On This Day

[Raistlin]

1535 - French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail for North America.

1536 - Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England's King Henry VIII, was beheaded after she was convicted of adultery.{C}

1568 - After being defeated by the Protestants, Mary the Queen of Scots, fled to England where she was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth.

1588 - The Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon, bound for England.{C}

1608 - The Protestant states formed the Evangelical Union of Lutherans and Calvinists.

1643 - Delegates from four New England colonies met in Boston to form a confederation.

1643 - The French army defeated a Spanish army at Rocroi, France.

1796 - The first U.S. game law was approved. The measure called for penalties for hunting or destroying game within Indian territory.

1847 - The first English-style railroad coach was placed in service on the Fall River Line in Massachusetts.

1856 - U.S. Senator Charles Sumner spoke out against slavery.

1857 - The electric fire alarm system was patented by William F. Channing and Moses G. Farmer.

1858 - A pro-slavery band led by Charles Hameton executed unarmed Free State men near Marais des Cygnes on the Kansas-Missouri border.

1864 - The Union and Confederate armies launched their last attacks against each other at Spotsylvania in Virginia.

1906 - The Federated Boys' Clubs, forerunner of the Boys' Clubs of America, were organized.{C}

1911 - The first American criminal conviction that was based on fingerprint evidence occurred in New York City.

1912 - The Associated Advertising Clubs of America held its first convention in Dallas, TX.

1921 - The U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants.{C}

1926 - Thomas Edison spoke on the radio for the first time.

1926 - Benito Mussolini announced that democracy was deceased. Rome became a fascist state.

1926 - In Damascus, Syria, French shells killed 600 people.

1928 - The first frog-jumping jubilee held in Calaveras County, CA.

1935 - T.E. Lawrence "Lawrence of Arabia" died from injuries in a motorcycle crash in England.

1935 - The National Football League (NFL) adopted an annual college draft to begin in 1936.

1943 - Winston Churchill told the U.S. Congress that his country was pledging their full support in the war against Japan.

1958 - Canada and the U.S. formally established the North American Air Defense Command.

1962 - Marilyn Monroe performed a sultry rendition of "Happy Birthday" for U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The event was a fund-raiser at New York's Madison Square Garden.

1964 - The U.S. State Department reported that diplomats had found about 40 microphones planted in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

1967 - The Soviet Union ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain that banned nuclear weapons from outer space.

1967 - U.S. planes bombed Hanoi for the first time.

1988 - In Jacksonville, FL, Carlos Lehder Rivas was convicted of smuggling more than three tons of cocaine into the United States. Rivas was the co-founder of Colombia's Medellin drug cartel.{C}

1989 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average passed 2,500 for the first time. The close for the day was 2,501.1.

1992 - U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the CBS sitcom "Murphy Brown" for having its title character decide to bear a child out of wedlock.{C}

1992 - In Massapequa, NY, Mary Jo Buttafuoco was shot and seriously wounded by Amy Fisher. Fisher was her husband Joey's teen-age lover.

1992 - The 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. The amendment prohibits Congress from giving itself midterm pay raises.

1993 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed about 3,500 (3,500.03) for the first time.

1998 - In Russia, strikes broke out over unpaid wages.

1998 - Bandits stole three of Rome's most important paintings from the National Gallery of Modern Art.

1999 - "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace" was released in the U.S. It set a new record for opening day sales at 28.5 million.

1999 - Rosie O'Donnell and Tom Selleck got into an uncomfortable verbal issue concerning gun control on O'Donnell's talk show.

2000 - The bones of the most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton went on display in Chicago.

2000 - Disney released the movie "Dinosaur."

2003 - It was announced that Worldcom Inc. would pay investors $500 million to settle civil fraud charges over its $11 billion accounting scandal.

2003 - Hundreds of Albert Einstein's scientific papers, personal letters and humanist essays were make available on the Internet. Einstein had given the papers to the Hebrew Universtiy of Jerusalem in his will.

2005 - "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" brought in 50.0 million in its opening day.

[spoofpig]

2002, Liberty X went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Just A Little.' They were the five runners-up from the TV talent show "Pop Stars", who failed to become part of the winning group Hear'Say, and music lovers everywhere rejoiced

[Raistlin]

0325 - The Ecumenical council was inaugurated by Emperor Constantine in Nicea, Asia Minor.

1303 - A peace treaty was signed between England and France over the town of Gascony.

1347 - Cola di Rienzo took the title of tribune in Rome.

1506 - In Spain, Christopher Columbus died in poverty.

1520 - Hernando Cortez defeated Spanish troops that had been sent to punish him in Mexico.

1690 - England passed the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.

1674 - John Sobieski became Poland’s first King.

1774 - Britain's Parliament passed the Coercive Acts to punish the American colonists for their increasingly anti-British behavior

1775 - North Carolina became the first colony to declare its independence. This is the date that is on the George state flag even though the date of this event has been questioned.

1784 - The Peace of Versailles ended a war between France, England, and Holland.

1830 - The fountain pen was patented by H.D. Hyde.

1861 - North Carolina became the eleventh state to secede from the Union.

1861 - During the American Civil War, the capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, AL, to Richmond, VA.

1874 - Levi Strauss began marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.

1875 - The International Bureau of Weights and Measures was established.

1899 - Jacob German of New York City became the first driver to be arrested for speeding. The posted speed limit was 12 miles per hour.

1902 - The U.S. military occupation of Cuba ended.

1902 - Cuba gained its independence from Spain.

1916 - Norman Rockwell’s first cover on "The Saturday Evening Post" appeared.

1926 - The U.S. Congress passed the Air Commerce Act. The act gave the Department of Commerce the right to license pilots and planes.

1927 - Charles Lindbergh took off from New York to cross the Atlantic for Paris aboard his airplane the "Spirit of St. Louis." The trip took 33 1/2 hours.

1930 - The first airplane was catapulted from a dirigible.

1932 - Amelia Earhart took off to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She became the first woman to achieve the feat.

1933 - "Charlie Chan" was heard for the final time on the NBC Blue radio network, after only six months on the air.

1939 - The first telecast over telephone wires was sent from Madison Square Garden to the NBC-TV studios at 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The event was a bicycle race.

1939 - The first regular air-passenger service across the Atlantic Ocean began with the take-off of the "Yankee Clipper" from Port Washington, New York.

1941 - Germany invaded Crete by air.

1942 - Japan completed the conquest of Burma.

1961 - A white mob attacked the Freedom Riders in Montgomery, AL. The event prompted the federal government to send U.S. marshals.

1969 - U.S. and South Vietnamese forces captured Apbia Mountain, which was referred to as Hamburger Hill.

1970 - 100,000 people marched in New York supporting U.S. policies in Vietnam.

1978 - Mavis Hutchinson, at age 53, became the first woman to run across America. It took Hutchinson 69 days to run the 3,000 miles.

1980 - The submarine Nautilus was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

1982 - TV’s "Barney Miller" was seen for the last time on ABC-TV.

1985 - The Dow Jones industrial average broke the 1300 mark for the first time. The Dow closed at 1304.88.

1985 - The FBI arrested U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer John Walker. Walker had begun spying for the Soviet Union in 1968.

1985 - Radio Marti was launched.

1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first photographs.

1993 - The final episode of "Cheers" was aired on NBC-TV.

1996 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Colorado measure banning laws that would protect homosexuals from discrimination.

1999 - At Heritage High School in Conyers, GA, a 15-year-old student shot and injured six students. He then surrendered to an assistant principal at the school.

2010 - Scientists announced that they had created a funtional synthetic genome.

2010 - Five paintings worth 100 million Euro were stolen from the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

[Raistlin]

0996 - Sixteen year old Otto III was crowned the Roman Emperor.

1471 - King Henry VI was killed in the tower of London. Edward IV took the throne.

1536 - The Reformation was officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland.

1542 - Hernando de Soto died along the Mississippi River while searching for gold.

1602 - Martha's Vineyard was first sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.

1688 - The English poet Alexander Pope was born.

1790 - Paris was divided into 48 zones.

1819 - Bicycles were first seen in the U.S. in New York City. They were originally known as "swift walkers."

1832 - In the U.S., the Democratic Party held its first national convention.

1840 - New Zealand was declared a British colony.

1856 - Lawrence, Kansas was captured by pro-slavery forces.

1863 - The siege of the Confederate Port Hudson, LA, began.

1881 - The American branch of the Red Cross was founded by Clara Barton.

1881 - The United States Lawn Tennis Association was formed in New York City.

1891 - Peter Jackson and Jim Corbett fought for 61 rounds only to end in a draw.

1906 - Louis H. Perlman received his patent for the demountable tire-carrying rim.

1922 - The cartoon, "On the Road to Moscow," by Rollin Kirby won a Pulitzer Prize. It was the first cartoon awarded the Pulitzer.

1924 - Fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a "thrill killing" committed by Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. The killers were students at the University of Chicago.

1927 - Charles A. Lindberg completed the first solo nonstop airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The trip began May 20.

1929 - The first automatic electric stock quotation board was used by Sutro and Company of New York City.

