1993 Chimp beats brokers After a month long contest in which a Swedish newspaper pitted a chimpanzee against five stock analysts to see who could earn the most on a $1,250 investment, the chimp had earned $190, as compared the stockbrokers best of $130. The chimp picked his stocks by throwing darts.

1992 Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos The TV show debuts. It featured home videos that included genitalia, people having sex, and animals having sex. It was cancelled by the head of the network after 34 minutes. He later fired many of the people involved in creating it and banned the program's host from the station headquarters for life.

1976 Viking II lands on the surface of Mars.

1972 Mark Spitz wins his sixth 1972 Olympic gold medal, the record for any one Olympiad. He went on to win a seventh.

1967 Right-Hand Drive At 6:00 a.m., Swedish drivers stop driving on the left-hand side of the road and begin driving on the right.

1964 Youngest person to swim the English Channel 14-year-old Lenore Modell from the U.S.

1951 Search For Tomorrow debuts on TV.

1950 Beetle Bailey The comic strip debuts on creator Mort Walker's 26th birthday.

1939 World War II Great Britain and France declare war on Germany after the German invasion of Poland two days earlier.

1833 New York Sun The first issue of New York's first penny paper is published.

1813 Uncle Sam The first known use of the term in print referring to the U.S. government is used in a Troy, New York newspaper.

1783 American Revolution The war ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

1965 Charlie Sheen (Carlos Irwin Estévez), American actor. An advocate of the "9/11 Truth Movement," he has publicly questioned the truth of the government's account of the 9/11 attacks. Film: Platoon (1986) and Wall Street (1987). TV: Spin City (2000-02, Charlie Crawford) and Two and a Half Men (2003-, Charlie Harper for which he is currently paid $1.78 million per episode).

1943 Valerie Perrine American actress. Film: Slaughterhouse Five (1972) and Lenny (1974, Lenny's wife).

1942 Al Jardine American singer, with The Beach Boys. Music: Surfin' USA (1963), I Get Around (1964, #1), Help Me Rhonda, (1965, #1), and Good Vibrations (1966, #1).

1935 Eileen Brennan American Emmy-winning actress. TV: Private Benjamin (Capt. Doreen Lewis).

1925 Wally Albright d. 1999 (Walton Algernon Albright, Jr.), American actor, one of the Little Rascals, appeared in six Our Gang films (1934, Wally). Won the Men's National Track and Ski Championship (1957).

1923 Mort Walker (Addison Mortimer Walker), American cartoonist, creator of Beetle Bailey (1950) and Hi and Lois (1954).

1913 Alan Ladd d. 1964 American actor. Film: This Gun for Hire (1942) and The Great Gatsby (1949).

1910 Kitty Carlisle d. 2007 (Catherine Conn), American actress, singer. TV: To Tell the Truth (panelist). Film: A Night at the Opera (1935) and Six Degrees of Separation (1992).

1905 Carl David Anderson d. 1991 American physicist. He discovered the positron (1932) for which he shared the 1936 Nobel Prize. He and his graduate student, Seth Neddermeyer, discovered the muon (1936, originally called mu-meson).

1902 Mantan Moreland d. 1973 American actor. Film: The Charlie Chan movies (Chan's chauffeur Birmingham Brown).

1856 Louis Henri Sullivan d. 1924 American architect, creator of the skyscraper.

1850 Eugene Field d. 1895 American author. Poems: Wynken, Blynken, and Nod (1888) and Little Boy Blue (1888).

2003 Alan Dugan b. 1923 American Pulitzer-winning poet (1962).

1991 Frank Capra b. 1897 Sicilian-born American Oscar-winning director. Film: It Happened One Night (1934) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946, although originally a box office flop, it has become a holiday classic).  Quote: Behind every successful man there stands an astonished woman.

1985 Johnny Marks b. 1909 American Hall of Fame songwriter. Wrote: Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1949), Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (1958),  A Holly, Jolly Christmas (1964), and The Most Wonderful Day of the Year (1964) even though he was Jewish.

1970 Vince Lombardi b. 1913 American football coach. He won the first two Super Bowls and led Greenbay to five NFL championships. The Super Bowl trophy is named in his honor.

1924 Adam Willis Wagnalls b. 1843 American publisher, co-founder of Funk & Wagnalls Company (1891), who first published their famous dictionary in 1912.

1658 Oliver Cromwell b. 1599 Lord Protector of England. He led "the curse of Cromwell," in which he massacred the Irish during an extensive expropriation of their land. He also outlawed Christmas celebrations in England, calling them an extreme forgetfulness to Christ.

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