-1977)
Actor Jack Wild (1952-2006)
Wrestler Chris Von Erich (1969-1991)