On this date in:

1857 – The “Atlantic Monthly” (one of my favorite magazines) first appeared on newsstands and featured the first installment of “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

1938    Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria on Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass.” At least 100 Jews were killed and over 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps . This provided the prelude to the Holocaust in Germany.

1953    Author-poet Dylan Thomas died at age 39.

1961 – The Professional Golfer’s Association (PGA) eliminated its “caucasians only” rule.

1961 – Brian Epstein meets the Beatles.

1976 – The U.N. General Assembly approved ten resolutions condemning the apartheid government in South Africa.

1989    Communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West for the first time since 1961 (My birth year). Some Germans used hammers to chip away at the Berlin Wall for keepsakes or in their own small way try to destroy the infamous symbol of East-West division

The following people were born:

Claude Rains 1889
Clifton Webb 1891
Paul Robeson 1898
Hedy Lamarr 1913
Sargent Shriver 1915
Spiro T. Agnew 1918
Dorothy Dandridge 1922
Anne Sexton 1928
Carl Perkins 1932
Carl Sagan 1934
Mary Travers (Peter, Paul & Mary) 1936
Tom Fogerty (Creedance Clearwater Revival) 1941
Lou Ferrigno 1951

And at 11:35 pm, yours truly entered the world, the first surviving child of Jimmy and Ruthie Humes.