1934 - Oskaloosa, IA, became the first city in the U.S. to fingerprint all of its citizens.

1941 - The first U.S. ship, the SS Robin Moor, was sunk by a U-boat.

1945 - Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart were married.

1947 - Joe DiMaggio and five of his New York Yankee teammates were fined $100 because they had not fulfilled contract requirements to do promotional duties for the team.

1956 - The U.S. exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean over Bikini Atoll.

1961 - Governor Patterson declared martial law in Montgomery, AL.

1968 - The nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.

1970 - The National Guard was mobilized to quell disturbances at Ohio State University.

1980 - The movie "The Empire Strikes Back" was released.

1982 - The British landed in the Falkland Islands and fighting began.

1991 - In Madras, India, the former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a bouquet of flowers that contained a bomb.

1998 - An expelled student, Kipland Kinkel, in Springfield, OR, killed 2 people and wounded 25 others with a semi-automatic rifle. Police also discovered that the boy had killed his parents before the rampage.

1998 - Microsoft and Sega announced that they are collaborating on a home video game system.

1998 - In Miami, FL, five abortion clinics were hit by an butyric acid-attacker.

[Raistlin]

1246 - Henry Raspe was elected anti-king by the Rhenish prelates in France.

1455 - King Henry VI was taken prisoner by the Yorkists at the Battle of St. Albans, during the War of the Roses.

1570 - Abraham Ortelius published the first modern atlas in Belgium.

1761 - In Philadelphia, the first life insurance policy was issued in the U.S.

1819 - The steamship Savannah became the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

1841 - Henry Kennedy received a patent for the first reclining chair.

1849 - Abraham Lincoln received a patent for the floating dry dock.

1859 - The creator of "Sherlock Holmes," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born.

1868 - Near Marshfield, IN, The "Great Train Robbery" took place. The robbery was worth $96,000 in cash, gold and bonds to the seven members of the Reno gang.

1872 - The Amnesty Act restored civil rights to Southerners.

1882 - The U.S. formally recognized Korea.

1891 - The first public motion picture was given in Thomas Edison's lab.

1892 - Dr. Sheffield, a British dentist, invented the toothpaste tube.

1900 - The Associated Press was incorporated as a non-profit news cooperative in New York.

1900 - A. DeVilbiss, Jr. patented his pendulum-type computing scale.

1900 - Edwin S. Votey received a patent for the pianola (a pneumatic piano player). It could be attached to any piano.

1908 - The Wright brothers registered their flying machine for a U.S. patent.

1939 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini signed a military alliance between Germany and Italy known as the "Pact of Steel."

1947 - The Truman Doctrine was enacted by the U.S. Congress to appropriate military and economic aid Turkey and Greece.

1955 - A scheduled dance to be headlined by Fats Domino was canceled by police in Bridgeport, Connecticut because "rock and roll dances might be featured."

1955 - jack Benny did his last live network radio broadcast after a run of 23 years. He devoted his time fully to TV.

1967 - "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" premiered on PBS.

1967 - The final "To Tell the Truth" program was seen on CBS-TV.

1969 - A lunar module of Apollo 10 flew within nine miles of the moon's surface. The event was a rehearsal for the first lunar landing.

1972 - U.S. President Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit Russia. He met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

1972 - The island Ceylon adopted a new constitution and became the republic of Sri Lanka.

1977 - Janet Guthrie set the fastest time of the second weekend of qualifying, becoming the first woman to earn a starting spot in the Indianapolis 500 since its inception in 1911.

1985 - Pete Rose passed Hank Aaron as National League run scoring leader with 2,108.

1986 - Sylvester Stallone agreed to a 10-picture, six-year deal with United Artists. He signed for a reported $15 million for each film.

1990 - In the Middle East, North and South Yemen merged to become a single state known as the Republic of Yemen.

1990 - Microsoft released Windows 3.0.

1992 - Johnny Carson hosted NBC's "Tonight Show" for the last time. He had been host for 30 years.

1997 - Kelly Flinn, the U.S. Air Force's first female bomber pilot certified for combat, accepted a general discharge. She thereby avoided court-martial on charges of adultery, lying and disobeying an order.

1998 - Bolivia was hit with a series of powerful earthquakes. At least 18 were killed. The quakes ranged in magnitude from 5.9 to 6.8.

1998 - New information came to light about the June 1996 bombing that killed 19 American airmen. The information indicated that Saudi citizens had been responsible and not Iranians as once believed.

1998 - A federal judge said that Secret Service agents could be compelled to testify before a grand jury in Monica Lewinsky investigation concerning U.S. President Clinton.

1998 - Voters in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland turned out to cast ballots giving approval to a Northern Ireland peace accord.

2002 - Chandra Levy's remains were found in Washington, DC's Rock Creek Park. She was last seen on April 30, 2001. California Congressman Gary Condit was questioned in the case due to his relationship with Levy.

2002 - In Birmingham, AL, a jury convicted former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry of murder in the 1963 church bombing that killed four girls.

2002 - Barry Bonds (San Francisco Giants) hit his 583rd career home run. He tied Mark McGwire for fifth on the all-time list.

2003 - At the Colonial in Fort Worth, TX, Annika Sorentam became the first woman to play on the PGA tour in 58 years. She ended the day at 1-over par.

[Raistlin]

1430 - Joan of Arc was captured by Burgundians. She was then sold to the English.

1533 - Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.

1618 - The Thirty Years War began when three opponents of the Reformation were thrown through a window.

1701 - In London, Captain William Kidd was hanged after being convicted of murder and piracy.

1785 - Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter that he had invented bifocals.

1788 - South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify U.S. Constitution.

1827 - The first nursery school in the U.S. was established in New York City.

1846 - Arabella Mansfield (Belle Aurelia Babb) was born. She was the first woman in the U.S. to pass the bar exam, though she never used her law degree.

1873 - Canada's North West Mounted Police force was established. The organization's name was changed to Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920.

1876 - Boston’s Joe Borden pitched the very first no-hitter in the history of the National League.

1879 - The first U.S. veterinary school was established by Iowa State University.

1895 - The New York Public Library was created with an agreement that combined the city's existing Astor and Lenox libraries.

1900 - Civil War hero Sgt. William H. Carney became the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, 37 years after the Battle of Fort Wagner.

1901 - American forces captured Filipino rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo.

1908 - Part of the Great White Fleet arrived in Puget Sound, WA.

1915 - During World War I, Italy joined the Allies as they declared war on Austria-Hungary.

1922 - The play "Abie's Irish Rose" opened in New York City.

1922 - "Daylight Saving Time" was debated in the first debate ever to be heard on radio in Washington, DC.

1926 - The French captured the Moroccan Rif capital.

1934 - In Bienville Parish, LA, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed and killed by Texas Rangers. The bank robbers were riding in a stolen Ford Deluxe.

1937 - Industrialist John D. Rockefeller died.

1938 - "LIFE" magazine’s cover pictured Errol Flynn as a glamour boy.

1945 - In Luneburg Germany, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi Gestapo, committed suicide while imprisoned by the Allied forces.

1949 - The Republic of West Germany was established.

1960 - Israel announced the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.

1962 - The National Basketball Association (NBA) agreed to transfer the Philadelphia Warriors to San Francisco, CA. The team became the San Francisco Warriors (and later the Golden State Warriors).

1962 - Joe Pepitone of the New York Yankees set a major league baseball record by hitting two home runs in one inning.

1981 - In Barcelona, Spain, gunmen seized control of the Central Bank and took 200 hostages.

1985 - Thomas Patrick Cavanagh was sentenced to life in prison for trying to sell Stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union.

1992 - In Lisbon, Portugal , the U.S. and four former Soviet republics signed an agreement to implement the START missile reduction treaty that had been agreed to by the Soviet Union before it was dissolved.

1994 - "Pulp Fiction" won the "Golden Palm" for best film at the 47th Cannes Film Festival.

1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was demolished.

1998 - British Protestants and Irish Catholics of Northern Ireland approved a peace accord.

1999 - In Kansas City, MO, Owen Hart (Blue Blazer) died when he fell 90 feet while being lowered into a WWF wrestling ring. He was 33 years old.

1999 - Gerry Bloch, at age 81, became the oldest climber to scale El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. He broke his own record that he set in 1986 when he was 68 years old.

[Raistlin]

1543 - Nicolaus Copernicus published proof of a sun-centered solar system.

1607 - Captain Christopher Newport and 105 followers found the colony of Jamestown at the mouth of the James River on the coast of Virginia.

1610 - Sir Thomas Gates institutes "laws divine moral and marshal," a harsh civil code for Jamestown.

1624 - After years of unprofitable operation Virginia’s charter was revoked and it became a royal colony.

1689 - The English Parliament passed Act of Toleration, protecting Protestants. Roman Catholics were specifically excluded from exemption.

1738 - The Methodist Church was established.

1764 - Bostonian lawyer James Otis denounced "taxation without representation" and called for the colonies to unite in demonstrating their opposition to Britain’s new tax measures.

1798 - Believing that a French invasion of Ireland was imminent, Irish nationalists rose up against the British occupation.

