Today in History - History - February 1st

1327Teenaged Edward III is crowned King of England, but the country is ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.

1953"You Are There" with Walter Cronkite premieres on CBS television

1982"Late Night With David Letterman" debuts on NBC-TV, Bill Murray is first guest

1968Former US VP Richard Nixon announces candidacy for president

1965Martin Luther King Jr. & 700 demonstrators arrested in Selma Ala

1992Denis Potvin's #5 becomes 1st number retired by NY Islanders

1978Harriet Tubman is 1st black woman honored on a US postage stamp

1981Duke Ellington's musical "Sophisticated Ladies," premieres in NYC

1587Queen Elizabeth I of England signs death warrant for Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots

1896Giacomo Puccini's Opera "La Boheme," premieres in Turin

1918Muriel Spark, Edinburgh Scotland, novelist (Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)

1902Langston Hughes, Joplin, Missouri, American poet (Weary Blues) and playwright (Mulatto)

1901Clark Gable, Cadiz Ohio, American actor (Gone With the Wind)

1931Boris Yeltsin, Ural Mts USSR, president of Russian SSR

1968Lisa Marie Presley Keough Jackson, Memphis Tenn, daughter of Elvis

1895John Ford, Maine, director (Stagecoach, Air Mail, Quiet Man)

1882Louis St. Laurent, Compton Quebec, (L) 12th Canadian PM (1948-57)

1948Rick James (James Ambrose Johnson Jr), Buffalo New York, American funk musician

1840Novelist Alexandre Dumas (37) weds actress Ida Ferrier

1997Retired MLB player Johnny Bench (49) weds stockbroker Elizabeth Benton

1944Piet Mondrian, abstract painter (Composition in Blue), dies at 71

1851Mary Shelley, novelist (Frankenstein), dies of a brain tumour at 53