Today in History

Today in History

1478 George, the Duke of Clarence, who had opposed his brother Edward IV, is murdered in the Tower of London.

1688 Quakers in Germantown, PA adopt the first formal antislavery resolution in America.

1813 Czar Alexander enters Warsaw at the head of his army.

1861 Victor Emmanuel II becomes the first King of Italy.

1861 Jefferson F. Davis is inaugurated as the Confederacy‘ s provisional president at a ceremony held in Montgomery, AL.

1865 Union troops force the Confederates to abandon Fort Anderson, NC.

1878 The bitter and bloody Lincoln County War begins with the murder of Billy the Kid‘s mentor, Englishman and rancher John Tunstall.

1885 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, is published in New York.

1907 600,000 tons of grain are sent to Russia to relieve the famine there.

1920 Vuillemin and Chalus complete their first flight over the Sahara Desert.

1932 Manchurian independence is formally declared.

1935 Rome reports sending troops to Italian Somalia.

1939 The Golden Gate Exposition opens in San Francisco.

1943 German General Erwin Rommel takes three towns in Tunisia, North Africa.

1944 The U.S. Army and Marines invade Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.

1945 U.S. Marines storm ashore at Iwo Jima.

1954 East and West Berlin drop thousands of propaganda leaflets on each other after the end of a month-long truce.

1962 Robert F. Kennedy says that U.S. troops will stay in Vietnam until Communism is defeated.

1964 The United States cuts military aid to five nations in reprisal for having trade relations with Cuba.

1967 The National Art Gallery in Washington agrees to buy a Leonardo da Vinci for a record $5 million.

1968 Three U.S. pilots that were held by the Vietnamese arrive in Washington.

1972 The California Supreme Court voids the death penalty.

1974 Randolph Hearst is to give $2 million in free food for the poor in order to open talks for his daughter Patty.

1982 Mexico devalues the peso by 30 percent to fight an economic slide.

Born

1516 Queen Mary I, also known as Bloody Mary for her persecution of Protestants.

1795 George Peabody, U.S. merchant and philanthropist.

1848 Louis Comfort Tiffany, glassware artist and designer.

1859 Sholem Aleichem, Yiddish author.

1862 Charles M. Schwab, “Boy Wonder” of the steel industry; president of both U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel.

1892 Wendell Willkie, Presidential candidate against Franklin Roosevelt.

1909 Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (Angle of Repose).

1922 Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.

1929 Len Deighton, English spy writer (The Ipcress File).

1931 Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author (The Bluest Eye, Beloved).

1934 Audre Lord, poet.

History