1816 - Emamual Leutze was born in Germany. He was most famous for his paintings "Washington Crossing the Delaware" and "Columbus Before the Queen".

1822 - At the Battle of Pichincha, Bolivar secured independence of the Quito.

1830 - The first passenger railroad service in the U.S. began service.

1844 - Samuel F.B. Morse formally opened America's first telegraph line. The first message was sent from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, MD. The message was "What hath God wrought?"

1859 - Charles Gounod's "Ave Maria" was performed by Madame Caroline Miolan-Carvalho for the first time in public.

1863 - Bushwackers led by Captain William Marchbanks attacked a U.S. Federal militia party in Nevada, Missouri.

1878 - The first American bicycle race was held in Boston.

1881 - About 200 people died when the Canadian ferry Princess Victoria sank near London, Ontario.

1883 - After 14 years of construction the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to traffic.

1899 - The first public garage was opened by W.T. McCullough.

1913 - The U.S. Department of Labor entered into its first strike mediation. The dispute was between the Railroad Clerks of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.

1930 - Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly from England to Australia.

1931 - B&O Railroad began service with the first passenger train to have air conditioning throughout. The run was between New York City and Washington, DC.

1935 - The Cincinnati Reds played the Philadelphia Phillies in the first major league baseball game at night. The switch for the floodlights was thrown by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.

1941 - The HMS Hood was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic. Only three people survived.

1950 - ‘Sweetwater’ (Nat) Clifton’s contract was purchased by the New York Knicks. Sweetwater played for the Harlem Globetrotters and became the first black player in the NBA.

1954 - The first moving sidewalk in a railroad station was opened in Jersey City, NJ.

1958 - United Press International was formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.

1961 - The Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.

1962 - The officials of the National Football League ruled that halftime of regular season games would be cut to 15 minutes.

1967 - California Governor Ronald Reagan greeted Charles M. Schulz at the state capitol in observance of the legislature-proclaimed "Charles Schulz Day."

1974 - The last "Dean Martin Show" was seen on NBC. The show had been aired for 9 years.

1976 - Britain and France opened trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington.

1980 - The International Court of Justice issued a final decision calling for the release of the hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979.

1983 - The Brooklyn Bridge's 100th birthday was celebrated.

1983 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to deny tax breaks to schools that racially discriminate.

1986 - Montreal won its 23rd National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup championship.

1990 - The Edmonton Oilers won their fifth National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup.

1993 - Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posada Ocampo and six other people were killed at the Guadalajara, Mexico, airport in a shootout that involved drug gangs.

1993 - The Ethiopian province of Eritrea declared itself an independent nation.

1994 - The four men convicted of bombing the New York's World Trade Center were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

1999 - 39 miners were killed in an underground gas explosion in the Ukraine.

2000 - Five people were killed and two others wounded when two gunmen entered a Wendy's restaurant in Flushing, Queens, New York. The gunmen tied up the victims in the basement and then shot them.

2000 - The U.S. House of Representatives approved permanent normal trade relations with China. China was not happy about some of the human rights conditions that had been attached by the U.S. lawmakers.

2000 - A Democratic Party event for Al Gore in Washington brought in $26.5 million. The amount set a new record, which had just been set the previous month by Republicans for Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

2001 - Temba Tsheri, 15, became the youngest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

[Raistlin]

585 BC - The first known prediction of a solar eclipse was made in Greece.

1085 - Alfonso VI took Toledo, Spain from the Moslems.

1787 - The Constitutional convention opened in Philadelphia with George Washington presiding.

1810 - Argentina declared independence from Napoleonic Spain.

1844 - The gasoline engine was patented by Stuart Perry.

1844 - The first telegraphed news dispatch, sent from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, MD, appeared in the Baltimore "Patriot."

1895 - Oscar Wilde, a playwright, poet and novelist, was convicted of a morals charge and sentenced to prison in London.

1895 - James P. Lee first published "Gold in America -- A Practical Manual."

1911 - President of Mexico, Porfolio Diaz, resigned his office.

1925 - John Scopes was indicted for teaching the Darwinian theory in school.

1927 - Ford Motor Company announced that the Model A would replace the Model T.

1927 - The "Movietone News" was shown for the first time at the Sam Harris Theatre in New York City.

1935 - Babe Ruth hit his final homerun, his 714th, and set a record that would stand for 39 years.

1935 - Jesse Owens tied the world record for the 100-yard dash. He ran it in 9.4 seconds. He also broke three other world track records.

1946 - Jordan gained independence from Britain.

1953 - In Nevada, the first atomic cannon was fired.

1961 - America was asked by U.S. President Kennedy to work toward putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

1963 - The Organization of African Unity was founded, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

1968 - The Gateway Arch, part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, MO, was dedicated.

1970 - Boeing Computer Services was founded.

1977 - "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" opened and became the largest grossing film to date.

1977 - An opinion piece by Vietnam verteran Jan Scruggs appeared in "The Washington Post." The article called for a national memorial to "remind an ungrateful nation of what it has done to its sons" that had served in the Vietnam War.

1979 - An American Airlines DC-10 crashed during takeoff at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. 275 people were killed.

1981 - Daredevil Daniel Goodwin scaled Chicago's Sears Tower, while wearing a "Spiderman" costume, in 7 1/2 hours.

1983 - "The Return of the Jedi" opened nationwide. It set a new record in opening day box office sales. The gross was $6,219,629.

1985 - Bangladesh was hit with a hurricane and tidal wave that killed more than 11,000 people.

1986 - Approximately 7 million Americans participated in "Hands Across America."

1989 - The Calgary Flames won their first NHL Stanley Cup by defeating the Montreal Canadiens.

1992 - Jay Leno debuted as the new permanent host of NBC's "Tonight Show."

1996 - In Nimes, France, Christina Sanchez became the first woman to achieve the rank of matadore in Europe.

1997 - In Sierra Leone a military coup overthrew the popularly elected President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. He was replaced with Major Johnny Paul Koromah.

1997 - U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond became the longest-serving senator in U.S. history (41 years and 10 months).

1997 - Poland adopted a constitution that removed all traces of communism.

1999 - A report by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China concluded that China had "stolen design information on the U.S. most-advanced thermonuclear weapons" and that China's penetration of U.S. weapons laboratories "spans at least the past several decades and almost certainly continues today."

2000 - The Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Inc. signed a long-term deal that ended a dispute over the airing policies of Time Warner. Time Warner had blacked out Disney programs for a 39 hour period the previous month due to the lack of an agreement.

2001 - Erik Weihenmeyer, 32, of Golder, CO, became the first blind climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

2001 - Sherman Bull, 64, of New Canaan, CT, became the oldest climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

2006 - In Houston, former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skillinng were convicted of conspiracy and fraud for the downfall of Enron.

2008 - NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander landed in the arctic plains of Mars.

2009 - North Korea announced that it had conducted a second successful nuclear test in the province of North Hamgyong. The United Nations Security Council condemned the reported test.

[Raistlin]

1647 - Achsah Young, a resident of Windsor, CT, was executed for being a "witch." It was the first recorded American execution of a "witch."

1668 - Three colonists were expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.

1813 - Americans captured Fort George, Canada.

1896 - 255 people were killed in St. Louis, MO, when a tornado struck.

1901 - The Edison Storage Battery Company was organized.

1907 - The Bubonic Plague broke out in San Francisco.

1919 - A U.S. Navy seaplane completed the first transatlantic flight.

1926 - Bronze figures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were erected in Hannibal, MO.

1929 - Colonel Charles Lindbergh and Anne Spencer Murrow were married.

1931 - Piccard and Knipfer made the first flight into the stratosphere, by balloon.

1933 - Walt Disney's "Three Little Pigs" was first released.
1933 - In the U.S., the Federal Securities Act was signed. The act required the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.

1935 - The U.S. Supreme Court declared that President Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional.

1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to pedestrian traffic. The bridge connected San Francisco and Marin County.

1941 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed an "unlimited national emergency" amid rising world tensions.

1941 - The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by British naval and air forces. 2,300 people were killed.

1942 - German General Erwin Rommel began a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.

1944 - U.S. General MacArthur landed on Biak Island in New Guinea.

1960 - A military coup overthrew the democratic government of Turkey.

1964 - Indian Prime Minister Jawaharla Nehru died.

1968 - After 48 years as coach of the Chicago Bears, George Halas retired.

1969 - Construction of Walt Disney World began in Florida.

1977 - George H. Willig was fined for scaling the World Trade Center in New York on May 26. He was fined $1.10.

1982 - Japan announced the elimination of tariffs on 96 industrial goods.

1985 - In Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchanged instruments of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.

1986 - Mel Fisher recovered a jar that contained 2,300 emeralds from the Spanish ship Atocha. The ship sank in the 17th century.

1988 - The U.S. Senate ratified the INF treaty. The INF pact was the first arms-control agreement since the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) to receive Senate approval.

1994 - Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. He had been in exile for two decades.

1995 - In Charlottesville, VA, Christopher Reeve was paralyzed after being thrown from his horse during a jumping event.

1996 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiated a cease-fire to the war in Chechnya in his first meeting with the leader of the rebels.

