1811 -  Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford for refusing to admit writing The Necessity of Atheism.

1823 - William Blake enters into an agreement to engrave the Inventions to the Book of Job, for which he is paid 5 pounds per plate.

1913 - The home of Vaudeville, the Palace Theatre, opens in New York City.

1918 - French composer Claude Debussy dies in Paris.


1934 - Gloria Steinem is born in Toledo, Ohio. Her childhood was spent travelling with her parents in trailers—she didn't attend school regularly until she was 12. In 1971 she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus, and edited the first issue of Ms. magazine.

1941 - Singer and champion of American morals Anita Bryant is born.

1942 - Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin is born in Memphis.

1955 - U.S. Customs Department officials confiscate five-hundred-twenty copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl as they enter the U.S. The poem will then be published by City Lights publishers in San Francisco, leading to the arrest of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

1956 - At the conclusion of Alan Freed's 3-day Rock 'n' Roll Show at the Stage Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, police have arrested eleven teenagers and took the theater's license to operate. This prompts Hartford Institue of Living psychiatrist Dr. Francis J. Braceland to testify at license hearings that rock & roll is "a communicable disease with music appealing to adolescent insecurity and driving teenagers to do outlandish things...It's cannibalistic and tribalistic."

1960 - the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rules that the unabridged version of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, was not obscene, and can be sent through the U.S. mail. The ruling is unanimous. One judge asked, "Should a mature and sophisticated reading public be kept in blinders because a government official thinks reading certain works of power and literary value are not good for him?" A British court issued a similar verdict shortly afterwards. During the wave of publicity that accompanied the litigation in 1959-1960, over 6 million copies of the book were sold.
[Once in awhile, we do something right:)]

1961 - Elvis Presley performs his last live show for eight years at Block Arena in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The show is a benefit and $62,000 is raised for the U.S.S. Arizona memorial fund.

1965 - The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, AL, to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.

1966 - The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Quicksilver Messenger Service perform at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.

1967 - Cream arrive in the U.S. to begin their first American tour.

1970 - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's album, Deja Vu goes gold. The LP yielded hit singles in Woodstock and Teach Your Children.

1995 - Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder is rescued after a riptide carries him 250 feet offshore while swimming in New Zealand.

For more day-by-day history go to HistoryUnlimited.net