March 30
1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sign a decree expelling all Jews from Spain.
1840 "Beau" Brummell, the English dandy and former favorite of the prince regent, dies in a French lunatic asylum for paupers.
1858 Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia patents the pencil with an eraser attached on one end.
1867 Russian Baron Stoeckl and U.S. Secretary of State Seward completed the draft of a treaty ceding Alaska to the United States. The treaty is signed the following day.
1870 The 15th amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race, passes.
1885 Texas is the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union.
1885 In Afghanistan, Russian troops inflict a crushing defeat on Afghan forces Ak Teppe despite orders not to fight.
1909 The Queensboro Bridge in New York opens. It is the first double decker bridge and links Manhattan and Queens.
1916 Mexican bandit Pancho Villa kills 172 at the Guerrero garrison in Mexico.
1936 Britain announces a naval construction program of 38 warships. This is the largest construction program in 15 years.
1941 The German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel begins its first offensive against British forces in Libya.
1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration, Oklahoma, opens on Broadway.
1944 The U.S. fleet attacks Palau, near the Philippines.
1945 The Red Army advances into Austria.
1946 The Allies seize 1,000 Nazis attempting to revive the Nazi party in Frankfurt.
1950 President Harry S Truman denounces Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.
1957 Tunisia and Morocco sign a friendship treaty in Rabat.
1972 Hanoi launches its heaviest attack in four years, crossing the DMZ.
1975 As the North Vietnamese forces move toward Saigon, desperate South Vietnamese soldiers mob rescue jets.
1981 President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded in Washington, D.C. by John W. Hinkley Jr.
1987 Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers is bought for $39.85 million.
Today in history
March 31
1282 The great massacre of the French in Sicily The Sicilian Vespers comes to an end.
1547 In France, Francis--king since 1515--dies and is succeeded by his son Henry II.
1776 Abigail Adams writes to husband John that women are "determined to foment a rebellion" if the new Declaration of Independence fails to guarantee their rights.
1779 Russia and Turkey sign a treaty by which they promise to take no military action in the Crimea.
1790 In Paris, France, Maximilien Robespierre is elected president of the Jacobin Club.
1836 The first monthly installment of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens is published in London.
1862 Skirmishing between Rebels and Union forces takes place at Island 10 on the Mississippi River.
1880 The first electric street lights ever installed by a municipality are turned on in Wabash, Indiana.
1889 The Eiffel Tower in Paris officially opens on the Left Bank as part of the Exhibition of 1889.
1916 General John Pershing and his army rout Pancho Villa's army in Mexico.
1917 The United States purchases the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million.
1918 Daylight Savings Time goes into effect throughout the United States for the first time.
1921 Great Britain declares a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal miners on strike.
1933 To relieve rampant unemployment, Congress authorizes the Civilian Conservation Corps.
1939 Britain and France agree to support Poland if Germany threatens to invade.
1940 La Guardia airport in New York officially opens to the public.
1941 Germany begins a counter offensive in North Africa.
1945 The United States and Britain bar a Soviet supported provisional regime in Warsaw from entering the U.N. meeting in San Francisco.
1948 The Soviet Union begins controlling the Western trains headed toward Berlin.
1949 Winston Churchill declares that the A-bomb was the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from taking over Europe.
1954 The siege of Dien Bien Phu, the last French outpost in Vietnam, begins after the Viet Minh realize it cannot be taken by direct assault.
1960 The South African government declares a state of emergency after demonstrations lead to the deaths of more than 50 Africans.
1966 An estimated 200,000 anti-war demonstrators march in New York City.
1967 President Lyndon Johnson signs the Consular Treaty, the first bi-lateral pact with the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution.
1970 U.S. forces in Vietnam down a MIG-21, the first since September 1968.
1980 President Jimmy Carter deregulates the banking industry.
1991 Albania offers a multi-party election for the first time in 50 years.
April 1
1572 The Sea Beggars under Guillaume de la Marck land in Holland and capture the small town of Briel.
1778 Oliver Pollock, creates the dollar sign.
1863 The first wartime conscription law goes into effect in the United States.
1865 At the Battle of Five Forks, Gen. Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
1868 The Hampton Institute is founded in Hampton, Va.
1905 Berlin and Paris are linked by telephone.
1918 England's Royal Air Force is formed.
1920 Germany's Workers Party changes its name to the Nationalist Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazis).