1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones could continue while President Clinton was in office.

1998 - Charlie Sheen was admitted to a hospital in Los Angeles for a drug overdose.

1998 - Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison for not warning anyone about the plot to bomb an Oklahoma City federal building.

1999 - In The Hague, Netherlands, a war crimes tribunal indicted Slobodan Milosevic and four others for atrocities in Kosovo. It was the first time that a sitting head of state had been charged with such a crime.

2010 - Universal Studios reopened its backlot. The area had been destroyed by a fire two years before.

[Raistlin]

585 BC - Thales Miletus predicted a solar eclipse.

585BC - The Persian-Lydian battle ended.

1533 - England's Archbishop declared the marriage of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid.

1774 - The First Continental Congress convened in Virginia.

1805 - Napoleon was crowned in Milan, Italy.

1863 - The first black regiment left Boston to fight in the U.S. Civil War.

1892 - The Sierra club was organized in San Francisco, CA.

1900 - Britain annexed the Orange Free State.

1918 - Azerbaijan declared independence.

1928 - Chrysler Corporation merged with Dodge Brothers, Inc.

1929 - Warner Brothers debuted "On With The Show" in New York City. It was the first all-color-talking picture.

1934 - The Dionne quintuplets were born near Callender, Ontario, to Olivia and Elzire Dionne. The babies were the first quintuplets to survive infancy.

1937 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, DC, signaling that vehicular traffic could cross the newly opened Golden Gate Bridge in California.

1940 - During World War II, Belgium surrendered to Germany.

1953 - The Walt Disney film "Melody" premiered in the Paramount Theatre in Hollywood. The picture was the first 3-D cartoon.
1957 - National League club owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers to move to Los Angeles and that the New York Giants could move to San Francisco.

1961 - Amnesty International, a human rights organization, was founded.

1976 - The Peaceful Nuclear Explosion Treaty was signed, limiting any nuclear explosion - regardless of its purpose - to a yield of 150 kilotons.

1977 - Fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, KY. 165 people were killed.

1985 - The first issue of "Vanity Fair" magazine went on sale. The issue had a picture of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy smooching on the cover.

1985 - David Jacobsen, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, was abducted by pro-Iranian kidnappers. He was freed 17 months later.

1987 - Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow's Red Square after evading Soviet air defenses. He was released August 3, 1988.

1995 - An earthquake in the Russian town Neftegorsk killed at least 2000 people. It had a magnitude of 7.5.

1996 - U.S. President Clinton's former business partners in the Whitewater land deal were convicted of fraud.

1998 - Pakistan matched India with five nuclear test blasts. The U.S., Japan and other nations imposed economic sanctions. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said "Today, we have settled the score with India."

1998 - Dr. Susan Terebey discovered a planet outside of our solar system with the use of photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

1999 - In Milan, Italy, Leonardo de Vinci's "The Last Supper" was put back on display after more than 20 years of restoration work.

2002 - Russia became a limited partner in NATO with the creation of the NATO-Russia Council.

[Raistlin]

1453 - Constantinople fell to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, ending the Byzantine Empire.

1660 - Charles II was restored to the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth.

1721 - South Carolina was formally incorporated as a royal colony.

1765 - Patrick Henry denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia's House of Burgesses.

1790 - Rhode Island became the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1827 - The first nautical school opened in Nantucket, MA, under the name Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin’s Lancasterian School.

1848 - WIsconsin became the 30th state to join the United States.

1849 - A patent for lifting vessels was granted to Abraham Lincoln.

1910 - An airplane raced a train from Albany, NY, to New York City. The airplane pilot Glenn Curtiss won the $10,000 prize.

1911 - The first running of the Indianapolis 500 took place.

1912 - Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, PA, for dancing the Turkey Trot while on the job.

1916 - The official flag of the president of the United States was adopted.

1916 - U.S. forces invaded Dominican Republic and remained until 1924.

1922 - Ecuador became independent.

1922 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized baseball was a sport, not subject to antitrust laws.

1932 - World War I veterans began arriving in Washington, DC. to demand cash bonuses they were not scheduled to receive for another 13 years.

1951 - C.F. Blair became the first man to fly over the North Pole in single engine plane.

1953 - Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.

1962 - Buck (John) O’Neil became the first black coach in major league baseball when he accepted the job with the Chicago Cubs.

1965 - Ralph Boston set a world record in the broad jump at 27-feet, 4-3/4 inches, at a meet held in Modesto, CA.

1973 - Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.

1974 - U.S. President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.

1978 - In the U.S., postage stamps were raised from 13 cents to 15 cents.

1981 - The U.S. performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.

1985 - Thirty-nine people were killed and 400 were injured in a riot at a European Cup soccer match in Brussels, Belgium.

1986 - Colonel Oliver North told National Security Advisor William McFarlane that profits from weapons sold to Iran were being diverted to the Contras.

1988 - U.S. President Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union in Moscow.

1988 - NBC aired "To Heal A Nation," the story of Jan Scruggs' effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1990 - Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic by the Russian parliament.

1997 - The ruling party in Indonesia, Golkar, won the Parliament election by a record margin. There was a boycott movement and rioting that killed 200 people.

1999 - Space shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.

2000 - Fiji's military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.

2001 - In New York, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of a global conspiracy to murder Americans. The crimes included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.

2001 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments.

[Raistlin]

1416 - Jerome of Prague was burned as a heretic by the Church.

1431 - Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France, at the age of 19.

1527 - The University of Marburg was founded in Germany.

1539 - Hernando de Soto, the Spanish explorer, landed in Florida with 600 soldiers to search for gold.

1783 - The first daily newspaper was published in the U.S. by Benjamin Towner called "The Pennsylvania Evening Post"

1814 - The First Treaty of Paris was declared, which returned France to its 1792 borders.

1848 - W.G. Young patented the ice cream freezer.

1854 - The U.S. territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.

1868 - Memorial Day was observed widely for the first time in the U.S.

1879 - William Vanderbilt renamed New York City's Gilmore’s Garden to Madison Square Garden.

1883 - Twelve people were trampled to death in New York City in a stampede when a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge was in danger of collapsing occurred.

1889 - The brassiere was invented.

1896 - The first automobile accident occurred in New York City.

1903 - In Riverdale, NY, the first American motorcycle hill climb was held.

1911 - Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis Sweepstakes. The 500-mile auto race later became known as the Indianapolis 500. Harroun's average speed was 74.59 miles per hour.

1912 - The U.S. Marines were sent to Nicaragua to protect American interests.

1913 - The First Balkan War ended.

1921 - The U.S. Navy transferred the Teapot Dome oil reserves to the Department of the Interior.

1922 - The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC.

1933 - Sally Rand introduced her exotic and erotic fan dance to audiences at Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition.

1943 - American forces secured the Aleutian island of Attu from the Japanese during World War II.

1958 - Unidentified soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflicts were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

1967 - Daredevil Evel Knievel jumped 16 automobiles in a row in a motorcycle stunt at Ascot Speedway in Gardena, CA.

1967 - The state of Biafra seceded from Nigeria and Civil war erupted.

1971 - Mariner 9, the American deep space probe blasted off on a journey to Mars.

1981 - In Chittagong, Bangladesh, President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated.

1982 - Spain became the 16th NATO member. Spain was the first country to enter the Western alliance since West Germany in 1955.

1983 - Peru's President Fernando Belaunde Terry declared a state of emergency and suspended civil rights after bombings by leftist rebels.

1989 - The "Goddess of Democracy" statue (33 feet height) was erected in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.

1996 - Britain's Prince Andrew and the former Sarah Ferguson were granted an uncontested decree ending their 10-year marriage.

1997 - Jesse K. Timmendequas was convicted in Trenton, NJ, of raping and strangling a 7-year-old neighbor, Megan Kanka. The 1994 murder inspired "Megan's Law," requiring that communities be notified when sex offenders move in.

1998 - A powerful earthquake hit northern Afghanistan killing up to 5,000.

2003 - Peter Jennings was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.

[Raistlin]

1236 - Ferdinand III of Castile and Leon took Cordoba in Spain.

1652 - Massachusetts declared itself an independent commonwealth.

1767 - The British Parliament approved the Townshend Revenue Acts. The acts imposed import duties on glass, lead, paint, paper and tea shipped to America.

1776 - The Virginia constitution was adopted and Patrick Henry was made governor.

1804 - Privates John Collins and Hugh Hall of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were found guilty by a court-martial consisting of members of the Corps of Discovery for getting drunk on duty. Collins received 100 lashes on his back and Hall received 50.

1860 - The first iron-pile lighthouse was completed at Minot’s Ledge, MA.

1880 - France annexed Tahiti.

1888 - Professor Frederick Treves performed the first appendectomy in England.

1897 - The Chicago Cubs scored 36 runs in a game against Louisville, setting a record for runs scored by a team in a single game.

1901 - The first edition of "Editor & Publisher" was issued.

1903 - The British government officially protested Belgian atrocities in the Congo.

1905 - Russian troops intervened as riots erupted in ports all over the country. Many ships were looted.

