Today in History

Today in History

37 The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius’ will and proclaims Caligula emperor.

1692 William Penn is deprived of his governing powers.

1863 Confederate women riot in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt in the South.

1865 The Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns for the last time.

1874 Hawaii signs a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.

1881 Barnum and Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth opens in Madison Square Gardens.

1911 Theodore Roosevelt opens the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the United States to date.

1913 Greek King George I is killed by an assassin. Constantine I is to succeed.

1916 On the Eastern Front, the Russians counter the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake Naroch. The Russians lose 100,000 men and the Germans lose

20,000.

1917 The Germans sink the U.S. ships, City of Memphis, Vigilante and the Illinois, without any type of warning.

1922 Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India.

1939 Georgia finally ratifies the Bill of Rights, 150 years after the birth of the federal government. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the only other states to hold out, also ratify the Bill of Rights in this year.

1942 The third military draft begins in the United States.

1943 Adolf Hitler calls off the offensive in the Caucasus.

1943 American forces take Gafsa in Tunisia.

1944 The Russians reach the Romanian border.

1950 Nationalist troops land on the mainland of China and capture Communist-held Sungmen.

1953 The Braves baseball team announces that they are moving from Boston to Milwaukee.

1965 Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to spacewalk when he exits his Voskhod 2 space capsule while in orbit around the Earth.

1969 President Richard M. Nixon authorizes Operation Menue, the ‘secret’ bombing of Cambodia.

1970 The U.S. Postal Service is paralyzed by the first postal strike.

1971 U.S. helicopters airlift 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.

1975 South Vietnam abandons most of the Central Highlands to North Vietnamese forces.

1981 The United States discloses biological weapons tests in Texas in 1966.

1986 Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.

Born

1782 John C. Calhoun, U.S. statesman.

1837 Stephen Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th President of the United States (1885-1889 and 1893-

1897), the only U.S. president elected for two nonconsecutive terms. 1842 Stephane Mallarme, French symbolist poet.

1858 Rudolf Diesel, German engineer who designed the compression-ignition engine.

1869 Neville Chamberlin, British Prime Minister

(1937-40).

1893 Wilfred Owen, World War I poet.

1932 John Updike, American poet and novelist.

1936 Frederik W. deKlerk, President of the Republic of South Africa.

History