1924 Adolf Hitler sentenced to five years in prison for the "Beer Hall Putsch."
1928 China's Chiang Kai-shek begins attacks on communists.
1929 The yo-yo is introduced in the United States by Louie Marx.
1939 The Spanish Civil War effectively ends with the official recognition of Franco's government.
1942 The U.S. Navy begins a partial convoy system in the Atlantic.
1945 U.S. forces launch invasion of Okinawa.
1946 A miner's strike in the U.S. idles 400,000 workers.
1948 The Berlin Airlift begins, relieving the surrounded city from the Soviet siege.
1951 United Nations forces again move northward across the 38th Parallel in Korea.
1954 The U.S. Air Force Academy is founded in Colorado.
1968 The U.S. Army launches Operation Pegasus, the reopening of a land route to the besieged Khe Sanh Marine base.
1970 The U.S. Army charges Captain Ernest Medina for his role in the My Lai massacre.
1982 The United States transfers control of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama.
April 2
1792 The United States authorizes the minting of the $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins as well as the silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime.
1796 Haitian revolt leader Toussaint L'Ouverture takes command of French forces at Santo Domingo.
1801 The British navy defeats the Danish at the Battle of Copenhagen.
1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis flees Richmond, Virginia as Grant breaks Lee's line at Petersburg.
1910 Karl Harris perfects the process for the artificial synthesis of rubber.
1914 The U.S. Federal Reserve Board announces plans to divide the country into 12 districts.
1917 President Woodrow Wilson presents a declaration of war against Germany to Congress.
1917 Jeannette Pickering Rankin is sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1931 Virne "Jackie" Mitchell becomes the first woman to play for an all-male pro baseball team. In an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, she strikes out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
1932 Charles Lindbergh pays over $50,000 ransom for his kidnapped son.
1944 Soviet forces enter Romania, one of Germany's allied countries.
1958 The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics is renamed NASA.
1963 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King begins the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.
1982 Argentina invades the British-owned Falkland Islands.
April 3
628 In Persia, Kavadh sues for peace with the Byzantines.
1367 John of Gaunt and Edward the Black Prince win the Battle of Najara, in Spain.
1559 Philip II of Spain and Henry II of France sign the peace of Cateau-Cambresis, ending a long series of wars between the Hapsburg and Valois dynasties.
1860 The Pony Express connects St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California.
1862 Slavery is abolished in Washington, D.C.
1865 Union forces occupy the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
1882 The American outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back and killed by his cousin, Bob Ford.
1910 Alaska's Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America is climbed.
1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre are married at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
1936 Bruno Hauptmann, killer of the Lindbergh baby, is executed.
1942 The Japanese begin their all-out assault on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan.
1944 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that black citizens are eligible to vote in all elections, including primaries.
1948 President Harry Truman signs Marshall Plan, it will revive war-torn Europe.
1966 Three-thousand South Vietnamese Army troops lead a protest against the Ky regime in Saigon.
1972 Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States after a twenty-year absence.
1984 Coach John Thompson of Georgetown University becomes the first African-American coach to win an NCAA basketball tournament.
April 4
527 In Constantinople, Justin, seriously ill, crowns his nephew Justinian as his co-emperor.
1581 Francis Drake completes circumnavigation of the world.
1812 The territory of Orleans becomes the 18th state and will become known as Louisiana.
1818 The United States flag is declared to have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars.
1841 President William Henry Harrison, aged 68, becomes the first president to die in office, just a month after being sworn in.
1862 The Battle of Yorktown begins as Union gen. George B. McClellan closes in on Richmond, Va.
1917 The U.S. Senate votes 90-6 to enter World War I on Allied side.
1918 The Battle of the Somme ends.
1941 Field Marshal Erwin Rommel captures the British held town of Benghazi in North Africa.
1949 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty is signed.
1968 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
1974 Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth's home-run record.
1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan is executed.
1985 A coup in Sudan ousts President Nimeiry and replaces him with General Dahab.
April 5
1242 Russian troops repel an invasion by Teutonic knights.
1614 Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe.
1792 George Washington casts the first presidential veto.
1843 Queen Victoria proclaims Hong Kong a British crown colony.
1865 As the Confederate army approaches Appomattox, it skirmishes with Union forces at Amelia Springs and Paine's Cross Road.
1908 The Japanese Army reaches Yalu River as Russians retreat.
1919 Eamon de Valera becomes president of Ireland.
1930 Mahatma Ghandi defies British law by making salt in India instead of buying it from the British.
1941 German commandos secure docks along the Danube River in preparation for Germany's invasion of the Balkans.
1943 The British 8th Army attacks the next blocking position of the retreating Axis forces at Wadi Akarit.
1951 Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for espionage.