1917 - The Ukraine proclaimed independence from Russia.

1925 - Marvin Pipkin filed for a patent for the frosted electric light bulb.

1926 - Fascists in Rome added an hour to the work day in an economic efficiency measure.

1932 - Siam’s army seized Bangkok and announced an end to the absolute monarchy.

1932 - "Vic and Sade" debuted on NBC radio.

1941 - Joe DiMaggio got a base hit in his 42nd consecutive game. He broke George Sisler's record from 1922.

1946 - British authorities arrested more than 2,700 Jews in Palestine in an attempt to end alleged terrorism.

1950 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman authorized a sea blockade of Korea.

1951 - The United States invited the Soviet Union to the Korean peace talks on a ship in Wonson Harbor.

1953 - The Federal Highway Act authorized the construction of 42,500 miles of freeway from coast to coast.

1954 - The Atomic Energy Commission voted against reinstating Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer's access to classified information.

1955 - The Soviet Union sent tanks to Poznan, Poland, to put down anti-Communist demonstrations.

1956 - Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were married. They were divorced on January 20, 1961.

1966 - The U.S. bombed fuel storage facilities near the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong.

1967 - Israel removed barricades, re-unifying Jerusalem.

1972 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty could constitute "cruel and unusual punishment." The ruling prompted states to revise their capital punishment laws.

1982 - Israel invaded Lebanon.

1987 - Vincent Van Gogh’s "Le Pont de Trinquetaille" was bought for $20.4 million at an auction in London, England.

1995 - The shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir docked, forming the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth.

1998 - With negotiations on a new labor agreement at a standstill, the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced that a lockout would be imposed at midnight.

2000 - In Santa Rosa, CA, the official groundbreaking ceremony took place for the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

[Raistlin]

1097 - The Crusaders defeated the Turks at Dorylaeum.

1841 - The Erie Railroad rolled out its first passenger train.

1859 - Charles Blondin became the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

1894 - Korea declared independence from China and asked for Japanese aid.

1908 - An explosion in Siberia, which knocked down trees in a 40-mile radius and struck people unconscious some 40 miles away. It was believed by some scientists to be caused by a falling fragment from a meteorite.

1912 - Belgian workers went on strike to demand universal suffrage.

1913 - Fighting broke out between Bulgaria and Greece and Spain. It was the beginning of the Second Balkan War.

1915 - During World War I, the Second Battle Artois ended when the French failed to take Vimy Ridge.

1922 - Irish rebels in London assassinate Sir Henry Wilson, the British deputy for Northern Ireland.

1930 - France pulled its troops out of Germany’s Rhineland.

1934 - Adolf Hitler purged the Nazi Party by destroying the SA and bringing to power the SS in the "Night of the Long Knives."

1935 - Fascists caused an uproar at the League of Nations when Haile Selassie of Ethiopia speaks.

1936 - Margaret Mitchell’s book, "Gone with the Wind," was published in New York City.

1950 - U.S. President Harry Truman ordered U.S. troops into Korea and authorizes the draft.

1951 - On orders from Washington, General Matthew Ridgeway broadcasts that the United Nations was willing to discuss an armistice with North Korea.

1952 - CBS-TV debuted "The Guiding Light."

1953 - The first Corvette rolled off the Chevrolet assembly line in Flint, MI. It sold for $3,250.

1955 - The U.S. began funding West Germany’s rearmament.

1957 - The American occupation headquarters in Japan was dissolved.

1958 - The U.S. Congress passed a law authorizing the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union.

1960 - The Katanga province seceded from Congo (upon Congo's independence from Belgium).

1962 - Los Angeles Dodger Sandy Koufax pitched his first no-hitter in a game with the New York Mets.

1964 - The last of U.N. troops left Congo after a four-year effort to bring stability to the country.

1970 - The Cincinnati Reds moved to their new home at Riverfront Stadium.

1971 - The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the New York Times to continue publishing the Pentagon Papers.

1971 - The Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 11 returned to Earth. The three cosmonauts were found dead inside.

1971 - The 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified when Ohio became the 38th state to approve it. The amendment lowered the minimum voting age to 18.

1974 - Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defected in Toronto, Canada.

1974 - The July 4th scene from the Steven Spielberg movie "Jaws" was filmed.

1977 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced his opposition to the B-1 bomber.

1984 - The longest professional football game took place in the United States Football League (USFL). The Los Angeles Express beat the Michigan Panthers 27-21 after 93 minutes and 33 seconds.

1985 - Yul Brynner left his role as the King of Siam after 4,600 performances in "The King and I."

1986 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states could outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults.

1994 - The U.S. Figure Skating Association stripped Tonya Harding of the 1994 national championship and banned her from the organization for life for an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan.

1998 - Officials confirmed that the remains of a Vietnam War serviceman buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were identified as those of Air Force pilot Michael J. Blassie.

2000 - U.S. President Clinton signed the E-Signature bill to give the same legal validity to an electronic signature as a signature in pen and ink.

[Raistlin]

0096 - Vespasian, a Roman Army leader, was hailed as a Roman Emperor by the Egyptian legions.

1543 - England and Scotland signed the peace of Greenwich.

1596 - An English fleet under the Earl of Essex, Lord Howard of Effingham and Francis Vere captured and sacked Cadiz, Spain.

1690 - The French defeated the forces of the Grand Alliance at Fleurus in the Netherlands.

1798 - Napoleon Bonaparte took Alexandria, Egypt.

1847 - The U.S. Post Office issued its first adhesive stamps.

1862 - The U.S. Congress established the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

1863 - During the U.S. Civil War, the first day's fighting at Gettysburg began.

1867 - Canada became an independent dominion.

1874 - The Philadelphia Zoological Society zoo opened as the first zoo in the United States.

1876 - Montenegro declared war on the Turks.

1893 - The first bicycle race track in America to be made out of wood was opened in San Francisco, CA.

1897 - Three years after the first issue of "Billboard Advertising" was published, the publication was renamed, "The Billboard".

1898 - During the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders" waged a victorious assault on San Juan Hill in Cuba.

1905 - The USDA Forest Service was created within the Department of Agriculture. The agency was given the mission to sustain healthy, diverse, and productive forests and grasslands for present and future generations.

1909 - Thomas Edison began commercially manufacturing his new "A" type alkaline storage batteries.

1916 - The massive Allied offensive known as the Battle of the Somme began in France. The battle was the first to use tanks.

1934 - The Federal Communications Commission replaced the Federal Radio Commission as the regulator of broadcasting in the United States.

1940 - In Washington, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was opened to traffic. The bridge collapsed during a wind storm on November 7, 1940.

1941 - Bulova Watch Company sponsored the first TV commercial in New York City, NY.

1942 - German troops captured Sevestpol, Crimea, in the Soviet Union.

1943 - The U.S. Government began automatically withholding federal income tax from paychecks.

1945 - New York established the New York State Commission Against Discrimination to prevent discrimination in employment because of race, creed or natural origin. It was the first such agency in the U.S.

1946 - U.S. President Harry Truman signed Public Law 476 that incorporated the Civil Air Patrol as a benevolent, nonprofit organization. The Civil Air Patrol was created on December 1, 1941.

1946 - The U.S. exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1948 - The price of a subway ride in New York City was increased from 5 cents to 10.

1950 - American ground troops arrived in South Korea to stem the tide of the advancing North Korean army.

1951 - Bob Feller set a major league baseball record as he pitched his third no-hitter for the Cleveland Indians.

1960 - Somalia gained its independence from Britain through the unification of Somaliland with Italian Somalia.

1961 - British troops landed in Kuwait to aid against Iraqi threats.

1961 - The first community air-raid shelter was built. The shelter in Boise, ID had a capacity of 1,000 people and family memberships sold for $100.

1963 - The U.S. postmaster introduced the five-digit ZIP (Zoning Improvement Plan) code.

1966 - The Medicare federal insurance program went into effect.

1968 - The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was signed by 60 countries. It limited the spreading of nuclear material for military purposes. On May 11, 1995, the treaty was extended indefinitely.

1969 - Britain's Prince Charles was invested as the Prince of Wales.

1974 - Isavel Peron became the president of Argentina upon the death of her husband, Juan.

1979 - Susan B. Anthony was commemorated on a U.S. coin, the Susan B. Anthony dollar.

1979 - Sony introduced the Walkman.

1980 - "O Canada" was proclaimed the national anthem of Canada.

1980 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed legislation that provided for 2 acres of land near the Lincoln Memorial for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1981 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that candidates for federal office had an "affirmative right" to go on national television.

1985 - Robin Yount (Milwaukee Brewers) got the 1,800th hit of his career.

1987 - John Kevin Hill, at age 11, became the youngest to fly across the U.S. when he landed at National Airport in Washington, DC.

1989 - The Montreal Protocol, an international treaty, went into effect. It limited the production of ozone-destroying chemicals.

1991 - Court TV began airing.

1991 - The Warsaw Pact dissolved.

1994 - Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization visited the Gaza Strip.

1997 - The sovereignty over Hong Kong was transferred from Great Britain to China. Britain had controlled Hong Kong as a colony for 156 years.

