Today in History

Today in History

1642 York, Maine becomes the first incorporated American city.

1692 Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are arrested for the supposed practice of witchcraft in Salem, Mass.

1776 French minister Charles Gravier advises his Spanish counterpart to support the American rebels against the English.

1780 Pennsylvania becomes the first U.S. state to abolish slavery.

1803 Ohio becomes the 17th state to join the Union.

1808 In France, Napoleon creates an imperial nobility.

1815 Napoleon lands at Cannes, France, returning from exile on Elba, with a force of 1,500 men and marches on Paris.

1871 German troops enter Paris, France, during the Franco-Prussian War.

1875 Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which is invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1883.

1912 Albert Berry completes the first in-flight parachute jump, from a Benoist plane over Kinlock Field in St. Louis, Missouri.

1915 The Allies announce their aim to cut off all German supplies and assure the safety of the neutrals.

1919 The Korean coalition proclaims their independence from Japan.

1921 The Allies reject a $7.5 billion reparations offer in London. German delegations decides to quit all talks.

1932 The Lindbergh baby is kidnapped from the Lindbergh home near Princeton, New Jersey.

1935 Germany officially establishes the Luftwaffe.

1941 Bulgaria joins the Axis as the Nazis occupy Sofia.

1942 Japanese troops land on Java in the Pacific.

1943 The British RAF conducts strategic bombing raids on all European railway lines.

1960 1,000 Black students pray and sing the national anthem on the steps of the old Confederate Capitol in Montgomery, Ala.

1968 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara is replaced by Clark Clifford.

1969Mickey Mantle announces his retirement from baseball.

1974A grand jury indicts seven of President Nixon‘s aides for the conspiracy on Watergate.

1985The Pentagon accepts the theory that an atomic war would block the sun, causing a “nuclear winter.”

1992Bosnian Serbs begin sniping in Sarajevo, after Croats and Muslims vote for Bosnian independence.

Born

1810 Frédéric Chopin, composer and pianist.

1837 William Dean Howells, novelist.

1904 Glenn Miller, big band leader during the 1930s and ’40s.

1914 Ralph Waldo Ellison, African-American author (Invisible Man).

1917 Robert Lowell, Jr., poet, won Pulitzer Prize in

1947 for Lord Weary’s Castle.

1921 Richard Wilbur, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator.

1921 Howard Nemerov, writer, another Pulitzer Prize recipient.

History