TODAY IN HISTORY
In 1715, following a reign of 72 years, King Louis XIV of France died four days before his 77th birthday; he was succeeded by his 5-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV.
In 1897, the first section of Boston’s new subway was opened, creating the first underground rapid transit system in North America.
In 1914, the passenger pigeon, once one of the most abundant bird species on earth, went extinct as the last known example, named Martha, died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.
In 1923, the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama were devastated by an earthquake that claimed some 140,000 lives.
In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, an event regarded as the start of World War II.
In 1964, pitcher Masanori Murakami of the San Francisco Giants became the first Japanese baseball player to play in a Major League Baseball game.
In 1969, a coup in Libya brought Moammar Gadhafi to power.
In 1972, American Bobby Fischer won the international chess crown in Reykjavik, Iceland, as Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union resigned before the resumption of their 21st and final game.
In 1983, 269 people were killed when a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 was shot down by a Soviet jet fighter after the airliner entered Soviet airspace.
In 1985, a U.S.-French expedition located the wreckage of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean roughly 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.
In 2004, Islamic terrorists took more than a thousand people hostage in a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia; the siege would end three days later in gunfire and explosions, leaving 334 people dead — more than half of them children.
In 2015, invoking “God’s authority,” Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis denied marriage licenses to gay couples again in direct defiance of the federal courts and vowed not to resign, even under the pressure of steep fines or jail. (Davis would spend five days in jail as a result, and is currently appealing a ruling ordering her to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in related legal fees.)
BIRTHDAYS
Attorney and law professor Alan Dershowitz is 86.
Comedian-actor Lily Tomlin is 85.
Singer Barry Gibb is 78.
Talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw is 74.
Singer Gloria Estefan is 67.
TV host-author Padma Lakshmi is 54.
Actor Ricardo Antonio Chavira is 53.
Fashion designer Rachel Zoe is 53.
Actor Scott Speedman is 49.
Composer-producer Ludwig Göransson is 40.
Actor-singer Zendaya is 28.