1955 Winston Churchill resigns as British prime minister.
1986 A bomb explodes in a West Berlin disco packed with American soldiers.
April 6
1199 English King Richard I is killed by an arrow at the siege of the castle of Chaluz in France.
1789 The First U.S. Congress begins regular sessions at Federal Hall in New York City.
1814 Granted sovereignty in the island of Elba and a pension from the French government, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates at Fountainebleau. He is allowed to keep the title of emperor.
1830 Joseph Smith and five others organize the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Seneca, New York.
1862 Confederate forces attack General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, Tennessee.
1865 At the Battle of Sailer's Creek, a third of Lee's army is cut off by Union troops pursuing him to Appomattox.
1896 The Modern Olympics begin in Athens with eight nations participating.
1903 French Army Nationalists are revealed to have forged documents to guarantee a conviction for Alfred Dryfus.
1909 Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson become the first men to reach the North Pole.
1917 The United States declares war on Germany and enters World War I on Allied side.
1924 Four planes leave Seattle on the first successful flight around the world.
1938 The United States recognizes Nazi Germany's conquest of Austria.
1941 German forces invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson authorizes the use of ground troops in combat operations.
April 7
1652 The Dutch establish a settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.
1712 A slave revolt breaks out in New York City.
1798 The territory of Mississippi is organized.
1862 General Ulysses S. Grant defeats Confederates at Battle of Shiloh, Tenn.
1914 The British House of Commons passes the Irish Home Rule Bill.
1922 U.S. Secretary of Interior leases the Teapot Dome naval oil reserves in Wyoming.
1933 President Franklin Roosevelt signs legislation ending Prohibition in the United States.
1943 British and American armies link up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa, forming a solid line against the German army.
1945 The Japanese battleship Yamato, the world's largest battleship, is sunk during the battle for Okinawa.
1963 Yugoslavia proclaims itself a Socialist republic.
1971 President Nixon pledges a withdrawal of 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.
1980 The United States breaks relations with Iran.
1983 Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson make first Space Shuttle spacewalk.
1990 John Poindexter is found guilty in the Iran-Contra scandal.
April 8
1789 The U.S. House of Representatives holds its first meeting.
1832 Some 300 American troops of the 6th Infantry leave Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to confront the Sauk Indians in what would become known as the Black Hawk War.
1864 In the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana, Federals are routed by Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor.
1865 General Robert E. Lee's retreat is cut off near Appomattox Court House.
1898 British General Horatio Kitchner defeats the Khalifa, leader of the dervishes in Sudan, at the Battle of Atbara.
1913 The 17th Amendment is ratified, requiring direct election of senators.
1935 The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is approved by Congress.
1939 Italy invades Albania.
1942 The Soviets open a rail link to the besieged city of Leningrad.
1952 President Truman orders the seizure of U.S. steel mills to prevent a strike.
1962 Bay of Pigs invaders get thirty years imprisonment in Cuba.
1974 Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's record.
1975 Frank Robinson of the Cleveland Indians becomes first black manager of a major league baseball team.
April 9
193 In the Balkans, the distinguished soldier Septimius Severus is proclaimed emperor by the army in Illyricum.
715 Constantine ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1241 In the Battle of Liegnitz, Mongol armies defeat Poles and Germans.
1454 The city states of Venice, Milan and Florence sign a peace agreement at Lodi, Italy.
1682 Robert La Salle claims lower Mississippi River and all lands that touch it for France.
1731 British Captain Robert Jenkins loses an ear to a band of Spanish brigands, starting a war between Britain and Spain: The War of Jenkins' Ear.
1770 Captain James Cook discovers Botany Bay on the Australian continent.
1859 Realizing that France has encouraged the Piedmontese forces to mobilize for invading Italy, Austria begins mobilizing its army.
1865 General Robert E. Lee surrenders his rebel forces to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Va.
1900 British forces route Boers at Kroonstadt, South Africa.
1916 The German army launches its third offensive during the Battle of Verdun.
1917 The Battle of Arras begins as Canadian troops begin a massive assault on Vimy Ridge.
1921 Russo-Polish conflict ends with signing of the Riga Treaty.
1940 Germany invades Norway and Denmark.
1942 In the Battle of Bataan, American and Filipino forces are overwhelmed by the Japanese Army.
1945 The Red Army is repulsed at the Seelow Heights on the outskirts of Berlin.
1950 Comedian Bob Hope makes his first television appearance.
1963 Winston Churchill becomes the first honorary U.S. citizen.
1966 The statue of Winston Churchill is dedicated at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.
1968 Murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., is buried.
1970 Paul McCartney announces the official break-up of the Beatles.
April 10
1790 The U.S. patent system is established.
1809 Austria declares war on France and her forces enter Bavaria.
1862 Union forces begin the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.
1865 At Appomattox Court, Va, General Robert E. Lee issues his last orders to the Army of Northern Virginia.
1866 The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is formed.
1902 South African Boers accept British terms of surrender.
1912 The Titanic begins her maiden voyage which will end in disaster.
1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby.