1999 - The U.S. Justice Department released new regulations that granted the attorney general sole power to appoint and oversee special counsels. The 1978 independent-counsel statute expired on June 30.

[Raistlin]

1298 - An army under Albert of Austria defeated and killed Adolf of Nassua near Worms, Germany.

1625 - The Spanish army took Breda, Spain, after nearly a year of siege.

1644 - Lord Cromwell crushed the Royalists at the Battle of Marston Moor near York, England.

1747 - Marshall Saxe led the French forces to victory over an Anglo-Dutch force under the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Lauffeld.

1776 - Richard Henry Lee’s resolution that the American colonies "are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States" was adopted by the Continental Congress.

1850 - Prussia agreed to pull out of Schlewig and Holstein, Germany.

1850 - B.J. Lane patented the gas mask.

1857 - New York City’s first elevated railroad officially opened for business.

1858 - Czar Alexander II freed the serfs working on imperial lands.

1881 - Charles J. Guiteau fatally wounded U.S. President James A. Garfield in Washington, DC.

1890 - The U.S. Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act.

1926 - The U.S. Congress established the Army Air Corps.

1937 - American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart disappeared in the Central Pacific during an attempt to fly around the world at the equator.

1939 - At Mount Rushmore, Theodore Roosevelt's face was dedicated.

1944 - American bombers, as part of Operation Gardening, dropped land mines, leaflets and bombs on German-occupied Budapest.

1947 - An object crashed near Roswell, NM. The U.S. Army Air Force insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts led to speculation that it might have been an alien spacecraft.

1964 - U.S. President Johnson signed the "Civil Rights Act of 1964" into law. The act made it illegal in the U.S. to discriminate against others because of their race.

1967 - The U.S. Marine Corps launched Operation Buffalo in response to the North Vietnamese Army's efforts to seize the Marine base at Con Thien.

1976 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.

1976 - North Vietnam and South Vietnam were reunited.

1979 - The U.S. Mint officially released the Susan B. Anthony coin in Rochester, NY.

1980 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter reinstated draft registration for males 18 years of age.

1981 - Soyuz T-6 returned to Earth.

1985 - General Motors announced that it was installing electronic road maps as an option in some of its higher-priced cars.

1995 - "Forbes" magazine reported that Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, was the worth $12.9 billion, making him the world's richest man. In 1999, he was worth about $77 billion.

1998 - Cable News Network (CNN) retracted a story that alleged that U.S. commandos had used nerve gas to kill American defectors during the Vietnam War.

2000 - In Mexico, Vicente Fox Quesada of the National Action Party (PAN) defeated Francisco Labastida Ochoa of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the presidential election. The PRI had controlled the presidency in Mexico since the party was founded in 1929.

[Raistlin]

1608 - The city of Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain.

1775 - U.S. Gen. George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, MA.

1790 - In Paris, the marquis of Condorcet proposed granting civil rights to women.

1844 - Ambassador Caleb Cushing successfully negotiated a commercial treaty with China that opened five Chinese ports to U.S. merchants and protected the rights of American citizens in China.

1863 - The U.S. Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, PA, ended after three days. It was a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated.

1871 - The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Company introduced the first narrow-gauge locomotive. It was called the "Montezuma."

1878 - John Wise flew the first dirigible in Lancaster, PA.

1880 - "Science" began publication. Thomas Edison had provided the principle funding.

1890 - IDaho became the 43rd state to join the United States of America.

1898 - During the Spanish American War, a fleet of Spanish ships in Cuba's Santiago Harbor attempted to run a blockade of U.S. naval forces. Nearly all of the Spanish ships were destroyed in the battle that followed.

1903 - The first cable across the Pacific Ocean was spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila.

1912 - Rube Marquand of the New York Giants set a baseball pitching record when earned his 19th consecutive win.

1922 - "Fruit Garden and Home" magazine was introduced. It was later renamed "Better Homes and Gardens."

1924 - Clarence Birdseye founded the General Seafood Corp.

1930 - The U.S. Congress created the U.S. Veterans Administration.

1934 - U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) made its first payment to Lydia Losiger.

1937 - Del Mar race track opened in Del Mar, CA.

1939 - Chic Young’s comic strip character, "Blondie" was first heard on CBS radio.

1940 - Bud Abbott and Lou Costello debuted on NBC radio.

1944 - The U.S. First Army opened a general offensive to break out of the hedgerow area of Normandy, France.

1944 - During World War II, Soviet forces recaptured Minsk.

1945 - U.S. troops landed at Balikpapan and take Sepinggan airfield on Borneo in the Pacific.

1945 - The first civilian passenger car built since February 1942 was driven off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company plant in Detroit, MI. Production had been diverted due to World War II.

1950 - U.S. carrier-based planes attacked airfields in the Pyongyang-Chinnampo area of North Korea in the first air-strike of the Korean War.

1954 - Food rationing ended in Great Britain almost nine years after the end of World War II.

1962 - Jackie Robinson became the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

1974 - The Threshold Test Ban Treaty was signed, prohibiting underground nuclear weapons tests with yields greater than 150 kilotons.

1981 - The Associated Press ran its first story about two rare illnesses afflicting homosexual men. One of the diseases was later named AIDS.

1986 - U.S. President Reagan presided over a ceremony in New York Harbor that saw the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty.

1986 - Mikhail Baryshnikov became a U.S. citizen at Ellis Island, New York Harbor.

1991 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush formally inaugurated the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

[Raistlin]

1776 - The amended Declaration of Independence, prepared by Thomas Jefferson, was approved and signed by John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress in America.

1802 - The U.S. Military Academy officially opened at West Point, NY.

1803 - The Louisiana Purchase was announced in newspapers. The property was purchased, by the U.S. from France, was for $15 million (or 3 cents an acre). The "Corps of Discovery," led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, began the exploration of the territory on May 14, 1804.

1817 - Construction began on the Erie Canal, to connect Lake Erie and the Hudson River.

1845 - American writer Henry David Thoreau began his two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond, near Concord, MA.

1848 - In Washington, DC, the cornerstone for the Washington Monument was laid.

1855 - The first edition of "Leaves of Grass," by Walt Whitman, was published in Brooklyn, NY.

1863 - The Confederate town of Vicksburg, MS, surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant.

1881 - Tuskegee Institute opened in Alabama.

1884 - Bullfighting was introduced in the U.S. in Dodge City, KS.

1886 - The first rodeo in America was held at Prescott, AZ.

1892 - The first double-decked street car service was inaugurated in San Diego, CA.

1894 - After seizing power, Judge Stanford B. Dole declared Hawaii a republic.

1901 - William H. Taft became the American governor of the Philippines.

1910 - Race riots broke out all over the United States after African-American jack Johnson knocked out Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match.

1934 - Boxer Joe Louis won his first professional fight.

1934 - At Mount Rushmore, George Washington's face was dedicated.

1939 - Lou Gehrig retired from major league baseball.

1946 - The Philippines achieved full independence for the first time in over four hundred years.

1955 - The first king cobra snakes born in captivity in the U.S. hatched at the Bronx Zoo in New York City.

1957 - The U.S. Postal Service issued the 4¢ Flag stamp.

1959 - The 49-star U.S. flag was debuted.

1960 - The 50-star U.S. flag made its debut in Philadelphia, PA.

1966 - U.S. President Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act, which went into effect the following year.

1976 - The U.S. celebrated its Bicentennial.

1982 - The Soviets performed a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhl Semipalitinsk.

1987 - Klaus Barbie, the former Gestapo chief known as the "Butcher of Lyon," was convicted by a French court of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison.

1997 - The Mars Pathfinder, an unmanned spacecraft, landed on Mars. A rover named Sojourner was deployed to gather data about the surface of the planet.

1997 - Ferry service between Manhattan and Staten Island was made free of charge. Previously, the charge had ranged from 5 cents to 50 cents.

2004 - In New York, the cornerstone of the Freedom Tower was laid on the former World Trade Center site.

2005 - NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft took pictures as a space probe smashed into the Tempel 1 comet. The mission was aimed at learning more about comets that formed from the leftover buidling blocks of the solar system. The Deep Impact mission launched on January 12, 2005.

2009 - North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast that defied U.N. resolutions.

2009 - The Statue of Liberty's crown reopened to visitors. It had been closed to the public since 2001.

[Raistlin]

1806 - A Spanish army repelled the British during their attempt to retake Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1811 - Venezuela became the first South American country to declare independence from Spain.

1814 - U.S. troops under Jacob Brown defeated a superior British force at Chippewa, Canada.

1830 - France occupied the North African city of Algiers.

1832 - The German government began curtailing freedom of the press after German Democrats advocate a revolt against Austrian rule.

1839 - British naval forces bombarded Dingai on Zhoushan Island in China and then occupied it.

1863 - U.S. Federal troops occupied Vicksburg, MS, and distributed supplies to the citizens.

1865 - William Booth founded the Salvation Army in London.

1892 - Andrew Beard was issued a patent for the rotary engine.

