There were a few events in Spanish history on this date: in 1521 explorer Ferdinand Magellan, in his quest to circumnavigate the globe, came to an unexpected end when he was killed in the Philippines in the battle of Mactan with natives in 1521. Four decades later, in 1565 Cebu was established as the first Spanish settlement in the Philippine archipelago where the Spanish held sway until the Spanish-American war in 1898. Over in the Americas the founding of Bogota, in what would become the nation of Colombia, happened in 1539.
In 1981 the first computer mouse was introduced by Xerox. In 1994 the first democratic election, and the first where black citizens could vote, was held in South Africa, with a victory of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress party. And a Super Outbreak happened in 2011 with over 200 tornadoes tearing through Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and North Carolina – killing more than 300 people and injuring hundreds more.
This date was shared as a birthday by Samuel Morse (1791) the inventor of the Morse code; Ulysses S Grant (1822) Civil War general and 18th US President; Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891) who has delighted loads of children (and adults) with Peter and the Wolf; American chemist Wallace Caruthers (1896) who invented nylon; and civil rights legend Coretta Scott King (1927) who continued to advocate for civil rights long after her husband Martin was assasinated.
The American general and explorer Zebulon Pike ceased his travels in 1813 and is remembered by Pike’s Peak in Colorado. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson laid down his pen in 1882. And WWII and McCarthy era journalist Edward R Murrow left his last commentary in 1965, and we are forever grateful for his stand against the second Red Scare. We will not go quietly into the dark night.
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