1930 The first synthetic rubber is produced.
1932 Paul von Hindenburg is elected president in Germany.
1938 Germany annexes Austria.
1941 U.S. troops occupy Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.
1945 In their second attempt to take the Seelow Heights, near Berlin, the Red Army launches numerous attacks against the defending Germans. The Soviets gain one mile at the cost of 3,000 men killed and 368 tanks destroyed.
1945 Allied troops liberate the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald north of Weiner, Germany.
1947 Jackie Robinson becomes the first black to play major league baseball as he takes the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1953 House of Wax, the first 3-D movie, is released.
1971 The American table tennis team arrives in China.
1974 Yitzhak Rabin replaces resigning Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir.
1981 Imprisoned Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands is elected to the British Parliament.
April 11
1512 The forces of the Holy League are heavily defeated by the French at the Battle of Ravenna.
1713 The Treaty of Utrecht is signed, ending the War of Spanish Succession. France cedes Maritime provinces to Britain.
1783 After receiving a copy of the provisional treaty on 13 March, Congress proclaims a formal end to hostilities with Great Britain.
1814 Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba.
1898 American President William McKinley asks Congress for declaration of war with Spain.
1941 Germany bombers blitz Conventry, England.
1942 Detachment 101 of the OSS--a guerrilla force--is activated in Burma.
1945 After two frustrating days of being repulsed and absorbing tremendous casualties, the Red Army finally takes the Seelow Heights north of Berlin.
1951 President Truman fires General Douglas MacArthur as head of United Nations forces in Korea.
1961 Israel begins the trial of Adolf Eichman, accused of war crimes during WWII.
1961 Folk singer Bob Dylan performs in New York City for the first time, opening for John Lee Hooker.
1968 President Johnson signs the 1968 Civil Rights Act.
1974 The Judiciary committee subpoenas President Richard Nixon to produce tapes for impeachment inquiry.
1981 President Ronald Reagan returns to the White House from hospital after recovery from an assassination attempt.
1986 Dodge Morgan sails solo nonstop around the world in 150 days.
1991 The U.N. Security Council issues formal cease fire with Iraq.
1996 Forty-three African nations sign the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty.
April 12
1204 The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople.
1606 England adopts the Union Jack as its flag.
1770 Parliament repeals the Townsend Acts.
1782 The British navy wins its only naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica.
1811 The first colonists arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington.
1861 Fort Sumter is shelled by Confederacy, starting America's Civil War.
1864 Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captures Fort Pillow, in Tennessee.
1877 The first catcher's mask is used in a baseball game.
1911 Pierre Prier completes the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes.
1916 American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clash at Parrel, Mexico.
1927 The British Cabinet comes out in favor of voting rights for women.
1944 The U.S. Twentieth Air Force is activated to begin the strategic bombing of Japan.
1945 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at Warm Spring, Georgia.
Harry S. Truman becomes president.
1954 Bill Haley records "Rock Around the Clock."
1955 Dr. Jonas Salk's discovery of a polio vaccine is announced.
1961 Soviet Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin becomes first man to orbit the Earth.
1963 Police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.
1966 Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American major league umpire.
1983 Harold Washington is elected the first black mayor of Chicago.
April 13
1598 The Edict of Nantes grants political rights to French Huguenots.
1775 Lord North extends the New England Restraining Act to South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The act forbids trade with any country other than Britain and Ireland.
1861 After 34 hours of bombardment, Union-held Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederates.
1865 Union forces under Gen. Sherman begin their devastating march through Georgia.
1902 J.C. Penny opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
1919 British forces kill hundreds of Indian nationalists in the Amritsar Massacre.
1933 The first flight over Mount Everest is completed by Lord Clydesdale.
1941 German troops capture Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Jefferson Memorial.
1945 Vienna falls to Soviet troops.
1960 The first navigational satellite is launched into Earth's orbit.
1961 The U.N. General Assembly condemns South Africa because of apartheid.
1964 Sidney Poitier becomes the first black to win an Oscar for best actor.
1970 An oxygen tank explodes on Apollo 13, preventing a planned moon landing and jeopardizing the lives of the three-man crew.
1976 The U.S. Federal Reserve begins issuing $2 bicentennial notes.
1979 The world's longest doubles ping-pong match ends after 101 hours.
1979 The world's longest doubles ping-pong match ends after 101 hours
But if you're all about the destination, then take a fucking flight.
