In 1808, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was born in Christian County, Kentucky.

In 1888, the poem “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer was first published in the San Francisco Daily Examiner.

In 1924, author Franz Kafka, 40, died near Vienna.

In 1937, Edward, The Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated the British throne, married Wallis Warfield Simpson in a private ceremony in Monts, France.

In 1948, the 200-inch reflecting Hale Telescope at the Palomar Mountain Observatory in California was dedicated.

In 1955, convicted murderer Barbara Graham, 31, was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison in California, as were Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins, for the 1953 slaying of Mabel Monahan.

In 1963, Pope John XXIII died at age 81; he was succeeded by Pope Paul VI.

In 1965, astronaut Edward H. White became the first American to “walk” in space during the flight of Gemini 4.

In 1972, Sally J. Priesand was ordained as America’s first female rabbi.

In 1983, Gordon Kahl, a militant tax protester wanted in the slayings of two U.S. marshals in North Dakota, was killed in a gun battle with law-enforcement officials near Smithville, Arkansas.

The Associated Press