Daniel Ander Peterson (born 1860)

In 1860, in the year that Daniel Ander Peterson was born, on December 20th, South Carolina seceded from the United States - the first state to do so. At the time, there were about 4 million people enslaved in the American South.

In 1888, Irishman John Robert Gregg published a pamphlet in the U.S., teaching his first version of shorthand - Gregg shorthand. When he improved on the first version and published it 5 years later, Gregg shorthand became popular.

In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover, at the age of 29, was appointed the sixth director of the Bureau of Investigation by Calvin Coolidge (which later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation). The Bureau had approximately 650 employees, including 441 Special Agents. A former employee of the Justice Department, Hoover accepted his new position on the proviso that the bureau was to be completely divorced from politics and that the director report only to the attorney general.

In 1962, on August 5th, actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe died in Brentwood California. She was ruled to have died from suicide due to a drug overdose. There has been controversy regarding the circumstances ever since, due to her relationships with Jack and Bobby Kennedy.

In 1994, on May 6th, the Channel Tunnel or "Chunnel" was officially opened. The Chunnel is a railway tunnel beneath the English Channel that connects Great Britain to mainland France. Original plans for such a tunnel were developed in 1802 and approved by Napoleon Bonaparte but the British rejected the plan fearing that Napoleon would use the railway to invade.