1916 - Adelina and August Van Buren started on the first successful transcontinental motorcycle tour to be attempted by two women. They started in New York City and arrived in San Diego, CA, on September 12, 1916.

1935 - "Hawaii Call" was broadcast for the first time.

1935 - U.S. President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. The act authorized labor to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining.

1940 - During World War II, Britain and the Vichy government in France broke diplomatic relations.

1941 - German troops reached the Dnieper River in the Soviet Union.

1943 - The battle of Kursk began as German tanks attack the Soviet salient. It was the largest tank battle in history.

1946 - The bikini bathing suit, created by Louis Reard, made its debut during a fashion show at the Molitor Pool in Paris. Micheline Bernardini wore the two-piece outfit.

1947 - Larry Doby signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first black player in the American League.

1948 - Britain's National Health Service Act went into effect, providing government-financed medical and dental care.

1950 - U.S. forces engaged the North Koreans for the first time at Osan, South Korea.

1951 - Dr. William Shockley announced that he had invented the junction transistor.

1962 - Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.

1975 - Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win a Wimbledon singles title when he defeated Jimmy Connors.

1984 - The U.S. Supreme Court weakened the 70-year-old "exclusionary rule," deciding that evidence seized with defective court warrants could be used against defendants in criminal trials.

1989 - Former U.S. National Security Council aide Oliver North received a $150,000 fine and a suspended prison term for his part in the Iran-Contra affair. The convictions were later overturned.

1991 - Regulators shut down the Pakistani-managed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in eight countries. The charge was fraud, drug money laundering and illegal infiltration into the U.S. banking system.

1995 - The U.S. Justice Department decided not to take antitrust action against Ticketmaster.

1998 - Japan joined U.S. and Russia in space exploration with the launching of the Planet-B probe to Mars.

2000 - Jordanian security agents shot and killed a Syrian hijacker after he threw a grenade that exploded and wounded 15 passengers aboard a Royal Jordanian airliner.

2000 - 10 Bengal tigers, including 7 rare white tigers, died at the Nandankanan Zoo in India. The tigers died of trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness).

2000 - Euan Blair, the oldest son of British prime minister Tony Blair, was arrested after police found him drunk and lying on the ground in London's Leicester Square.

[Raistlin]

1483 - King Richard III of England was crowned.

1699 - Captain William Kidd, the pirate, was captured in Boston, MA, and deported back to England.

1777 - British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga during the American Revolution.

1854 - In Jackson, MI, the Republican Party held its first convention.

1858 - Lyman Blake patented the shoe manufacturing machine.

1885 - Louis Pasteur successfully tested his anti-rabies vaccine. The child used in the test later became the director of the Pasteur Institute.

1905 - Fingerprints were exchanged for the first time between officials in Europe and the U.S. The person in question was John Walker.

1917 - During World War I, Arab forces led by T.E. Lawrence captured the port of Aqaba from the Turks.

1919 - A British dirigible landed in New York at Roosevelt Field. It completed the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship.

1923 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established.

1928 - "The Lights of New York" was previewed in New York's Strand Theatre. It was the first all-talking movie.

1932 - The postage rate for first class mail in the U.S. went from 2-cents to 3-cents.

1933 - The first All-Star baseball game was held in Chicago. The American League beat the National League 4-2.

1942 - Diarist Anne Frank and her family took refuge from the Nazis in Amsterdam.

1945 - U.S. President Truman signed an order creating the Medal of Freedom.

1945 - Nicaragua became the first nation to formally accept the United Nations Charter.

1947 - "Candid Microphone" began airing on ABC radio.

1948 - Frieda Hennok became the first woman to serve as the commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.

1957 - Althea Gibson won the Wimbledon women’s singles tennis title. She was the first black athlete to win the event.

1966 - Malawi became a republic within the Commonwealth with Dr. Hastings Banda as its first president.

1967 - The Biafran War erupted. The war lasted two-and-a-half years. About 600,000 people died.

1981 - Former President of Argentina Isabel Peron was freed after five years of house arrest by a federal court.

1981 - The Dupont Company announced an agreement to purchase Conoco, Inc. (Continental Oil Co.) for $7 billion. At the time it was the largest merger in corporate history.

1983 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that retirement plans could not pay women smaller monthly payments solely because of their gender.

1983 - Fred Lynn (California Angels) hit the first grand slam in an All-Star game. The American League defeated the National League 13-3.

1985 - Martina Navratilova won her 4th consecutive Wimbledon singles title.

1985 - The submarine Nautilus arrived in Groton, Connecticut. The vessel had been towed from Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

1988 - Several popular beaches were closed in New York City due to medical waste and other debris began washing up on the seashores.

1989 - The U.S. Army destroyed its last Pershing 1-A missiles at an ammunition plant in Karnack, TX. The dismantling was under the terms of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

1996 - Steffi Graf won her seventh Wimbledon title.

1997 - The Mars Pathfinder released Sojourner, a robot rover on the surface of Mars. The spacecraft landed on the red planet on July 4th.

1997 - In Cambodia, Second Prime Minister Hun Sen ousted First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh and claimed to have the capital under his control.

1998 - Protestants rioted in many parts of Northern Ireland after British authorities blocked an Orange Order march in Portadown.

2000 - A jury awarded former NHL player Tony Twist $24 million for the unauthorized use of his name in the comic book Spawn and the HBO cartoon series. Co-defendant HBO settled with Twist out of court for an undisclosed amount.

[Raistlin]

1754 - Kings College opened in New York City. It was renamed Columbia College 30 years later.

1846 - U.S. annexation of California was proclaimed at Monterey after the surrender of a Mexican garrison.

1862 - The first railroad post office was tested on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad in Missouri.

1885 - G. Moore Peters patented the cartridge-loading machine.

1898 - The United States annexed Hawaii.

1917 - Aleksandr Kerensky formed a provisional government in Russia.

1920 - A device known as the radio compass was used for the first time on a U.S. Navy airplane near Norfolk, VA.

1930 - Construction began on Boulder Dam, later Hoover Dam, on the Colorado River.

1937 - Japanese forces invaded China.

1946 - Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini was canonized as the first American saint.

1949 - "Dragnet" was first heard on NBC radio.

1950 - The U.N. Security Council authorized military aid for South Korea.

1969 - Canada's House of Commons gave final approval to a measure that made the French language equal to English throughout the national government.

1981 - U.S. President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1983 - Eleven-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, left for a visit to the Soviet Union at the personal invitation of Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov.

1987 - Public testimony at the Iran-Contra hearing began.

1998 - A jury in Santa Monica, CA, convicted Mikail Markhasev of murdering Ennis Cosby, Bill Cosby's only son, during a roadside robbery.

1999 - In Sierra Leone, President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and rebel leader Foday Sankoh signed a pact to end the nation's civil war.

2000 - Cisco Systems Inc. announced that it would buy Netiverse Inc. for $210 million in stock. It was the 13th time Cisco had purchased a company in 2000.

2000 - Amazon.com announced that they had sold almost 400,000 copies of "Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire," making it the biggest selling book in e-tailing history.

2003 - In Liberia, a team of U.S. military experts arrived at the U.S. embassy compound to assess whether to deploy troops as part of a peacekeeping force in the country.

2011 - The world's first artificial organ transplant was achieved. It was an artificial windpipe coated with stem cells.

[Raistlin]

1099 - Christian soldiers on the First Crusade march around Jerusalem.

1608 - The first French settlement at Quebec was established by Samuel de Champlain.

1663 - King Charles II of England granted a charter to Rhode Island.

1693 - Uniforms for police in New York City were authorized.

1709 - Peter the Great defeated Charles XII at Poltava, in the Ukraine, The Swedish empire was effectively ended.

1755 - Britain broke off diplomatic relations with France as their disputes in the New World intensified.

1776 - Col. John Nixon gave the first public reading of the U.S. Declaration of Independence to a crowd at Independence Square in Philadelphia.

1794 - French troops captured Brussels, Belgium.

1795 - Kent County Free School changed its name to Washington College. It was the first college to be named after U.S. President George Washington. The school was established by an act of the Maryland Assembly in 1723.

1815 - Louis XVIII returned to Paris after the defeat of Napoleon.

1865 - C.E. Barnes patented the machine gun.

1879 - The first ship to use electric lights departed from San Francisco, CA.

1881 - Edward Berner, druggist in Two Rivers, WI, poured chocolate syrup on ice cream in a dish. To this time chocolate syrup had only been used for making ice-cream sodas.

1889 - The Wall Street Journal was first published.

1889 - John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain, in the last championship bare-knuckle fight. The fight lasted 75 rounds.

1907 - Florenz Ziegfeld staged his first "Follies" on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City.

1919 - U.S. President Wilson returned from the Versailles Peace Conference in France.

1947 - Demolition work began in New York City for the new permanent headquarters of the United Nations.

1950 - General Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief of United Nations forces in Korea.

1953 - Notre Dame announced that the next five years of its football games would be shown in theatres over closed circuit TV.

1960 - The Soviet Union charged Gary Powers with espionage. He was shot down in a U-2 spy plane.

1963 - All Cuban-owned assets in the United States were frozen.

