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| On this date in: | |
| 1832 | The first streetcar - a horse-drawn vehicle called the John Mason - went into operation in New York City. |
| 1851 | Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick" was published. |
| 1881 | Charles J. Guiteau went on trial for assassinating President James A. Garfield. (He was convicted and hanged.) |
| 1889 | Inspired by Jules Verne, New York World reporter Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) set out to travel around the world in less than 80 days. (She made the trip in 72 days.) |
| 1900 | Composer Aaron Copland was born in New York City. |
| 1922 | The British Broadcasting Corp. began its domestic radio service. |
| 1935 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the Philippine Islands a free commonwealth. |
| 1940 | German planes destroyed most of the English town of Coventry during World War II. |
| 1969 | Apollo 12 was launched on the second manned mission to the moon. |
| 1973 | Britain's Princess Anne married Capt. Mark Phillips in Westminster Abbey. |
| 1986 | The SEC fined Ivan F. Boesky $100 million for insider stock trading. |
| 1995 | The U.S. government instituted a partial shutdown, closing national parks and museums while government offices operated with skeleton crews. |
| 1999 | The United Nations imposed sanctions on Afghanistan for refusing to hand over terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden. |
| 2001 | Eight foreign aid workers - including two Americans - who had been accused of preaching Christianity in Afghanistan were freed by the Taliban. |
Article of the day
Moby-Dick published
On this day in 1851, Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville about the voyage of the whaling ship Pequod, is published by Harper & Brothers in New York. Moby-Dick is now considered a great classic of American literature and contains one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: "Call me Ishmael." Initially, though, the book about Captain Ahab and his quest for a giant white whale was a flop.
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819 and as a young man spent time in the merchant marines, the U.S. Navy and on a whaling ship in the South Seas. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee, a romantic adventure based on his experiences in Polynesia. The book was a success and a sequel, Omoo, was published in 1847. Three more novels followed, with mixed critical and commercial results. Melville's sixth book, Moby-Dick, was first published in October 1951 in London, in three volumes titled The Whale, and then in the U.S. a month later. Melville had promised his publisher an adventure story similar to his popular earlier works, but instead, Moby-Dick was a tragic epic, influenced in part by Melville's friend and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, neighbor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose novels include The Scarlet Letter.
After Moby-Dick's disappointing reception, Melville continued to produce novels, short stories (Bartleby) and poetry, but writing wasn't paying the bills so in 1865 he returned to New York to work as a customs inspector, a job he held for 20 years.
Melville died in 1891, largely forgotten by the literary world. By the 1920s, scholars had rediscovered his work, particularly Moby-Dick, which would eventually become a staple of high school reading lists across the United States. Billy Budd, Melville's final novel, was published in 1924, 33 years after his death.Today Birthdays
| Prince Charles turns 60 years old today. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis Britain's Prince Charles turns 60 years old today.
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