Today in History

Today in History

0455 – Rome was sacked by the Vandal army.

1487 – The War of the Roses ended with the Battle of Stoke.

1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle in Scotland.

1815 – Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny, Netherlands.

1858 – In a speech in Springfield, IL, U.S. Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln said the slavery issue had to be resolved. He declared, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'

1884 – At Coney Island, in Brooklyn, NY, the first roller coaster in America opened.

1890 – The second Madison Square Gardens opened.

1883 – The New York Giants baseball team admitted all ladies for free to the ballpark. It was the first Ladies Day.

1897 – The U.S. government signed a treaty of annexation with Hawaii.

1903 – Ford Motor Company was incorporated.

1904 – The novel 'Ulysses' by James Joyce took place. The main character of the book was Leopold Bloom.

1907 – The Russian czar dissolved the Duma in St. Petersburg.

1909 – Glenn Hammond Curtiss sold his first airplane, the 'Gold Bug' to the New York Aeronautical Society for $5,000.

1922 – Henry Berliner accomplished the first helicopter flight at College Park, MD.

1925 – France accepted a German proposal for a security pact.

1932 – The ban on Nazi storm troopers was lifted by the von Papen government in Germany.

1940 – Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain became the prime minister of the Vichy government of occupied France.

1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the closure of all German consulates in the United States. The deadline was set as July 10.

1952 – 'Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl' was published in the United States.

1955 – The U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend Selective Service until 1959.

1955 – Pope Pius XII excommunicated Argentine President Juan Peron. The ban was lifted eight years later.

1955 – Argentine naval officers launched an attack on President Juan Peron's headquarters. The revolt was suppressed by the army.

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union while in Paris, traveling with the Leningrad Kirov Ballet.

1963 – 26-year-old Valentina Tereshkova went into orbit aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft for three days. She was the first female space traveler.

1972 – Ulrike Meinhof was captured by West German police in Hanover. She was co-founder of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group and the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion).

1975 – The Simonstown agreement on naval cooperation between Britain and South Africa ended. The agreement was formally ended by mutual agreement after 169 years.

1976 – In Soweto, thousands of school children revolted against the South African government's plan to enforce Afrikaans as the language for instruction in black schools.

1977 – Leonid Brezhnev was named the first Soviet president of the USSR. He was the first person to hold the post of president and Communist Party General Secretary. He replaced Nikolai Podgorny.

1978 – U.S. President Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos ratified the Panama Canal treaties.

1980 – The movie 'The Blues Brothers' opened in Chicago, IL.

1981 – The 'Chicago Tribune' purchased the Chicago Cubs baseball team from the P.K. Wrigley Chewing Gum Company for $20.5 million.

1983 – Yuri Andropov was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The position was the equivalent of president.

1984 – Wilson Ferreira Aldunate was arrested upon his return from an eleven year exile. Aldunate had been a popular Uruguayan opposition leader.

1985 – Willie Banks broke the world record for the triple jump with a leap of 58 feet, 11-1/2 inches in the U.S.A. championships in Indianapolis, IN.

1992 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush welcomed Russian President Boris Yeltsin to a meeting in Washington, DC. The two agreed in principle to reduce strategic weapon arsenals by about two-thirds by the year 2003.

History