This Day in History

► Today’s birthdays: Actor Ben Gazzara is 81. Actor Sonny Shroyer is 76. Actor Ken Jenkins is 71. Former defense secretary William S. Cohen is 71. Actor David Soul is 68. Baseball manager Lou Piniella is 68. Actress Barbara Bach is 65. Actress Debra Mooney is 64. Singer Wayne Osmond (The Osmonds) is 60. Actor Daniel Stern is 54. Olympic gold medal figure skater Scott Hamilton is 53. Actor John Allen Nelson is 52. Actress Emma Samms is 51. Actress Jennifer Coolidge is 50. Movie director David Fincher (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’’) is 49. Actress Amanda Tapping is 46. Country singer Shania Twain is 46. Actor Billy Boyd is 43. Actor Jack Black is 42. Actor Jason Priestley is 42. Olympic gold medal swimmer Janet Evans is 40. Actor J. August Richards is 38. Rock singer-musician Max Collins (Eve 6) is 33. Actress Carly Pope is 31. Country singer LeAnn Rimes is 29. Actor Michael Galeota is 27. Country singer Jake Owen is 27. Actress Sarah Roemer is 27. Actor Armie Hammer is 25.

► In 1609, English sea explorer Henry Hudson and his ship, the Half Moon, reached present-day Delaware Bay.

► In 1861, Union forces attacked two Confederate forts on the North Carolina Outer Banks. (The Confederates surrendered the next day, giving the Union its first notable victory of the Civil War.)

► In 1941, Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Kichisaburo Nomura, presented a note to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Japan’s prime minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, expressing a desire for improved relations.

► In 1955, Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Miss., by two white men after he had supposedly whistled at a white woman; he was found slain three days later.

►In 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in the nation’s capital, where more than 200,000 listened as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream’’ speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

► In 1968, police and antiwar demonstrators clashed in the streets of Chicago as the Democratic national convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey for president.

► In 1973, more than 600 people died as an earthquake shook central Mexico.

► In 1988, 70 people were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air show at the US Air Base in Ramstein, West Germany.

► In 1990, an F5 tornado struck the Chicago area, killing 29.

► In 1995, a mortar shell tore through a crowded market in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, killing some three dozen and triggering NATO airstrikes against the Bosnian Serbs.

► In 2001, Gateway, the nation’s number four manufacturer of personal computers, said it was laying off 4,700 employees, 25 percent of its global work force, because of a bleak market.

► In 2010, conservative commentator Glenn Beck and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin headlined a “Restoring Honor’’ rally attended by tens of thousands in Washington. US and Afghan forces repelled attackers wearing American uniforms and suicide vests in a pair of simultaneous assaults before dawn on NATO bases near the border with Pakistan. A gunman in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., shot and killed the mother of his two children, the woman’s boyfriend, and three others before fleeing with the children to Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., where he killed himself. The children were unharmed.