Today in History

Today in History

630 Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.

1556 Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.

1617 Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.

1788 Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is destroyed by fire.

1806 Lewis and Clark begin their trip home after an

8,000 mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.

1865 The Battle of Bentonville, N.C. ends, marking the last Confederate attempt to stop Union General William Sherman.

1851 Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.

1858 British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.

1906 Ohio passes a law that prohibits hazing by fraternities.

1908 Frenchman Henri Farman carries a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.

1910 The U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt an annual pension of $10,000.

1918 The Germans launch the ‘Michael’ offensive, better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.

1928 President Calvin Coolidge presents the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh, a captain in the US Army Air Corps Reserve, for making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. On June 11, 1927, Lindbergh had received the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded.

1939 Singer Kate Smith records “God Bless America” for Victor Records.

1941 The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, falls to the British.

1951 Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.

1963 Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.

1965 The United States launches Ranger 9, last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.

1971 Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.

1975 As North Vietnamese forces advance, Hue and other northern towns in South Vietnam are evacuated.

1980 President Jimmy Carter announces to the U.S. Olympic Team that they will not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

1984 A Soviet submarine crashes into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.

Born

1685 Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer.

1806 Benito Juarez, President of Mexico.

1869 Albert Kahn, architect who originated modern factory design.

1869 Florenz Ziegfeld, producer, creator of Ziegfeld Follies.

1885 Raoul Lufbery, French-born American fighter pilot of World War I.

History