In looking for OS X tidbits to add to my lazysearch script, I came across /usr/share/calendar, which is full of "today in history" type stuff. This is already there in every stock OS X install, one of the weird bits of BSD detritus. Anyway, I added the following line to my .login file (actually, ~/Library/init/tcsh/login.mine if you must know):

cat /usr/share/calendar/* | grep `date +"%m/%d"`

Note the backticks around the date command, which tell the shell to actually use the output of that command as an argument for grep. Today's output (you can see there are a few rough edges):

09/20   Upton (Beall) Sinclair born, 1878
09/20   Harlan Herrick runs first FORTRAN program, 1954
09/20   Equal Rights Party nominates Belva Lockwood for President, 1884
09/20   First meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
09/20   First meeting of the National Research Council, 1916
09/20   Magellan leaves Spain on the first Round the World passage, 1519
09/20   The Roxy Theater opens in Hollywood, 1973
09/20*  First Day of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish Lunar New Year; 5741 == 1980;
09/20   Jim Croce dies in a plane crash, 1973

Have fun!