Today in History

Today in History

1776 Americans begin shelling British troops in Boston.

1781 Maryland ratifies the Articles of Confederation. She is the last state to sign.

1797 The Directory of Great Britain authorizes vessels of war to board and seize neutral vessels, particularly if the ships are American.

1815 To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declares war on Algiers.

1836 Texas declares independence from Mexico on Sam Houston’s 43rd birthday.

1853 The Territory of Washington is organized.

1865 President Abraham Lincoln rejects Confederate General Robert E. Lee‘s plea for peace talks, demanding unconditional surrender.

1867 The first Reconstruction Act is passed by Congress.

1877 Rutherford B. Hayes is declared president by one vote the day before the inauguration.

1889 Congress passes the Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.

1896 Bone Mizell, the famed cowboy of Florida, is sentenced to two years of hard labor in the state pen for cattle rustling. He would only serve a small portion of the sentence.

1901 Congress passes the Platt amendment, which limits Cuban autonomy as a condition for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

1908 An international conference on arms reduction opens in London.

1908 Gabriel Lippman introduces the new threedimensional color photography at the Academy of Sciences.

1917 Congress passes the Jones Act making Puerto Rico a territory of the United States and makes the inhabitants U.S. citizens.

1923 In Italy, Mussolini admits that women have a right to vote, but declares that the time is not right.

1930 Novelist D.H. Lawrence dies of tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Vence, France, at the age of 45.

1943 The center of Berlin is bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs are dropped in a half hour.

1945 MacArthur raises the U.S. flag on Corregidor in the Philippines.

1946 Ho Chi Minh is elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

1951 The U.S. Navy launches the K-1, the first modern submarine designed to hunt enemy submarines.

1955 Claudette Colvin refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks‘ famous arrest for the same offense.

1956 France grants independence to Morocco.

1965 More than 150 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes bomb two bases in North Vietnam in the first of the “Rolling Thunder” raids.

1968 The siege of Khe Sanh ends in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there are still in control of the mountain top.

1973 Federal forces surround Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which is occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who are holding at least 10 hostages.

1974 A grand jury in Washington, D.C. concludes that President Nixon was indeed involved in the Watergate cover-up.

1978 Czech pilot Vladimir Remek becomes the first non-Russian, non-American in space.

1981 The United States plans to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.

Born

1793 Sam Houston, president of Texas, later Texas senator and governor.

1810 Leo XIII, 256th Roman Catholic Pope.

1829 Carl Schurz, Civil War general, political reformer and anti-imperialist.

1900 Kurt Weill, German-born composer (The Threepenny Opera).

1904 Henry Dreyfuss, industrial designer of everything from telephones to the interior of the Boeing 707.

1904 Theodor Seuss Geisel [Dr. Seuss], author of numerous children’s books including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.

1923 Doc Watson, singer and guitarist.

1931 Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary General of the Soviet Union. Responsible for restructuring the Soviet economy (perestroika) and openness and information (glasnost).

1942 John Irving, novelist (The World According to Garp).

History