On this day in history
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Source: HistoryNet.com
1066: William of Normandy defeats King Harold in the Battle of Hastings.
1651: Laws are passed in Massachusetts forbidding the poor to adopt excessive styles of dress.
1705: The English Navy captures Barcelona in Spain.
1773: Britain's East India Company tea ships' cargo is burned at Annapolis, Md.
1912: Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is shot and wounded in assassination attempt in Milwaukee.
1930: Singer Ethel Merman stuns the audience when she holds a high C for sixteen bars while singing "I Got Rhythm" during her Broadway debut in Gershwin's Girl Crazy.
1947: Test pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier aboard a Bell X-1 rocket plane.
1962: Cuban Missile Crisis begins; USAF U-2 reconnaissance pilot photographs Cubans installing Soviet-made missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
1964: Rev. Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating a policy of non-violence.
1966: Montreal, Quebec, Canada, opens its underground Montreal Metro rapid-transit system.
1968: Jim Hines, USA, breaks the "ten-second barrier" in the 100-metre sprint at the Olympics in Mexico City; his time was 9.95.
1994: Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for establishing the Oslo Accords and preparing for Palestinian Self Government.
1998: Eric Robert Rudolph charged with the 1996 bombing during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia; It was one of several bombing incidents Rudolph carried out to protest legalized abortion in the U.S.
2012: Felix Baumgartner breaks the world record for highest manned balloon flight, highest parachute jump, and greatest free-fall velocity, parachuting from an altitude of approximately 39 kilometres.
