Today in History

Today in History

1489 – Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, sold her kingdom to Venice. She was the last of the Lusignan dynasty.

1629 – A Royal charter was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1647 – During the Thirty Years War, France, Sweden, Bavaria and Cologne signed a Treaty of Neutrality.

1743 – First American town meeting was held at Boston's Faneuil Hall.

1757 – British Admiral John Byng was executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty.

1794 – Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin.

1864 – Samuel Baker discovered another source of the Nile in East Africa. He named it Lake Albert Nyanza.

1891 – The submarine Monarch laid telephone cable along the bottom of the English Channel to prepare for the first telephone links across the Channel.

1900 – U.S. currency went on the gold standard with the ratification of the Gold Standard Act.

1900 – In Holland, Botanist Hugo de Vries rediscovered Mendel's laws of heredity.

1901 – Utah Governor Heber M. Wells vetoed a bill that would have relaxed restrictions on polygamy.

1903 – The U.S. Senate ratified the Hay-Herran Treaty that guaranteed the U.S. the right to build a canal at Panama. The Columbian Senate rejected the treaty. A deal was signed on November 6, 1903 with the newly independent Panama.

1904 – The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the governments claim that the Northern Securities Company was an illegal merger between the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway companies.

1905 – French bankers refused to lend money to Russia until after their war.

1905 – The British House of Commons cited a need to compete with Germany in naval strength.

1906 – The island of Ustica was devastated by an earthquake.

1912 – An anarchist named Antonio Dalba unsuccessfully attempted to kill Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III in Rome.

1914 – Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12? hours to 93 minutes.

1915 – The British Navy sank the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.

1918 – An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified a peace treaty with the Central Powers.

1923 – President Harding became the first U.S. President to file an income tax report.

1932 – George Eastman, the founder of the Kodak company, committed suicide.

1936 – Adolf Hitler told a crowd of 300,000 that Germany's only judge is God and itself.

1939 – Hungary occupied the Carpatho-Ukraine. Slovakia declared its independence.

1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to fly in an airplane while in office.

1945 – In Germany, a 22,000 pound 'Grand Slam' bomb was dropped by the Royal Air Force Dumbuster Squad on the Beilefeld railway viaduct. It was the heaviest bomb used during World War II.

1947 – The U.S. signed a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.

1951 – U.N. forces recaptured Seoul for the second time during the Korean War.

1958 – The U.S. government suspended arms shipments to the Batista government of Cuba.

1964 – A Dallas jury found Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

1967 – John F. Kennedy's body was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent one.

1976 – Egypt formally abrogated the 1971 Treaty Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union.

1978 – An Israeli force of 22,000 invaded south Lebanon. The PLO bases were hit.

1979 – The Census Bureau reported that 95% of all Americans were married or would get married.

1980 – A Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw. 87 people were killed. A 14man U.S. boxing team was aboard the plane.

1981 – Three Pakistani airline hijackers surrendered in Syria after they had exchanged 100 passengers and crewmen for 54 Pakistani prisoners.

1983 – OPEC agreed to cut its oil prices by 15% for the first time in its 23-year history.

1989 – Imported assault guns were banned in the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush.

1991 – The 'Birmingham Six,' imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, were set free after a court agreed that the police fabricated evidence.

1995 – American astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket.

1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton committed $100 million for an anti-terrorism pact with Israel to track down and root out Islamic militants.

1998 – An earthquake left 10,000 homeless in southeastern Iran.

History