HISTORY TODAY

 747 BC – Epoch (origin) of Ptolemy’s Nabonassar Era.

 1606 – The Janszoon voyage of 1605-06 becomes the first European expedition to sight Australia, although it is mistaken as a part of New Guinea.

 1616 – Galileo Galilei is formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

 1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba.

 1909 – Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, is first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.

 1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signs an act of Congress establishing the Grand Canyon National Park.

 1929 – President Calvin Coolidge signs an executive order establishing the 96,000 acre Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

 1935 – Robert Watson-Watt carries out a demonstration near Daventry which leads directly to the development of radar in the United Kingdom.

 1971 – U.N. Secretary-General U Thant signs United Nations proclamation of the vernal equinox as Earth Day.

 1979 – The Superliner railcar enters revenue service with Amtrak.

 1980 – Egypt and Israel establish full diplomatic rela- tions.

 1993 – World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing six and injur- ing over a thousand people.

 2008 – The New York Philharmonic performs in Pyongyang, North Korea; this is the first event of its kind to take place in North Korea.