1621: The Pilgrim Fathers met their first Indian. He strode into their camp, bade them welcome and asked them for a beer, all in English.

1842: Superstitious Londoners evacuated the city in the strange belief that it was going to be destroyed by an earthquake.

1914: Avenging wife Henriette Caillaux shot Gaston Calmette, editor of one of France's most influential newspapers, Le Figaro. In just two months Gaston had written more than 130 articles about her husband, the Minister of Finance, deriding his support of income tax and his policy of friendship with Germany. She took the law into her own hands when the paper published a sexually and politically indiscreet letter written when Henriette was Monsieur Caillaux's mistress.

1926: Slapstick clown Jerry Lewis was born in Newark, New Jersey.