TODAY IN HISTORY

EVENTS

2002 American businessman, Steve Fossett completes the first solo around-the-world Balloon Flight

2001 World's first self-contained artificial heart transplant

1937 American aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan are heard for the last time before disappearing

1900 The Zeppelin takes off for the first time

1843 Alligator falls out of the sky in Charleston, South Carolina during a thunderstorm.

BIRTHS

1986 Lindsay Lohan – American actress, singer

1925 Patrice Lumumba – Congolese politician, first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

1925 Medgar Evers – American civil rights activist

1877 Hermann Hesse – German writer, Nobel Prize laureate

DEATHS

1977 Vladimir Nabokov – Russian/American author

1961 Ernest Hemingway – American writer, Nobel Prize laureate

1914 Joseph Chamberlain – British politician

1778 Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Swiss philosopher, polymath

OBSERVATIONS

I Forgot Day

Freedom From Fear of Speaking Day

Made in the USA Day

Special Recreation for the Disabled Day

World Sports Journalists Day

World UFO day