We're going nowhere slowly, but we're seeing all the sights.
And we're definitely going to hell, but we'll have all the best stories to tell.
Full of the heavens and time.
We're going nowhere slowly, but we're seeing all the sights.
And we're definitely going to hell, but we'll have all the best stories to tell.
Full of the heavens and time.
Houston, we had a problem!April 16
69 Defeated by Vitellius' troops at Bedriacum, Otho commits suicide.
556 Pelagius I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1065 The Norman Robert Guiscard takes Bari, ending five centuries of Byzantine rule in southern Italy.
1705 Queen Anne of England knights Isaac Newton.
1746 Prince Charles is defeated at the battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle fought in Britain.
1777 At the Battle of Bennington, New England's minute men rout British regulars.
1818 The U.S. Senate ratifies the Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed U.S.-Canada border.
1854 San Salvador is destroyed by an earthquake.
1862 Confederate President Jefferson Davis approves a conscription act for white males between 18 and 35.
1862 Slavery is abolished in the District of Columbia.
1917 Vladimir Lenin returns to Russia to start Bolshevik Revolution.
1922 Annie Oakley shoots 100 clay targets in a row, setting a woman's record.
1942 The Island of Malta is awarded the George Cross in recognition for heroism under constant German air attack. It was the first such award given to any part of the British Commonwealth.
1944 The destroyer USS Laffey survives horrific damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa.
1945 American troops enter Nuremberg, Germany.
1947 A lens which provides zoom effects is demonstrated in New York City.
1968 The Pentagon announces the "Vietnamization" of the war.
1972 Two giants pandas arrive in the U.S. from China.
1977 The ban on women attending West Point is lifted.
April 17
858 Benedict III ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1492 Christopher Columbus signs a contract with Spain to find a western route to the Indies.
1521 Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
1524 Present-day New York Harbor is discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.
1535 Antonio Mendoza is appointed first viceroy of New Spain.
1758 Frances Williams, the first African-American to graduate for a college in the western hemisphere, publishes a collection of Latin poems.
1808 Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France orders seizure of U.S. ships.
1824 Russia abandons all North American claims south of 54' 40'.
1861 Virginia become eighth state to secede from the Union.
1864 General Grant bans the trading of prisoners.
1865 Mary Surratt is arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.
1875 The game "snooker" is invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain.
1895 China and Japan sign peace treaty of Shimonoseki.
1929 Baseball player Babe Ruth and Claire Hodgeson, a former member of the Ziegfield Follies, get married.
1946 The last French troops leave Syria.
1947 Jackie Robinson bunts for his first major league hit.
1961 Some 1,400 Cuban exiles attack the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.
1964 Jerrie Mock becomes first woman to fly solo around the world.
1969 Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
1970 Apollo 13--originaly scheduled to land on the moon--lands back safely on Earth after an accident.
1975 Khmer Rouge forces capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.
1983 In Warsaw, police rout 1,000 Solidarity supporters.
April 18
310 St. Eusebius begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1521 Martin Luther confronts the emperor Charles V, refusing to retract the views which led to his excommunication.
1676 Sudbury, Massachusetts is attacked by Indians.
1775 American revolutionaries Paul Revere and William Dawes ride though the towns of Massachusetts warning that "the British are coming."
1791 National Guardsmen prevent Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris.
1818 A regiment of Indians and blacks is defeated at the Battle of Suwanna, in Florida, ending the first Seminole War.
1834 William Lamb becomes prime minister of England.
1838 The Wilkes' expedition to the South Pole sets sail.
1847 U.S. forces defeat Mexicans at Cerro Gordo in one of the bloodiest battle of the war.
1853 The first train in Asia begins running from Bombay to Tanna.
1861 Colonel Robert E. Lee turns down an offer to command the Union armies.
1885 The Sino-Japanese war ends.
1906 A massive earthquake hits San Francisco, measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale.
1923 Yankee Stadium opens with Babe Ruth hitting a three-run homer as the Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1.
1937 Leon Trotsky calls for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
1942 James H. Doolittle bombs Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
1943 Traveling in a bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is shot down by American P-38 fighters.
1946 The League of Nations dissolves.
1949 The Republic of Ireland withdraws from British Commonwealth.
1950 The first transatlantic jet passenger trip is completed.
1954 Colonel Nasser seizes power in Egypt.
1978 The U.S. Senate approves the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama.
1980 Zimbabwe's (Rhodesia) formal independence from Britain is proclaimed.
1983 A suicide bomber kills U.S. Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon.