1782 The British sign a preliminary agreement in Paris, recognizing American independence.
1838 Mexico declares war on France.
1861 The British Parliament sends to Queen Victoria an ultimatum for the United States, demanding the release of two Confederate diplomats who were seized on the British ship Trent.
1864 The Union wins the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee.
1900 The French government denounces British actions in South Africa, declaring sympathy for the Boers.
1900 Oscar Wilde dies in a Paris hotel room after saying of the room's wallpaper: "One of us had to go."
1906 President Theodore Roosevelt publicly denounces segregation of Japanese schoolchildren in San Francisco.
1919 Women cast votes for the first time in French legislative elections.
1935 Non-belief in Nazism is proclaimed grounds for divorce in Germany.
1945 Russian forces take Danzig in Poland and invade Austria.
1948 The Soviet Union complete the division of Berlin, installing the government in the Soviet sector.
1950 President Truman declares that the United States will use the A-bomb to get peace in Korea.
1956 The United States offers emergency oil to Europe to counter the Arab ban.
1961 The Soviet Union vetoes a UN seat for Kuwait, pleasing Iraq.
1974 India and Pakistan decide to end a 10-year trade ban.
1974 Pioneer II sends photos back to NASA as it nears Jupiter.
1979 Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope in 1,000 years to attend an Orthodox mass.
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of France in Notre Dame Cathedral.
1805 Napoleon Bonaparte celebrates the first anniversary of his coronation with a victory at Austerlitz over a Russian and Austrian army.
1823 President James Monroe proclaims the principles known as the Monroe Doctrine, "that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers."
1863 General Braxton Bragg turns over command of the Army of Tennessee to General William Hardee at Dalton, Ga.
1864 Major General Grenville M. Dodge is named to replace General William Rosecrans as Commander of the Department of Missouri.
1867 People wait in mile-long lines to hear Charles Dickens give his first reading in New York City.
1907 Spain and France agree to enforce Moroccan measures adopted in 1906.
1909 J.P. Morgan acquires majority holdings in Equitable Life Co. This is the largest concentration of bank power to date.
1914 Austrian troops occupy Belgrade, Serbia.
1918 Armenia proclaims independence from Turkey.
1921 The first successful helium dirigible, C-7, makes a test flight in Portsmouth, Va.
1927 The new Ford Model A is introduced to the American public.
1932 Bolivia accepts Paraguay's terms for a truce in the Chaco War.
1942 The Allies repel a strong Axis attack in Tunisia, North Africa.
1944 General George S. Patton's troops enter the Saar Valley and break through the Siegfried line.
1946 The United States and Great Britain merge their German occupation zones.
1964 Brazil sends Juan Peron back to Spain, foiling his efforts to return to his native land.
1970 The U.S. Senate votes to give 48,000 acres of New Mexico back to the Taos Indians.
1982 Dentist Barney Clark receives the first permanent artificial heart, developed by Dr. Robert K. Jarvik.
1468 Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano succeed their father, Piero de Medici, as rulers of Florence, Italy.
1762 France cedes to Spain all lands west of the Mississippi--the territory known as Upper Louisiana.
1818 Illinois admitted into the Union as the 21st state.
1800 The French defeat an Austrian army at the Battle of Hohenlinden, near Munich.
1847 Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delaney establish the North Star, and anti-slavery paper.
1862 Confederate raiders attack a Federal forage train on the Hardin Pike near Nashville, Tenn.
1863 Confederate General James Longstreet moves his army east and north toward Greeneville. This withdrawal marks the end of the Fall Campaign in Tennessee.
1864 Major General William Tecumseh Sherman meets with slight resistance from Confederate troops at Thomas Station on his march to the sea.
1906 The U.S. Supreme Court orders Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leaders extradited to Idaho for trial in the Steunenberg murder case.
1915 The United States expels German attaches on spy charges.
1916 French commander Joseph Joffre is dismissed after his failure at the Somme. General Robert Nivelle is the new French commander in chief.
1918 The Allied Conference ends in London where they decide that Germany must pay for the war.
1925 The League of Nations orders Greece to pay an indemnity for the October invasion of Bulgaria.
1926 British reports claim that German soldiers are being trained in the Soviet Union.
1950 The Chinese close in on Pyongyang, Korea, and UN forces withdraw southward.
1965 The National Council of Churches asks the United States to halt the massive bombings in North Vietnam.
1977 The State Department proposes the admission of 10,000 more Vietnamese refugees to the United States.
1979 Eleven are dead and eight injured in a mad rush to see a rock band (The Who) at a concert in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1984 Toxic gas leaks from a Union Carbide plant and results in the deaths of thousands in Bhopal, India.
1989 Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announce the official end to the Cold War at a meeting in Malta.
771 With the death of his brother Carloman, Charlemagne becomes sole ruler of the Frankish Empire.
1861 The U.S. Senate, voting 36 to 0, expels Senator John C. Brekinridge of Kentucky because of his joining the Confederate Army.
1861 Queen Victoria of Britain forbids the export of gunpowder, firearms and all materials for their production.
1862 Winchester, Va., falls into Union hands, resulting in the capture of 145 Southern soldiers.
1863 Seven solid days of bombardment ends at Charleston, S.C. The Union fires some 1,307 rounds.
1872 The U.S. brigantine Marie Celeste is found adrift and deserted with its cargo intact, in the Atlantic Ocean between the Azores and Portugal.
1900 The French National Assembly, successor to the States-General, rejects Nationalist General Mercier's proposal to plan an invasion of England.
1914 The first Seaplane Unit formed by the German Navy officially comes into existence and begins operations from Zeebrugge, Belgium.
1918 France cancels trade treaties in order to compete in the postwar economic battles.
1941 Operation Taifun (Typhoon), which was launched by the German armies on October 2, 1941, as a prelude to taking Moscow, is halted because of freezing temperatures and lack of serviceable aircraft.
1942 U.S. planes make the first raids on Naples, Italy.
1947 Tennessee William's play A Streetcar Named Desire premieres on Broadway starring Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy.
1950 The University of Tennessee defies court rulings by rejecting five Negro applicants.
1952 The Grumman XS2F-1 makes its first flight.
1959 Peking pardons Pu Yi, ex-emperor of China and of the Japanese puppet-state of Manchukuo.
1981 President Ronald Reagan broadens the power of the CIA by allowing spying in the United States.
1985 Robert McFarland resigns as National Security Advisor. Admiral John Poindexter is named to succeed.
1991 The last American hostages held in Lebanon are released.
1492 Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Santo Domingo in search of gold.
1776 Phi Beta Kappa, the first scholastic fraternity, is founded at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
1812 The majority of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armeé staggers into Vilna, Lithuania, ending the failed Russian campaign.
1861 Union General George G. Meade leads a foraging expedition to Gunnell's farm near Dranesville, Virginia.
1862 President Abraham Lincoln orders the hanging of 39 of the 303 convicted Indians who participated in the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota.
They are to be hanged on December 26.
1863 The monitor Weehawken sinks in Charleston Harbor.
1876 Jack McCall is convicted for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok and sentenced to hang.
1877 Thomas A. Edison makes the first sound recording when he recites "Mary had a Little Lamb" into his phonograph machine.
1906 Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge flies a powered, man-carrying kite that carries him 168 feet in the air for seven minutes at Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
1917 The Bolsheviks imprison Czar Nicholas II and his family in Tobolsk.
1921 Ireland's 26 southern counties become independent from Britain forming the Irish Free State.
1922 Benito Mussolini threatens Italian newspapers with censorship if they keep reporting "false" information.
1934 American Ambassador Davis says Japan is a grave security threat in the Pacific.
1938 France and Germany sign a treaty of friendship.
1939 Britain agrees to send arms to Finland, which is fighting off a Soviet invasion.
1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues a personal appeal to Emperor Hirohito to use his influence to avoid war.
1945 The United States extends a $3 billion loan to Great Britain to help compensate for the termination of the Lend-Lease agreement.
1947 Florida's Everglades National Park is established.
1948 The "Pumpkin Spy Papers" are found on the Maryland farm of Whittaker Chambers. They become evidence that State Department employee Alger Hiss is spying for the Soviet Union.
1976 Democrat Tip O'Neill is elected speaker of the House of Representatives. He will serve the longest consecutive term as speaker.
43 BC Cicero, considered one of the greatest sons of Rome, is assassinated on the orders of Marcus Antonius.
983 Otto III takes the throne after his father's death in Italy. A power struggle between magnates ensues.
1787 Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States.
1808 James Madison is elected president in succession of Thomas Jefferson.
1861 USS Santiago de Cuba, under Commander Daniel B. Ridgely, halts the British schooner Eugenia Smith and captures J.W. Zacharie, a New Orleans merchant and Confederate purchasing agent.
1862 Confederate forces surprise an equal number of Union troops at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
1863 Outlaw George Ives, an alleged member of an outlaw gang known as the "Innocents," robs and then kills Nick Thiebalt in the Ruby Valley of what would become Montana.
1917 The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary with only one dissenting vote in Congress.
1918 Spartacists call for a German revolution.
1931 A report indicates that Nazis would ensure "Nordic dominance" by sterilizing certain races.
1941 Japanese planes raid Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack.
1942 The U.S. Navy launches USS New Jersey, the largest battleship ever built.
1946 The president of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, orders all striking miners back to work.
1949 The A.F.L. and the C.I.O. organize a non-Communist international trade union.
1970 Poland and West Germany sign a pact renouncing the use of force to settle disputes, recognizing the Oder-Neisse River as Poland's western frontier, and acknowledging the transfer to Poland of 40,000 square miles of former German territory.
1972 The crew of Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon, lifts off at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1981 The Reagan Administration predicts a record deficit in 1982 of $109 billion.
1988 An earthquake in Armenia kills an estimated 100,000 people.
1861 Kentucky is admitted to the Confederate States of America.
1862 The U.S. House of Representatives passes a bill creating the state of West Virginia.
1869 Governor John Campbell signs the bill that grants women in Wyoming Territory the right to vote as well as hold public office.
1898 The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Paris, ceding Spanish possessions, including the Philippines, to the United States.
1917 The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the International Red Cross.
1918 U.S. troops are called to guard Berlin as a coup is feared.
1919 Captain Ross Smith becomes the first person to fly 11,500 miles from England to Australia.
1936 Edward VIII abdicates to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, an American-born divorcee.
1941 Japanese troops invade the Philippine island of Luzon.
1941 The siege of Tobruk in North Africa is raised.
1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill that postpones a draft of pre-Pearl Harbor fathers.
1943 Allied forces bomb Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.
1949 150,000 French troops mass at the border in Vietnam to prevent a Chinese invasion.
1950 Dr. Ralph J. Bunche becomes the first African-American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1977 On UN Human Rights Day, the Soviet Union places 20 prominent dissidents under house arrest, cutting off telephones and threatening to break up a planned silent demonstration in Moscow's Pushkin Square.
Soviet newspapers decry human rights violations elsewhere in the world.
1688 James II abdicates the throne because of William of Orange landing in England.
1816 Indiana is admitted to the Union as the 19th state.
1861 A raging fire sweeps the business district of Charleston, South Carolina, adding to an already depressed economic state. A walking tour of Charleston.
1862 Union General Ambrose Burnside occupies Fredericksburg and prepares to attack the Confederates under Robert E. Lee.
1863 Union gunboats Restless, Bloomer and Caroline enter St. Andrew's Bay, Fla., and begin bombardment of both Confederate quarters and saltworks.
1882 A production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe at Boston's Bijou Theatre becomes the first performance in a theatre lit by incandescent electric lights.
1927 Nearly 400 world leaders sign a letter to President Calvin Coolidge asking the United States to join the World Court.
1930 As the economic crisis grows, the Bank of the United States closes its doors.
1933 Reports say Paraguay has captured 11,000 Bolivians in the war over Chaco.
1936 Britain's King Edward VIII abdicates the throne to marry American Wallis Warfield Simpson.
1941 The United States declares war on Italy and Germany.
1943 U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull demands that Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria withdraw from the war.
1945 A Boeing B-29 Superfortress shatters all records by crossing the United States in five hours and 27 minutes.
1951 Joe DiMaggio announces his retirement from baseball.
1955 Israel raids Syrian positions on the Sea of Galilee.
1964 Frank Sinatra, Jr., is returned home to his parents after being kidnapped for the ransom amount of $240,000.
1967 The Concorde, a joint British-French venture and the world's first supersonic airliner, is unveiled in Toulouse, France.
1972 Challenger, the lunar lander for Apollo 17, touches down on the moon's surface, the last time that men visit the moon.
1978 Massive demonstrations take place in Tehran against the shah.
1753 George Washington, the adjutant of Virginia, delivers an ultimatum to the French forces at Fort Le Boeuf, south of Lake Erie, reiterating Britain's claim to the entire Ohio River valley.
1770 The British soldiers responsible for the "Boston Massacre" are acquitted on murder charges.
1862 The Union loses its first ship to a torpedo, USS Cairo, in the Yazoo River.
1863 Orders are given in Richmond, Virginia, that no more supplies from the Union should be received by Federal prisoners.
1901 Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio transmission in St. John's Newfoundland.
1927 Communists forces seize Canton, China.
1930 The Spanish Civil War begins as rebels take a border town.
1930 The last Allied troops withdraw from the Saar region in Germany.
1931 Under pressure from the Communists in Canton, Chiang Kai-shek resigns as president of the Nanking Government but remains the head of the Nationalist government that holds nominal rule over most of China.
1943 The German Army launches Operation Winter Tempest, the relief of the Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad.
1943 The exiled Czech government signs a treaty with the Soviet Union for postwar cooperation.
1956 The United Nations calls for immediate Soviet withdrawal from Hungary.
1964 Kenya becomes a republic.
1964 Three Buddhist leaders begin a hunger strike to protest the government in Saigon.
1967 The United States ends the airlift of 6,500 men in Vietnam.
1995 Willie Brown beats incumbent mayor Frank Jordon to become the first African-American mayor of San Francisco.
1812 The last remnants of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armeé reach the safety of Kovno, Poland, after the failed Russian campaign. Napoleon's costly retreat from Moscow
1814 General Andrew Jackson announces martial law in New Orleans, Louisiana, as British troops disembark at Lake Borne, 40 miles east of the city. The Battle of New Orleans
1862 The Battle of Fredericksburg ends with the bloody slaughter of onrushing Union troops at Marye's Heights.
1902 The Committee of Imperial Defense holds its first meeting in London.
1908 The Dutch take two Venezuelan Coast Guard ships.
1937 The Japanese army occupies Nanking, China. Boeing's Trailblazing P-26 Peashooters.
1940 Adolf Hitler issues preparations for Operation Martita, the German invasion of Greece.
1941 British forces launch an offensive in Libya. A secret ear for the Desert Fox.
1945 France and Britain agree to quit Syria and Lebanon.
1951 After meeting with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, President Harry S Truman vows to purge all disloyal government workers.
1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson and Mexico's President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz meet on a bridge at El Paso, Texas, to officiate at ceremonies returning the long-disputed El Chamizal area to the Mexican side of the border.
1972 Astronaut Gene Cernan climbs into his lunar lander on the moon and prepares to lift off. He is the last man to set foot on the moon.
1973 Great Britain cuts the work week to three days to save energy.
1981 Polish labor leader Lech Walesa is arrested and the government decrees martial law, restricting civil rights and suspending operation of the independent trade union Solidarity.
1985 France sues the United States over the discovery of an AIDS serum.
1799 George Washington dies on his Mount Vernon estate.
1819 Alabama is admitted as the 22nd state, making 11 slave states and 11 free states.
1861 Prince Albert of England, one of the Union's strongest advocates, dies.
1863 Confederate General James Longstreet attacks Union troops at Bean's Station, Tenn.
1863 President Abraham Lincoln grants amnesty to the widow of Confederate General B.H. Helm after she swears allegiance to the Union. Mrs. Helm is the half-sister of Mary Todd Lincoln.
1900 Max Planck presents the quantum theory at the Physics Society in Berlin.
1906 The first U1 submarine is brought into service in Germany. Italy's MAS torpedo boats.
1908 The first truly representative Turkish Parliament opens.
1909 The Labor Conference in Pittsburgh ends with a "declaration of war" on U.S. Steel.
1911 Roald Amundsen and four others discover the South Pole.
1920 The League of Nations creates a credit system to aid Europe.
1939 The League of Nations drops the Soviet Union from its membership. Joseph Avenol sold out the League of Nations.
1941 German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel orders the construction of defensive positions along the European coastline. Desperate Hours on Omaha Beach
1946 The United Nations adopt a disarmament resolution prohibiting the A-Bomb.
1949 Bulgarian ex-Premier Traicho Kostov is sentenced to die for treason in Sofia.
1960 A U.S. Boeing B-52 bomber sets a 10,000-mile non-stop record without refueling.
1980 NATO warns the Soviets to stay out of the internal affairs of Poland, saying that intervention would effectively destroy the détente between the East and West.
1862 Nathan B. Forrest crosses the Tennessee River at Clifton with 2,500 men to raid the communications around Vicksburg, Mississippi.
1862 In New Orleans, Louisiana, Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler turns his command over to Nathaniel Banks. The citizens of New Orleans hold farewell parties for Butler, "The Beast," but only after he leaves.
1864 The battle at Nashville begins.
1890 As U.S. Army soldiers attempt to arrest Sitting Bull at his cabin in Standing Rock, South Dakota, shooting breaks out and Lt. Bullhead shoots the great Sioux leader.
1903 The British parliament places a 15-year ban on whale hunting in Norway.
1920 China wins a place on the League Council; Austria is admitted.
1924 The Soviet Union warns the United States against repeated entry of ships into Soviet territorial waters.
1938 Washington sends its fourth note to Berlin demanding amnesty for Jews.
1944 The battle for Luzon begins.
1946 Vietnam leader Ho Chi Minh sends a note to the new French Premier, Leon Blum, asking for peace talks.
1961 Adolf Eichmann, the former German Gestapo official accused of a major role in the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews, is sentenced by a Jerusalem court to be hanged.
1965 The United States drops 12 tons of bombs on an industrial center near Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnam.
1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the meat bill in the presence of Upton Sinclair, the author of the controversial book The Jungle.
1972 The Commonwealth of Australia orders equal pay for women.
1431 Henry VI of England is crowned King of France.
1653 Oliver Cromwell takes on dictatorial powers with the title of "Lord Protector."
1773 To protest the tax on tea from England, a group of young Americans, disguised as Indians, throw chests of tea from British ships in Boston Harbor.
1835 A fire in New York City destroys property estimated to be worth $20,000,000. It lasts two days, ravages 17 blocks, and destroys 674 buildings including the Stock Exchange, Merchants' Exchange, Post Office, and the South Dutch Church.
1863 Confederate General Joseph Johnston takes command of the Army of Tennessee.
1864 Union forces under General George H. Thomas win the battle at Nashville, smashing an entire Confederate army.
1930 In Spain, a general strike is called in support of the revolution.
1939 The National Women's Party urges immediate congressional action on equal rights.
1940 British troops carry out an air raid on Italian Somalia.
1944 Germany mounts a major offensive in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. As the center of the Allied line falls back, it creates a bulge, leading to the name--the Battle of the Bulge.
1949 Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung is received at the Kremlin in Moscow.
1950 President Harry Truman declares a state of National Emergency as Chinese communists invade deeper into South Korea.
1976 President Jimmy Carter appoints Andrew Young as Ambassador to the United Nations.
1978 Cleveland becomes the first U.S. city to default since the depression.
1998 The United States launches a missile attack on Iraq for failing to comply with United Nations weapons inspectors.
1399 Tamerlane's Mongols destroy the army of Mahmud Tughluk, Sultan of Delhi, at Panipat.
1861 The Stonewall Brigade begins to dismantle Dam No. 5 of the C&O Canal.
1886 At a Christmas party, Sam Belle shoots his old enemy Frank West, but is fatally wounded himself.
1903 Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft.
1927 U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg suggests a worldwide pact renouncing war.
1938 Italy declares the 1935 pact with France invalid because ratifications had not been exchanged. France denies the argument.
1939 In the Battle of River Plate near Montevideo, Uruguay, the British trap the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. German Captain Langsdorf sinks his ship believing that resistance is hopeless.
1943 U.S. forces invade Japanese-held New Britain Island in New Guinea.
1944 The German Army renews the attack on the Belgian town of Losheimergraben against the defending Americans during the Battle of the Bulge.
1944 U.S. approves end to internment of Japanese Americans. U.S. Major General Henry C. Pratt issues Public Proclamation No. 21, declaring that Japanese American "evacuees" from the West Coast could return to their homes effective January 2, 1945.
1948 The Smithsonian Institution accepts the Kitty Hawk - the Wright brothers' plane.
1950 The French government appoints Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny to command their troops in Vietnam.
1952 Yugoslavia breaks relations with the Vatican.
1965 Ending an election campaign marked by bitterness and violence, Ferdinand Marcos is declared president of the Philippines.
1981 Red Brigade terrorists kidnap Brigadier General James Dozier, the highest-ranking U.S. NATO officer in Italy.
1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide wins Haiti's first free election.
1118 Afonso the Battler, the Christian King of Aragon captures Saragossa, Spain, causing a major blow to Muslim Spain.
1812 Napoleon Bonaparte arrives in Paris after his disastrous campaign in Russia.
1862 Nathan B. Forrest engages and defeats a Federal cavalry force near Lexington in his continued effort to disrupt supply lines.
1862 Union General Ulysses S. Grant announces the organization of his army in the West. Sherman, Hurlbut, McPherson, and McClernand are to be corps commanders.
1865 Slavery is abolished in the United Staes. The 13th Amendment is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude... shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
1915 In a single night, about 20,000 Australian and New Zealand troops withdraw from Gallipoli, Turkey, undetected by the Turks defending the peninsula.
1916 The Battle of Verdun ends with the French and Germans each having suffered more than 330,000 killed and wounded in 10 months. It was the longest engagement of World War I.
1925 Soviet leaders Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev break with Joseph Stalin.
1940 Adolf Hitler issues his secret plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union--Operation Barbarossa.
1941 Defended by 610 fighting men, the American-held island of Guam falls to more than 5,000 Japanese invaders in a three-hour battle.
1941 Japan invades Hong Kong.
1942 Adolf Hitler meets with Benito Mussolini and Pierre Laval.
1944 Japanese forces are repelled from northern Burma by British troops.
1951 North Koreans give the United Nations a list of 3,100 POWs.
1956 Japan is admitted to the United Nations.
1960 A rightist government is installed under Prince Boun Oum in Laos as the United States resumes arms shipments.
1965 U.S. Marines attack VC units in the Que Son Valley during Operation Harvest Moon.
1970 An atomic leak in Nevada forces hundreds of citizens to flee the test site.
1972 President Richard M. Nixon declares that the bombing of North Vietnam will continue until an accord can be reached.
1562 The French Wars of Religion between the Huguenots and the Catholics begins with the Battle of Dreux.
1793 French troops recapture Toulon from the British.
1862 Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest begins tearing up the railroads in Union generals Grant and Rosecrans rear, causing considerable delays in the movement of Union supplies.
1900 The French Parliament votes amnesty for everyone involved in the Dreyfus Affair.
1909 American socialist women denounce suffrage as a movement of the middle class.
1941 Japanese land on Hong Kong and clash with British troops.
1941 Adolf Hitler assumes the position of commander in chief of the German army.
1942 The British advance 40 miles into Burma in a drive to oust the Japanese from the colony.
1944 During the Battle of the Bulge, American troops begin pulling back from the twin Belgian cities of Krinkelt and Rocherath in front of the advancing German Army.
1945 Congress confirms Eleanor Roosevelt as U.S. delegate to the United Nations.
1950 The North Atlantic Council names General Dwight D. Eisenhower as supreme commander of Western European defense forces.
1959 Reputed to be the last civil war veteran, Walter Williams, dies at 117 in Houston.
1974 Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as vice president of the United states after a House of Representatives vote.
1982 Four bombs explode at South Africa's only nuclear power station in Johannesburg.
1984 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang sign an agreement that committed Britain to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 in return for terms guaranteeing a 50-year extension of its capitalist system. Hong Kong was leased by China to Great Britain in 1898 for 99 years.
1998 President Bill Clinton is impeached. The House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against President Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton was the second president in American history to be impeached.
