1556 ~ Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and author of the Book of Common Prayer, burned at the stake for Heresy.

1685 ~ Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer.

1826 ~ Beethoven's Quartet #13 in B flat major (Op 130) premiered in Vienna.

1839 ~ Birthday of Modest Mussorgsky, Composer.

1918 ~ The Somme Offensive started. This, followed by the Lys Offensive the following month accounted for about 1,125,000 total casualties. As difficult as this may be to believe, I’m not making it up.

http://www.westernfrontassociation....ne/sommeoff.htm
http://www.westernfrontassociation....imeline/lys.htm


1939 ~ "God Bless America" recorded by Kate Smith.

1960 ~ More than 50 people were killed when police opened fire on a "peaceful" protest in the South African township of Sharpeville.

1963 ~ The federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island, in San Francisco Bay, closed.

1965 ~ More than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began a march from Selma to Montgomery, AL.

1990 ~ Namibia became independent of South Africa.

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Eudaimonia