On this date in

1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded for allegedly conspiring against King James I of England.

1682 The founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, landed at what is now Chester, Pa.

1787 Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" had its first performance in Prague.

1863 Sixteen countries meeting in Geneva agreed to form the International Red Cross.

1901 President William McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was electrocuted.

1911 American newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer died at age 64.

1923 The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed.

1929 Stock prices collapsed on the New York Stock Exchange amid panic selling. Thousands of investors were wiped out.

1940 Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number - 158 - in America's first peacetime military draft.

1947 Frances Cleveland Preston, the widow of President Grover Cleveland, died at age 83.

1956 Israel invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula during the Suez Canal crisis; "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" premiered as NBC's nightly TV newscast.

1960 Cassius Clay (who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali) won his first professional boxing match in Louisville, Ky.

1964 Thieves (including "Murph the Surf") made off with the Star of India and other gems from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

1971 Syria left the United Arab Republic.

1966 The National Organization for Women was founded.

1967 The musical "Hair" opened off-Broadway.

1971 Rock musician Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band died in a motorcycle accident at age 24.

1987 Jazz great Woody Herman died at age 74.

1994 Francisco Martin Duran fired more than two dozen shots at the White House.

1998 John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, returned to space 36 years later, at age 77.

Born on this date:
Henry III (1017-1056)
Edmond Halley (1656-1742)
Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904)
Thomas Francis Bayard (1828-1898)
Franz Von Papen (1879-1969)
Fanny Brice (1891-1951)
Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)
Akim Tamiroff (1899-1972)
Bill Mauldin (1921-2003)
Neal Hefti (1922-2008)