Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include Oliver Cromwell, lord protector of England, in 1599; Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the radio telegraph, in 1874; U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1906; pioneer broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow in 1908; singer Ella Fitzgerald in 1917; former Harlem Globetrotters basketball player George "Meadowlark" Lemon III in 1932 (age 82); composer Jerry Leiber in 1933; actors Al Pacino in 1940 (age 74), Talia Shire in 1946 (age 68), Hank Azaria in 1964 (age 50), Renee Zellweger in 1969 (age 45) and Jason Lee in 1970 (age 44); sports broadcaster Joe Buck in 1969 (age 45); and champion skier Anja Paerson in 1981 (age 33)
On this date in history:
In 1507, German geographer and mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller published a book in which he named the newly discovered continent of the New World "America" after the man he mistakenly thought had discovered it, Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.
In 1792, "La Marseillaise," composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, became the French national anthem.
In 1859, ground was broken for the Suez Canal at Port Said, Egypt.
In 1862, Union forces captured New Orleans during the Civil War.
In 1898, the U.S. Congress formally declared war on Spain in the battle over Cuba.
In 1901, New York became the first state to require license plates on automobiles.
In 1939, Batman was introduced in DC Comics' Detective Comics No. 27.
In 1945, delegates of 46 countries gathered in San Francisco to organize a permanent United Nations.
In 1967, the first law legalizing abortion in the United States was signed into law by Colorado Gov. John Arthur Love.
In 1982, Israel turned over the final third of the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt under the Camp David peace agreement.
In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was released into space by astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery.
In 1991, the United States announced its first financial aid to Hanoi since the 1960s: $1 million to make artificial limbs for Vietnamese disabled during the war.
In 1993, an estimated 300,000 people took part in a gay rights march on the National Mall in Washington.
In 1994, Tsutomu Hata was elected prime minister of Japan.
In 1995, regular-season play by Major League Baseball teams got under way, the first official action since what was then the longest strike in sports history began in August 1994.
In 2000, Vermont approved a measure legalizing "civil unions" among same-sex couples, becoming the first U.S. state to give homosexual couples the same legal status as heterosexual married couples.
In 2001, Junichiro Koizumi became Japan's prime minister.
In 2005, the crash of a commuter train near Osaka, Japan, killed more than 70 people and injured about 300 others.
In 2007, the Dow Jones industrial average closed at more than 13,000 for the first time.
In 2009, Bea Arthur, who went from high-profile supporting roles on Broadway to stardom in groundbreaking TV sitcoms "Maude" and "The Golden Girls," died in Los Angeles. She was 86.
in 2010, Austrian President Heinz Fischer was re-elected in a landslide for a second six-year term.
In 2011, nearly 800 classified U.S. military documents released by WikiLeaks revealed details about the alleged terrorist activities of al-Qaida operatives held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
In 2012, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, saying the "system of justice is very imperfect," signed a bill making the death penalty illegal in Connecticut.
In 2013, the George W. Bush Presidential Library was dedicated on the Southern Methodist University campus.
A thought for the day: "History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside." -- John F. Kennedy