1969 - The U.S. Patent Office issued a patent for the game "Twister."

1970 - The San Francisco Giant’s Jim Ray Hart became the first National League player in 59 seasons to collect six runs batted (RBI) during a single inning.

1981 - The Solar Challenger became the frist solar-powered airplane to cross the English Channel.

1986 - Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated as president of Austria despite controversy over his alleged ties to Nazi war crimes.

1997 - The Mayo Clinic and the U.S. government warned that the diet-drug combination known as "fen-phen" could cause serious heart and lung damage.

1997 - NATO invited Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to join the alliance in 1999.

2000 - J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was released in the U.S. It was the fourth Harry Potter book.

2010 - The Solar Impulse completed the first 24-hour flight by a solar powered plane.

[Raistlin]

0118 - Hadrian, Rome's new emperor, made his entry into the city.

0455 - Avitus, the Roman military commander in Gaul, became Emperor of the West.

1540 - England's King Henry VIII had his 6-month-old marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, annulled.

1609 - In a letter to the crown, the emperor Rudolf II granted Bohemia freedom of worship.

1755 - General Edward Braddock was killed when French and Indian troops ambushed his force of British regulars and colonial militia.

1776 - The American Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Gen. George Washington's troops in New York.

1789 - In Versailles, the French National Assembly declared itself the Constituent Assembly and began to prepare a French constitution.

1790 - The Swedish navy captured one third of the Russian fleet at the naval battle of Svensksund in the Baltic Sea.

1792 - S.L. Mitchell of Columbia College in New York City became the first Professor of Agriculture.

1808 - The leather-splitting machine was patented by Samuel Parker.

1816 - Argentina declared independence from Spain.

1847 - A 10-hour work day was established for workers in the state of New Hampshire.

1868 - The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

1872 - The doughnut cutter was patented by John F. Blondel.

1877 - Alexander Graham Bell, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Thomas Sanders and Thomas Watson formed the Bell Telephone Company.

1878 - The corncob pipe was patented by Henry Tibbe.

1900 - The Commonwealth of Australia was established by an act of the British Parliament, uniting the separate colonies under a federal government.

1922 - Johnny Weissmuller became the first person to swim the 100 meters freestyle in less than a minute.

1935 - Norman Bright ran the two mile event in the record time of 9 minutes, 13.2 seconds at a meet in New York City.

1943 - American and British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily.

1947 - The engagement of Britain's Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten was announced.

1951 - U.S. President Truman asked Congress to formally end the state of war between the United States and Germany.

1953 - New York Airways began the first commuter passenger service by helicopter.

1968 - The first All-Star baseball game to be played indoors took place at the Astrodome in Houston, TX.

1971 - The United States turned over complete responsibility of the Demilitarized Zone to South Vietnamese units.

1985 - Herschel Walker of the New Jersey Generals was named the Most Valuable Player in the United States Football League (USFL).

1985 - Joe Namath signed a five-year pact with ABC-TV to provide commentary for "Monday Night Football".

1997 - Mike Tyson was banned from the boxing ring and fined $3 million for biting the ear of opponent Evander Holyfield.

2005 - Danny Way, a daredevil skateboarder, rolled down a large ramp and jumped across the Great Wall of China. He was the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid.

[Raistlin]

1609 - The Catholic states in Germany set up a league under the leadership of Maximillian of Bavaria.

1679 - The British crown claimed New Hampshire as a royal colony.

1776 - The statue of King George III was pulled down in New York City.

1778 - In support of the American Revolution, Louis XVI declared war on England.

1821 - U.S. troops took possession of Florida. The territory was sold by Spain.

1832 - U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoed legislation to re-charter the Second Bank of the United States.

1866 - Edison P. Clark patented his indelible pencil.

1890 - Wyoming became the 44th state to join the United States.
Today in Wyoming History

1900 - ‘His Master’s Voice’, was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The logo of the Victor Recording Company, and later, RCA Victor, shows the dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone machine.

1910 - W.R. Brookins became the first to fly an airplane at an altitude of one mile.

1913 - The highest temperature ever recorded in the U.S. was 134 degrees in Death Valley, CA.

1919 - The Treaty of Versailles was hand delivered to the U.S. Senate by President Wilson.

1925 - The official news agency of the Soviet Union, TASS, was established.

1928 - George Eastman first demonstrated color motion pictures.

1929 - The U.S. government began issuing paper money in the small size.

1938 - Howard Hughes completed a 91 hour flight around the world.

1940 - The 114-day Battle of Britain began during World War II.

1949 - The first practical rectangular television was presented. The picture tube measured 12 by 16 and sold for $12.

1951 - Armistice talks aimed at ending the Korean conflict began at Kaesong.

1951 - Sugar Ray Robinson was defeated for only the second time in 133 fights as Randy Turpin took the middleweight crown.

1953 - American forces withdraw from Pork Chop Hill in Korea after heavy fighting.

1962 - The Telstar Communications satellite was launched. The satellite relayed TV and telephone signals between Europe and the U.S.

1962 - Fred Baldasare swam the English Channel underwater. It was a 42 miles and took 18 hours.

1969 - The National League was divided up into two baseball divisions.

1973 - Britain granted the Bahamas their independence after three centuries of British colonial rule.

1984 - Dwight ‘Doc’ Gooden, of the New York Mets, became the youngest player to appear in an All-Star Game as a pitcher. He was 19 years, 7 months, and 24 days old.

1985 - Coca-Cola resumed selling the old formula of Coke, it was renamed "Coca-Cola Classic." It was also announced that they would continue to sell "New" Coke.

1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev won re-election as the leader of the Soviet Communist Party.

1991 - Boris Yeltsin took the oath of office as the first elected president of the Russian republic.

1991 - U.S. President Bush lifted economic sanctions against South Africa, citing its "profound transformation" toward racial equality.

1993 - Kenyan runner Yobes Ondieki became the first man to run 10,000 meters in less than 27 minutes.

1997 - Scientists in London said DNA from a Neanderthal skeleton supported a theory that all humanity descended from an "African Eve" 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

1998 - The World Bank approved a $700 million loan to Thailand.

1998 - The U.S. military delivered the remains of Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Blassie to his family in St. Louis. He had been placed in Arlington Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknown in 1984. His identity had been confirmed with DNA tests.

1999 - The heads of six African nations that had troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a cease-fire agreement that would end the civil war in that nation.

2002 - Peter Paul Rubens' painting "The Massacre of the Innocents" sold for $76.2 million at Sotheby's.

[Raistlin]

1346 - Charles IV of Luxembourg was elected Holy Roman Emperor in Germany.

1533 - Henry VIII, who divorced his wife and became head of the church of England, was excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Clement VII.

1708 - The French were defeated at Oudenarde, Malplaquet, in the Netherlands by the Duke of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy.

1742 - A papal decree was issued condemning the disciplining actions of the Jesuits in China.

1786 - Morocco agreed to stop attacking American ships in the Mediterranean for a payment of $10,000.

1798 - The U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by "An Act for Establishing a Marine Corps" passed by the U.S. Congress. The act also created the U.S. Marine Band. The Marines were first commissioned by the Continental Congress on November 10, 1775.

1804 - The United States' first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was killed by Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel.

1864 - In the U.S., Confederate forces led by Gen. Jubal Early began an invasion of Washington, DC. They turned back the next day.

1914 - Babe Ruth debuted in the major leagues with the Boston Red Sox.

1918 - Enrico Caruso recorded "Over There" written by George M. Cohan.

1934 - The first appointments to the newly created Federal Communications Commission were made.

1934 - U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first American chief executive to travel through the Panama Canal while in office.

1955 - The U.S. Air Force Academy was dedicated in Colorado Springs, CO, at Lowry Air Base.

1960 - In Honolulu, HI, the first tournament held outside the Continental U.S., sanctioned by the U.S. Golf Association, began.

1962 - The first transatlantic TV transmission was sent through the Telstar I satellite.

1972 - U.S. forces broke the 95-day siege at An Loc in Vietnam.

1977 - The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a White House ceremony.

1979 - The abandoned U.S. space station Skylab returned to Earth. It burned up in the atmosphere and showered debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.

1985 - Dr. H. Harlan Stone announced that he had used zippers for stitches on 28 patients. The zippers were used when he thought he may have to re-operate.

1985 - Nolan Ryan (Houston Astros) became the first major league pitcher to earn 4,000 strikeouts in a career. (Texas)

1987 - Bo Jackson signed a contract to play football for the L.A. Raiders for 5 years. He was also continued to play baseball for the Kansas City Royals. (California)

1995 - Full diplomatic relations were established between the United States and Vietnam.

1998 - U.S. Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie, a casualty of the Vietnam War, was laid to rest near his Missouri home. He had been positively identified from his remains that had been enshrined in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, VA.

1999 - A U.S. Air Force jet flew over the Antarctic and dropped off emergency medical supplies for Dr. Jerri Nelson after she had discovered a lump in her breast. Nelso was at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Center.

2000 - The video "Jaws," the Anniversary Collector's Edition, was released.

2000 - Liam Neeson broke his pelvis after hitting a deer with his Harley Davidson motorcycle.