On this day in 1521, Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam.
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On this day in 1820, the Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.
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On this day in 1834, York, Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto.
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On this day in 1836, after a thirteen day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.
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On this day in 1857, the Supreme Court hands down its decision in the Dred Scott case, establishing that slaves cannot be considered citizens. It would take a Civil War, and the deaths of nearly ¾ of a million Americans, to correct this stupid mistake.
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On this day in 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
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On this day in 1899, Bayer registers "Aspirin" as a trademark.
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On this day in 1943, Norman Rockwell published Freedom from Want in the The Saturday Evening Post with a matching essay by Carlos Bulosan as part of the Four Freedoms series.
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On this day in 1951, the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins.
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On this day in 1953, Georgy Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin as Premier of the Soviet Union and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
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On this day in 1964, Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.
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On this day in 1967, Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.
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On this day in 1970, an explosion at the Weather Underground safe house in Greenwich Village kills three.
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On this day in 1975, for the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory.
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On this day in 1978, Klan assassin Joseph Paul Franklin shoots and cripples Larry Flynt, apparently because he was enraged by an interracial photo spread published in Hustler Magazine. Franklin was never prosecuted for the attack on Flynt, but he currently sits in jail, considered party to upwards of 20 racially-motivated murders and a number of other violent offenses, including the attempted murder of former Clinton lawyer Vernon Jordan.
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On this day in 1981, Walter Cronkite signs-off as anchorman of The CBS Evening News. Twenty-five years later, he's still kicking himself in the ass for retiring too early and leaving that show-boating loon Dan Rather in charge.
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