[Although by the time he made his historic flight he was a former President (having handed the reins of power to William Howard Taft in March 1909) Theodore Roosevelt made the most of his post-Presidency - including undertaking a famous safari on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution and American Museum of Natural History.]
1531 - Huldrych Zwingli was killed in battle with the Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland.
1727 - George II and Caroline of Ansbach were crowned King and Queen of Great Britain at Westminster Abbey.
1809 - Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis died under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder's Stand.
1852 - The University of Sydney - Australia's first - was inaugurated.
1865 - Paul Bogle led the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica; because he was eventually captured and executed by the British, his image appears today on the Jamaican ten-cent piece.
1890 - The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded; famous living members include North Carolina's senior Senator Elizabeth Dole and First Lady Laura Bush.
1899 - The Second Boer War - between the United Kingdom and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State - erupted in South Africa.
1910 - After a respectful bit of arm-twisting Theodore Roosevelt became the first American president to fly in an airplane when he took a four minute flight above St. Louis, Missouri, with Arch Hoxsey.
1941 - The National Liberation War of Macedonia began; it would last until 1944, at which point Yugoslavia was reformed.
1958 - NASA launched the lunar probe Pioneer 1 as part of the Pioneer program; the probe later fell back to Earth and burnt up.
1962 - Pope John XXIII convened the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years; known as the Second Vatican Council, it sought to bring the Vatican into line with modern times - and might have succeeded too, if only John Paul II and Benedict XVI (both of whom were present) hadn't done their utmost during their subsequent reigns to undo whatever progress was made.
1975 - Saturday Night Live made its television debut; the first host was George Carlin, with musical guests Janis Ian and Billy Preston.
1976 - George Washington's posthumous appointment to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States by congressional joint resolution Public Law 94-479 was approved by President Gerald R. Ford.
1982 -The Tudor-era gunship Mary Rose - which sank in July 1545 during the Battle of the Solent - was raised from the seabed off Portsmouth.
1986 - US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavík in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.
1987 - The 2nd Gay & Lesbian March on Washington attracted 500,000 participants, included the first public showing of the entire NAMES Project/AIDS Quilt along The Mall, and was the impetus for National Coming Out Day.
2000 - The 100th Space Shuttle mission (STS-92) was flown, in order to deliver crucial components to the International Space Station.
2002 - A bomb attack at the Myyrmanni shopping mall in the Helsinki suburb of Vantaa killed seven (including the bomber, Petri Erkki Tapio Gerdt) and injured 66.
2007 - The record high of the Dow Jones Industrial Average occurred at 14,198.10 points.
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