Today in history

On July 19, 1553, Lady Jane Grey, 15, was deposed after nine days as Queen of England, and King Henry VIII’s daughter Mary was proclaimed queen.

In 1814 Samuel Colt, inventor of the Colt revolver, was born in Hartford, Conn.

In 1834 impressionist painter Edgar Degas was born in Paris.

In 1848 a women’s rights convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott opened in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

In 1860 Lizzie Borden, the

alleged killer of her father and stepmother, was born in Fall River, Mass.

In 1865 Charles Mayo, the surgeon who founded, with his brother, the Mayo Clinic, was born in Rochester, Minn.

In 1870 the Franco-Prussian War began.

In 1898 Marxist philosoper Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin.

In 1922 George McGovern, the senator and Democratic presidential candidate, was born in Avon, S.D.

In 1941 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his “V for Victory” campaign in Europe.

In 1943 Allied planes staged their first raid on Rome in World War II.

In 1944, the Democratic national convention convened in Chicago with the nomination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered a certainty.

In 1969 Apollo 11 and its astronauts — Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins — went into orbit around the moon.

In 1975 the Apollo and Soyuz space capsules separated after being linked in orbit for two days.

In 1979 Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, fell to Sandinista rebels, two days after President Anastasio Somoza fled the country.

In 1980 the Summer Olympics began in Moscow, minus dozens of nations that were boycotting the Games because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

In 1984 Rep. Geraldine Ferraro,

D-N.Y., was voted Walter Mondale’s running mate at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.

In 1985 Christa McAuliffe, of New Hampshire, was chosen by NASA to be its first schoolteacher in a space shuttle crew. (McAuliffe and six other crew members died in January 1986 when the shuttle Challenger exploded soon after launching.)

In 1989 112 people were killed when a United Air Lines DC-10 crashed while making an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa; 184 people survived.

In 1990 Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader, was sentenced to 5 months in prison for tax evasion.

In 1991 the South African government acknowledged that it had been giving money to the Inkatha Freedom Party, the main rival of the African National Congress.

In 1993 President Bill Clinton announced a compromise allowing homosexuals to serve in the military, but only if they refrained from all homosexual activity.

In 1996 opening ceremonies were held for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Also in 1996 a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended, with conditions, approval for the abortion-inducing drug RU-486.

In 2001 Circus animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams died in Venice, Fla.; he was 66.

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