Some notable facts about this date, for more, visit http://www.onthisday.com
Facts
1520 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan begins crossing the Pacific Ocean
1814 The Times of London first printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer - makes newspapers available to a mass audience
1893 Women vote in a national election for the first time, in the New Zealand general election
1919 US-born Lady Astor elected first female member of British House of Commons
1967 1st radio pulsars detected by British postgraduate Jocelyn Burnell and her supervisor Antony Hewish at Cambridge University
Deaths
1290 Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I of England (b. 1241)
1680 Giovanni Bernini, Italian sculptor/painter, dies at 81
1794 Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, Prussian-American military officer (major general of the Continental Army)
1859 Washington Irving, American author (Legend of Sleepy Hollow), dies of a heart attack at 76
1939 James Naismith, Canadian-American physical educator and inventor (basketball, football helmet), dies at 78
1954 Enrico Fermi, Italian-American nuclear physicist (Nobel 1938), dies of stomach cancer at 53
1993 Kenneth Connor, English comic/actor (Carry on Sergeant), dies at 75
1994 Jeffrey Dahmer, American serial killer (Milwaukee Cannibal), killed in prison at 34
2010 Leslie Nielsen, Canadian actor (b. 1926)
2016 Van Williams, American actor (Green Hornet, Tycoon), dies at 82
Born on this day
1950 Ed Harris, American actor (Right Stuff, Swing Shift, Walker, Coma), born in Englewood, New Jersey
1961 Martin Clunes, British actor
Kenneth Connor
Leslie Nielsen