On this date in

1793 Marie Antoinette was guillotined.

1859 John Brown led a raid on Harper's Ferry, W. Va.

1869 The Cardiff Giant hoax was exposed.

1875 Brigham Young University was founded.

1915 Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood.

1923 Walt and Roy Disney founded the Walt Disney Company.

1940 The Warsaw Ghetto was established.

1946 Ten Nazi war criminals condemned during the Nuremberg trials were hanged.

1964 China detonated its first atomic bomb.

1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who negotiated a cease-fire in the Vietnam War, were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize; Tho declined the award.

1978 Pope John Paul II was elected.

1984 Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1987 Rescuers freed Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl who had been trapped in an abandoned well for 58 hours in Midland, Texas.

1991 George Hennard ran amok in Killeen, killing 23 persons and wounding 20 others in a Luby's Cafeteria.

1995 The Million Man March took place in Washington, D.C.

1997 Author James Michener died at the age of 90 in Austin. He is buried there and honored by a statue in the Texas State Cemetery.

1998 British police arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London.

2000 Missouri Gov. and U.S. Senate candidate Mel Carnahan was killed in a plane crash south of St. Louis.

2002 President George W. Bush signed a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq.

Born on this date:
Noah Webster (1758-1843)
Francis Lubbock (1815-1905)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973)
Eugene O'Neill (1886-1953)
Michael Collins (1890-1922)
William O. Douglas (1898-1980)
Bert Kaempfert (1923-1980)
Linda Darnell (1923-1965)
Nico (1938-1988)
Dave DeBusschere (1940-2003)