09/04/10

Robert de la Salle found the mouth of the Mississippi River and claimed the entire river basin for France in 1682.  Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia in 1865, ending the US Civil War.  Marian Anderson performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, after having been denied to perform at Constitution Hall, owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution.  The first British-built Concorde took its maiden flight in 1969.  Twenty people were killed in Tblisi in 1989, when Soviet troops dispersed what had been a peaceful anti-Soviet demonstration.

Born today:  Isambard Brunel (1806-1859), Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), Paul Robeson (1898-1976), Jean Paul Belmondo (1933) and Dennis Quaid (1954).

It is the feast day of Saint Waltrude.