Who was born on this date?

1513 - Forces of James IV of Scotland battled English troops in Flodden near Branxton, in the English county of Northumberland. The Scots were heavily defeated and James IV was killed along with all his nobles.

1776 - The United States of America was born when the Continental Congress changed the name of the nation from the United Colonies.

1835 - The so-called "September Laws" were introduced in France, suppressing the radical movement and censoring the press.

1836 - Abraham Lincoln received a license to practice law.

1850 - California joined the United States as the thirty-first state, only two years after the population boom of the California Gold Rush. As part of the North-South Compromise of 1850, California was admitted as a free state.

1898 - In Omaha, Nebraska, Tommy Fleming of Eau Claire, Wisconsin won the first logrolling championship.

1901 - Artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec died at age 36. Heavy drinking and varied ailments led to mental illness and the artist's early death.

1904 - In New York City, mounted police were first used. The police still have a horse division in use for Central Park and other not easliy patrolled on foot areas.

1914 - In World War I, the chief of the German general staff, Helmuth von Moltke, called off the German advance after the British and French counter-attacked, thus ending the first Battle of the Marne.

1926 - NBC, The National Broadcasting Company, was organized as a Radio Corporation of America broadcasting service.

1932 - One year after a semi-autonomous Catalonian Republic was proclaimed, the Spanish government and the Generalitat (Catalonian government) agreed to a Statute of Autonomy. This newly-gained political autonomy was lost when Gen. Francisco Franco took power in Spain in 1939, and brutally repressed regional sentiments. Francesc Macia was the first president of the first Generalitat in modern times.

1939 - Wanting spontaneous audience reaction without the press, David O. Selznick and co-workers on the movie Gone With the Wind drove 2½ hours out of Hollywood. Carrying 54 cans of film and soundtrack, they convinced the manager of the local Riverside Fox Theatre to preempt the scheduled movie, Beau Geste, in order that GWTW be shown unannounced. The secret preview was a huge success, and gave producer Selznick the information he needed for final editing of the 3-hour-long movie.

1942 - A Japanese aircraft, launched from a submarine, dropped incendiary bombs near Brookings, Oregon, in an attempt to set fire to the forests during World War II. The plane, piloted by Nobuo Fujita, dropped more bombs 20 days later. Both raids were unsuccessful. This was the first and only time that the continental United States has been bombed from the air. In 1962, the city of Brookings invited Fujita and his family as a gesture of goodwill.

1943 - Allied forces landed at Taranto and Salerno during World War II.

1944 - A day after Soviet troops had entered the country, internal Communist elements in Bulgaria seized power in a coup, Kimon Giorgiev replacing Konstantin Muraviev as prime minister.

1946 - For the first time, Ben Alexander hosted "Heart’s Desire", a giveaway contest show on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

1948 - After the withdrawal of Soviet forces from North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed with Pyongyang as its capital.

1950 - Sal Maglie of the New York Giants pitched a fourth consecutive shutout. Only four other pitchers in the National League had accomplished this feat.

1956 - 54,000,000 viewers, 82.6 percent of the United States' television audience, tuned to CBS as Ed Sullivan announced the 21-year-old singer Elvis "The Pelvis" Presley who sang "Hound Dog" and "Love Me Tender". Ed Sullivan, for the moral safety of the viewing public, and a live audience of screaming fans in the show’s New York theatre, demanded the cameras not show Elvis below the waist. Elvis got the largest fee to that date for his appearance on "Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town": $50,000.

1957 - The first civil rights bill to pass Congress since the Reconstruction was signed into law by President Eisenhower.

1965 - Los Angeles Dodger Sandy Koufax pitched the major league's eighth perfect game in history by leading the Dodgers to beat the Chicago Cubs 1-0. A perfect game ihas the same player pitching the whole game without allowing any player of the opposing team to reach first base.

1965 - French President Charles de Gaulle announced that France was withdrawing from NATO to protest the domination of the United States in the organization.

1971 - Gordie Howe, hockey legend, of the Detroit Red Wings retired from the National Hockey League.

1971 - Apple Records released John Lennon's Imagine album in the United States.

1971 - Geoffrey Jackson, the British ambassador to Uruguay, was released after being held by Tupamaros guerrillas for eight months.

1975 - Czech tennis player Martina Navratilova asked for political asylum in the United States

1979 - At just 16-years old, Tracy Austin became the youngest player to win the United States Open women’s tennis title.

1981 - In his 4th United States Open, men's singles, tennis championship, John McEnroe beat Czechoslovakia’s Ivan Lendl. This one was won by scores of 6-3, 6-4, and 6-1.

1981 - France announced its intention to nationalize 36 private banks.

1982 - Princess Grace of Monaco died from injuries sustained when her car plummeted off a mountain road. Stephanie, her seventeen- year-old daughter was a passenger in the car, but only suffered bruises and trauma. Princess Grace, former movie star, Grace Kelly, of Pennsylvania and Hollywood, had been wed to Prince Ranier III of Monaco since 1956.

1984 - Chicago Bear Walter Payton broke Jim Brown’s combined yardage record reaching 15,517 yards.

1986 - Ted Turner presented his first colorized films on his superstation WTBS in Atlanta, Georgia. The first Hollywood movie to get colored was "Yankee Doodle Dandy". Some opposed the colorization process, where color is added to black-and-white movies, feeling the originals should be pristine, and that any change interferes with the original creativity.

1986 - Frank Reed, the director of a private schoolin Lebanon, was taken hostage in Lebanon by pro-Iranian kidnappers. He was released 44 months later.

1990 - Liberian President Samuel K. Doe was captured and killed by rebels.

1990 - Presidents George Bush of the United States and Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union ended a summit in Helsinki, pledging unity in their "struggle against Iraqi aggression." The summit occurred shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

1991 - The Soviet Central Asian republic of Tajikistan declared independence from Moscow.

1993 - In the Line of Fire, starring Clint Eastwood, Rene Russo, and John Malkovich opened in United States theaters.

1993 - Israel and PLO leaders agreed to recognize each other.

1993 - Former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos was buried in his homeland. The burial occurred about four years after his death in exile.

1994 - The United States agreed to accept about 20,000 Cuban immigrants per year. This was in return for Cuba's promise to halt the flight of refugees.

1994 - The space shuttle Discovery blasted off on an 11-day mission.

1996 - The Iraqi-backed Kurdistan Democratic Party captured the main stronghold of Sulaimaniya from its rival.

1996 - Hutu rebels murdered the Roman Catholic archbishop of Burundi, Joachim Ruhuna, in an ambush.

1997 - Former president F.W. de Klerk, who freed South Africa from the scourge of his National Party's apartheid policies, retired from parliament.

1998 - A woman who said she co-wrote the hit Broadway musical Rent with the late Jonathan Larson settled her lawsuit against his estate for an undisclosed amount of money and credit on the playbill's title page. Lynn Thomson claimed she wrote the play with Larson, who died from an aortic aneurysm on Jan. 25, 1996, the day the show was to open in previews off-Broadway. Lawyers for Ms. Thomson and the estate confirmed the settlement, which included the money and a credit for Ms. Thomson as a dramaturge on the title page of the Rent playbill. Inspired by Puccini's opera La Boheme, Rent opened on Broadway to almost universal critical acclaim. The play about life in New York City's bohemian East Village won four Tony Awards, and Larson was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama.