741 Charles Martel of Gaul dies at Quiezy. His mayoral power is divided between his two sons, Pepin III and Carloman.
1746 Princeton University, in New Jersey, receives its charter.
1797 The first successful parachute descent is made by Andre-Jacqes Garnerin, who jumps from a balloon at some 2,200 feet over Paris.
1824 The Tennessee Legislature adjourns ending Davy Crockett's state political career.
1836 Sam Houston sworn in as the first president of the Republic of Texas.
1862 Union troops push 5,000 confederates out of Maysbille, Ark., at the Second Battle of Pea Ridge.
1859 Spain declares war on the Moors in Morocco.
1907 Ringling Brothers buys Barnum & Bailey.
1914 U.S. places economic support behind Allies.
1918 The cities of Baltimore and Washington run out of coffins during the "Spanish Inflenza" epidemic.
1938 Chester Carlson invents the photocopier. He tries to sell the machine to IBM, RCA, Kodak and others, but they see no use for a gadget that makes nothing but copies.
1954 As a result of the Geneva accords granting Communist control over North Vietnam, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes a crash program to train the South Vietnamese Army.
1955 The prototype of the F-105 Thunder Chief makes its maiden flight.
1962 U.S. reveals Soviet missile sites in Cuba. President Kennedy orders a naval and air blockade on further shipment of military equipment to Cuba. Following a confrontation that threatens nuclear war, Kennedy and Khrushchev agree on October 28 on a formula to end the crisis. On November 2 Kennedy reports that Soviet missile bases in Cuba are being dismantled.
1964 Jean Paul Satre declines the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1966 The Soviet Union launches Luna 12 for orbit around the moon
1972 Operation Linebacker I, the bombing of North Vietnam with B-52 bombers, ends.
4004 BC According to 17th century divine James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, and Dr. John Lightfoot of Cambridge, the world was created on this day, a Sunday, at 9 a.m.
1641 Rebellion in Ireland. Catholics, under Phelim O'Neil, rise against the Protestants and massacred men, women and children to the number of 40,000 (some say 100,000).
1694 American colonial forces led by Sir William Phips, fail in their attempt to seize Quebec.
1707 The first Parliament of Great Britain meets.
1783 Virginia emancipates slaves who fought for independence during the Revolutionary War.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C. for all military-related cases.
1918 President Wilson feels satisfied that the Germans are accepting his armistice terms and agrees to transmit their request for an armistice to the Allies. The Germans have agreed to suspend submarine warfare, cease inhumane practices such as the use of poison gas, and withdraw troops back into Germany.
1929 The first transcontinental air service begins from New York to Los Angeles.
1942 The Western Task Force, destined for North Africa, departs from Hampton Roads, Virginia.
1952 The Nobel Prize for Medicine is awarded to Ukranian-born microbiologist Selmart A. Waksman for his discovery of an effective treatment of tuberculosis.
1954 In Paris, an agreement is signed providing for West German sovereignty and permitting West Germany to rearm and enter NATO and the Western European Union.
1973 A U.N. sanctioned cease-fire officially ends the Yom Kippur war between Israel and Syria.
1983 A truck filled with explosives, driven by a Moslem terrorist, crashes into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The bomb kills 237 Marines and injures 80. Almost simultaneously, a similar incident occurs at French military headquarters, where 58 die and 15 are injured.
439 Carthage, the leading Roman city in North Africa, falls to Genseric and the Vandals.
1531 Bavaria, despite being a Catholic region, joins the League of Schmalkalden, a Protestant group which opposes Charles V.
1648 The signing of the Treaty of Westphalia ends the German Thirty Years' War.
1755 A British expedition against the French held Fort Niagara in Canada ends in failure.
1836 The match is patented.
1861 Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line, putting the Pony Express out of business.
1863 General Ulysses S. Grant arrives in Chattanooga, Tennessee to find the Union Army there starving.
1897 The first comic strip appears in the Sunday color supplement of the New York Journal called the 'Yellow Kid.'
1901 Anna Edson Taylor, 43, is the first woman to go safely over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She made the attempt for the cash award offered, which she put toward the loan on her Texas ranch.
1916 Henry Ford awards equal pay to women.
1917 The Austro-German army routs the Italian army at Caporetto, Italy.
1929 Black Thursday--the first day of the stock market crash which began the Great Depression.
1930 John Wayne debuts in his first starring role in The Big Trail .
1931 Al (Alphonse) Capone, the prohibition-era Chicago gangster, is sent to prison for tax evasion.
1934 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, called Mahatma or "Great Soul," resigns from Congress in India.
1938 The Fair Labor Standards Act becomes law, establishing the 40-hour work week.
1944 The aircraft carrier USS Princeton is sunk by a single Japanese plane during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1945 The United Nations comes into existence with the ratification of its charter by the first 29 nations.
1945 Vidkun Quisling, Norway's wartime minister president, is executed by firing squad for collaboration with the Nazis.
1952 Presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that if elected, he will go to Korea.
1970 Leftist Salvador Allende elected president of Chile.
2003 The supersonic Concorde jet made its last commercial passenger flight from New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport to London's Heathrow Airport, traveling at twice the speed of sound.
1415 An English army under Henry V defeats the French at Agincourt, France. The French had out numbered Henry's troops 60,000 to 12,000 but British longbows turned the tide of the battle.
1760 George III of England crowned.
1854 During the Crimean War, a brigade of British light infantry is destroyed by Russian artillery as they charge down a narrow corridor in full view of the Russians.
1916 German pilot Rudolf von Eschwege shoots down his first enemy plane, a Nieuport 12 of the Royal Naval Air Service over Bulgaria.
1923 The Teapot Dome scandal comes to public attention as Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, subcommittee chairman, reveals the findings of the past 18 months of investigation. His case will result in the conviction of Harry F. Sinclair of Mammoth Oil, and later Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, the first cabinet member in American history to go to jail. The scandal, named for the Teapot Dome oil reserves in Wyoming, involved Fall secretly leasing naval oil reserve lands to private companies.
1940 German troops capture Kharkov and launch a new drive toward Moscow.
1944 The Japanese are defeated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the world's largest sea engagement. From this point on, the depleted Japanese Navy increasingly resorts to the suicidal attacks of Kamikaze fighters.
1950 Chinese Communist Forces launch their first-phase offensive across the Yalu River into North Korea.
1951 In a general election, England's Labour Party loses to Conservatives. Winston Churchill becomes prime minister, and Anthony Eden becomes foreign secretary.
1954 President Eisenhower conducts the first televised Cabinet meeting.
1958 The last U.S. troops leave Beirut.
1960 Martin Luther King, Jr., is sentenced to four months in prison for a sit-in.
1983 1,800 U.S. troops and 300 Caribbean troops land on Grenada. U.S. forces soon turn up evidence of a strong Cuban and Soviet presence--large stores of arms and documents suggesting close links to Cuba.
1774 The first Continental Congress, which protested British measures and called for civil disobedience, concludes in Philadelphia.
1795 When General Paul Barras resigns his commission as head of France's Army of the Interior to become head of the Directory, his second-in-command becomes the army's commander-Napoleon Bonaparte.
1825 The first boat on the Erie Canal leaves Buffalo, N.Y.
1881 Three Earp brothers and Doc Holliday have a shootout with the Clantons and McLaurys at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory.
1905 Norway signs a treaty of separation with Sweden. Norway chooses Prince Charles of Denmark as the new king; he becomes King Haakon VII.
1918 Germany's supreme commander, General Erich Ludendorff, resigns, protesting the terms to which the German Government has agreed in negotiating the armistice. This sets the stage for his later support for Hitler and the Nazis, who claim that Germany did not lose the war on the battlefield but were "stabbed in the back" by politicians.
1942 Japanese attack Guadalcanal, sinking two U.S. carriers.
1942 U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Hornet is sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz Island, in the South Pacific.
1950 A reconnaissance platoon for a South Korean division reaches the Yalu River. They are the only elements of the U.N. force to reach the river before the Chinese offensive pushes the whole army down into South Korea.
1954 Chevrolet introduces the V-8 engine.
1955 The Village Voice is first published, backed in part by Norman Mailer.
1957 The Russian government announces that Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the nation's most prominent military hero, has been relieved of his duties as Minister of Defense. Khrushchev accused Zhukov as promoting his own "cult of personality" and saw him as a threat to his own popularity.
1958 The first New York - Paris transatlantic jet passenger service is inaugurated by Pan Am, while the first New York - London transatlantic jet passenger service is inaugurated by BOAC.
1970 Gary Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury first appears.
97 To placate the Praetorians of Germany, Nerva of Rome adopts Trajan, the Spanish-born governor of lower Germany.
1553 Michael Servetus, who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood, is burned for heresy in Switzerland.
1612 A Polish army that invaded Russia capitulates to Prince Dimitri Pojarski and his Cossacks.
1806 Emperor Napoleon enters Berlin.
1809 President James Madison orders the annexation of the western part of West Florida. Settlers there had rebelled against Spanish authority.
1862 A Confederate force is routed at the Battle of Georgia Landing, near Bayou Lafourche in Louisiana.
1870 The French fortress of Metz surrenders to the Prussian Army.
1873 Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applies for a patent on barbed wire. Glidden eventually received five patents and is generally considered the inventor of barbed wire.
1891 D. B. Downing, inventor, is awarded a patent for the street letter (mail) box.
1904 The New York subway officially opens running from the Brooklyn Bridge uptown to Broadway at 145th Street.
1907 The first trial in the Eulenberg Affair ends in Germany.
1917 20,000 women march in a suffrage parade in New York. As the largest state and the first on the East Coast to do so, New York has an important effect on the movement to grant all women the vote in all elections.
1922 In Italy, liberal Luigi Facta's cabinet resigns after threats from Mussolini that "either the government will be given to us or we will seize it by marching on Rome." Mussolini calls for a general mobilization of all Fascists.
1927 Fox Movie-tone news, the first sound news film, is released.
1941 In a broadcast to the nation on Navy Day, President Franklin Roosevelt declares: "America has been attacked, the shooting has started." He does not ask for full-scale war yet, realizing that many Americans are not yet ready for such a step.
1962 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev offers to remove Soviet missile bases in Cuba if the U.S. removes its missile bases in Turkey.
312 Constantine the Great defeats Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius at the Mulvian Bridge.
969 After a prolonged siege, the Byzantines end 300 years of Arab rule in Antioch.
1216 Henry III of England is crowned.
1628 After a fifteen-month siege, the Huguenot town of La Rochelle surrenders to royal forces.
1636 Harvard College, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, is founded in Cambridge, Mass.
1768 Germans and Acadians join French Creoles in their armed revolt against the Spanish governor of New Orleans.
1793 Eli Whitney applies for a patent on the cotton gin, a machine which cleans the tight-clinging seeds from short-staple cotton easily and effectively--a job which was previously done by hand.
1863 In a rare night attack, Confederates under Gen. James Longstreet attack a Federal force near Chattanooga, Tennessee, hoping to cut their supply line, the "cracker line." They fail.
1886 The Statue of Liberty, originally named Liberty Enlightening the World, is dedicated at Liberty Island, N. Y., formerly Bedloe's Island, by President Grover Cleveland
1901 Race riots sparked by Booker T. Washington's visit to the White House kill 34.
1904 The St. Louis police try a new investigation method: fingerprints.
1914 The German cruiser Emden, disguised as a British ship, steams into Penang Harbor near Malaya and sinks the Russian light cruiser Zhemchug.
1914 George Eastman announces the invention of the color photographic process.
1919 Over President Wilson's veto, Congress passes the National Prohibition Act, or Volstead Act, named after its promoter, Congressman Andrew J. Volstead. It provides enforcement guidelines for the Prohibition Amendment.
1927 Pan American Airways launches the first scheduled international flight.
1940 Italy invades Greece, launching six divisions on four fronts from occupied Albania.
1944 The first B-29 Superfortress bomber mission flies from the airfields in the Mariana Islands in a strike against the Japanese base at Truk.
1960 In a note to the OAS (Organization of American States), the United States charges that Cuba has been receiving substantial quantities of arms and numbers of military technicians" from the Soviet bloc.
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh is executed. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, Raleigh's enemies spread rumors that he was opposed the accession of King James.
1787 Mozart's opera Don Giovanni opens in Prague.
1813 The Demologos, the first steam-powered warship, launched in New York City.
1901 Leon Czolgosz is electrocuted for the assassination of President McKinley. Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley on September 6 during a public reception at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, N.Y. Despite early hopes of recovery, McKinley died September 14, in Buffalo.
1927 Russian archaeologist Peter Kozloff apparently uncovers the tomb of Genghis Khan in the Gobi Desert, a claim still in dispute.
1929 Black Tuesday--the most catastrophic day in stock market history, the herald of the Great Depression. 16 million shares were sold at declining prices. By mid-November $30 billion of the $80 billion worth of stocks listed in September will have been wiped out.
1945 The first ball-point pen goes is sold by Gimbell's department store in New York for a price of $12.
1949 Alonzo G. Moron of the Virgin Islands becomes the first African-American president of Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia.
1952 French forces launch Operation Lorraine against Viet Minh supply bases in Indochina.
1964 Thieves steal a jewel collection--including the world's largest sapphire, the 565-carat "Star of India," and the 100-carat DeLong ruby--from the Museum of Natural History in New York. The thieves were caught and most of the jewels recovered.
1969 The U.S. Supreme Court orders immediate desegregation, superseding the previous "with all deliberate speed" ruling.
1972 Palestinian guerrillas kill an airport employee and hijack a plane, carrying 27 passengers, to Cuba. They force West Germany to release 3 terrorists who were involved in the Munich Massacre.
1270 The Seventh Crusade ends by the Treaty of Barbary.
1485 Henry VII of England crowned.
1697 The Treaty of Ryswick ends the war between France and the Grand Alliance.
1838 Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Lorian County, Ohio becomes the first college in the U.S. to admit female students.
1899 Two battalions of British troops are cut off, surrounded and forced to surrender to General Petrus Joubert's Boers at Nicholson's Nek.
1905 The czar of Russia issues the October Manisfesto, granting civil liberties and elections in an attempt to avert the burgeonng supprot for revolution.
1918 The Italians capture Vittorio Veneto and rout the Austro-Hungarian army.
1918 Turkey signs an armistice with the Allies, agreeing to end hostilities at noon, October 31.
1922 Mussolini sends his black shirts into Rome. The Fascist takeover is almost without bloodshed. The next day, Mussolini is made prime minister. Mussolini centralized all power in himself as leader of the Fascist party and attempted to create an Italian empire, ultimately in alliance with Hitler's Germany.
1925 Scotsman John L. Baird performs first TV broadcast of moving objects.
1938 H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds is broadcast over the radio by Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Many panic believing it is an actual newscast about a Martian invasion.
1941 The U.S. destroyer Reuben James, on convoy duty off Iceland, is sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of 96 Americans.
1950 The First Marine Division is ordered to replace the entire South Korean I Corps at the Chosin Reservoir area.
1991 BET Holdings Inc., becomes the first African-American company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
1517 Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg in Germany. Luther's theories and writings inaugurate Protestantism, shattering the external structure of the medieval church and at the same time reviving the religious consciousness of Europe.
1803 Congress ratifies the purchase of the entire Louisiana area in North America, adding territory to the U.S. which will eventually become 13 more states.
1838 A mob of about 200 attacks a Mormon camp in Missouri, killing 20 men, women and children.
1864 Nevada becomes the 36th state.
1941 After 14 years of work, the Mount Rushmore National Memorial is completed.
1952 The United States explodes the first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.
1968 The bombing of North Vietnam is halted by the United States.
1971 Saigon begins the release of 1,938 Hanoi POW’s.
1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated in New Delhi by two Sikh members of her bodyguard.
79 The city of Pompeii is buried by eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
1512 Michelangelo's painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling is exhibited for the first time.
1582 Maurice of Nassau, the son of William of Orange, becomes the governor of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht.
1755 A great earthquake at Lisbon, Spain, kills over 50,000 people.
1765 The Stamp Act goes into effect in the British colonies.
1861 Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, 50 year-veteran and leader of the U.S. Army at the onset of the Civil War, retires. General George McClellan is appointed general-in-chief of the Union armies.
1866 Wild woman of the west Myra Maybelle Shirley marries James C. Reed in Collins County, Texas.
1869 Louis Riel seizes Fort Garry, Winnipeg, during the Red River Rebellion.
1911 Italian planes perform the first aerial bombing on Tanguira oasis in Libya.
1923 Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company buys the rights to manufacture Zeppelin dirigibles.
1924 Legendary Oklahoma marshal Bill Tilghman, 71, is gunned down by a drunk in Cromwell, Oklahoma.
1936 Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini announces the Rome-Berlin axis after Count Ciano's visit to Germany.
1936 The Rodeo Cowboy's Association is founded.
1943 American troops invade Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.
1945 John H. Johnson publishes the first issue of Ebony magazine.
1950 Two members of a Puerto Rican nationalist movement attempt to assassinate President Harry S Truman.
1951 Algerian National Liberation Front begins guerrilla warfare against the French.
1967 The first issue of Rolling Stone hits the streets.
1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson calls a halt to bombing in Vietnam, hoping this will lead to progress at the Paris peace talks.
1570 A tidal wave in the North Sea destroys the sea walls from Holland to Jutland. More than 1,000 people are killed.
1772 The first Committees of Correspondence are formed in Massachusetts under Samuel Adams.
1789 The property of the church in France is taken away by the state.
1841 The second Afghan War begins.
1869 Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok loses his re-election bid in Ellis County, Kan.
1880 James A. Garfield is elected the 20th president of the United States.
1882 Newly elected John Poe replaces Pat Garrett as sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory.
1889 North Dakota is made the 39th state.
1889 South Dakota is made the 40th state.
1892 Lawmen surround outlaws Ned Christie and Arch Wolf near Tahlequah, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). It will take dynamite and a cannon to dislodge the two from their cabin.
1903 London's Daily Mirror newspaper is first published.
1914 Russia declares war with Turkey.
1920 The first radio broadcast in the United States is made from Pittsburgh.
1920 Charlotte Woodward, who signed the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration calling for female voting rights, casts her ballot in a presidential election.
1921 Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett form the American Birth Control League.
1923 U.S. Navy aviator H.J. Brown sets new world speed record of 259 mph in a Curtiss racer.
1926 Air Commerce Act is passed, providing federal aid for airlines and airports.
1936 The first high-definition public television transmissions begin from Alexandra Palace in north London by the BBC.
1942 Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrives in Gibraltar to set up an American command post for the invasion of North Africa.
1943 The Battle of Empress Augusta Bay in Bougainville ends in U.S. Navy victory over Japan.
1947 Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose flies for the first and last time.
1948 Harry S Truman is elected the 33rd president of the United States.
1959 Charles Van Doren confesses that the TV quiz show "21" is fixed and that he had been given the answers to the questions asked him.
1960 A British jury determines that Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence is not obscene.
1963 South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated.
1976 Jimmy (James Earl) Carter elected the 39th president of the United States.
1983 President Ronald Reagan signs a bill establishing Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.
Nov. 2, 1947: Spruce Goose ... Or an Expensive Turkey?
1947: The Spruce Goose, with Hollywood producer-aviator-tycoon Howard Hughes at the controls, makes its first -- and only -- flight, skimming the waters of Long Beach Harbor in California for roughly one minute.
That short hop, made mostly for the benefit of the press and newsreel cameras, was the climax of a story that began more than five years earlier, at the height of World War II.
Appalled at the heavy toll being taken on Allied shipping by the German U-boats, Henry J. Kaiser, builder of the Liberty ships, proposed a fleet of gigantic flying transports to move men and material across the Atlantic. After Kaiser enlisted Hughes' support, the two men sold their idea to the government and walked away with an $18 million contract (about $238 million in today's money) to build three flying boats.
Hughes, who had attracted Kaiser's interest because of his reputation as an aircraft designer, set to work with his engineers. They came up with the Hughes H-4 "Hercules," an eight-engined behemoth with a wingspan of 320 feet, wider than the length of a football field. The plane was to be capable of carrying 750 troops.
Because of restrictions on the use of materials deemed critical to the war effort, Hughes built the prototype, HK-1, not out of steel or aluminum but of wood. And while the seaplane would become known worldwide as the Spruce Goose (a name Hughes despised), it was made largely of birch, not spruce.
Hughes used a process called Duramoid, a fluid-pressure method of molding plywood, to create a material generally agreed to be both lighter and stronger than aluminum.
Despite the innovation, the project bogged down in cost overruns and red tape. Kaiser withdrew in 1944, but Hughes had the bit between his teeth and assumed sole responsibility for continuing. When the government cut off funding and began investigating Hughes for misappropriation of funds involving this and another project, he plowed $7 million of his own into the H-4.
Hughes was determined to get his plane off the ground (or, more accurately, off the water) and on Nov. 2, 1947, he did.
Following its short flight, Hughes had the Spruce Goose stored in a custom-built hangar and maintained in a state of flight readiness. After Hughes' death in 1976, the plane passed through a succession of owners, was put on public display in Long Beach Harbor, and was finally relocated to Oregon, where it now serves as the centerpiece of the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum.
1493 Christopher Columbus arrives at the Caribbee Isles (Dominica) during his second expedition.
1507 Leonardo da Vinci is commissioned to paint Lisa Gherardini ("Mona Lisa").
1529 The first parliament for five years opens in England and the Commons put forward bills against abuses amongst the clergy and in the church courts.
1794 Thomas Paine is released from a Parisian jail with help from the American ambassador James Monroe. He was arrested for having offended the Robespierre faction.
1813 American troops destroy the Indian village of Tallushatchee in the Mississippi Valley.
1868 Ulysses S. Grant elected the 18th president of the United States.
1883 A poorly trained Egyptian army, led by British General William Hicks, marches toward El Obeid in the Sudan--straight into a Mahdist ambush and massacre.
1883 The U.S. Supreme Court declares American Indians to be "dependent aliens."
1896 William McKinley is elected 25th president of the United States.
1912 The first all-metal plane flies near Issy, France, piloted by Ponche and Prinard.
1918 The German fleet at Kiel mutinies. This is the first act leading to Germany's capitulation in World War I.
1921 Milk drivers on strike dump thousands of gallons of milk onto New York City's streets.
1935 Left-wing groups in France form the Socialist and Republican Union.
1957 The Soviet Union launches Sputnik II with the dog Laika, the first animal in space, aboard.
1964 Lyndon B. Johnson is elected the 36th president of the United States.
1964 Robert Kennedy, brother of the slain president, is elected as a senator from New York.
1983 Jesse Jackson announces his candidacy for the office of president of the United States.
1992 Arkansas Governor Bill (William Jefferson) Clinton is elected 42nd president of the United States.
644 Umar of Arabia is assassinated at Medina and is succeeded as caliph by Uthman.
1493 Christopher Columbus discovers Guadeloupe during his second expedition.
1677 William III and Mary of England wed on William's birthday.
1760 Following the Russian capture of Berlin, Frederick II of Prussia defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Torgau.
1791 General Arthur St. Clair, governor of Northwest Territory, is badly defeated by a large Indian army near Fort Wayne.
1798 Congress agrees to pay a yearly tribute to Tripoli, considering it the only way to protect U.S. shipping.
1842 Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Todd in Springfield, Ill.
1854 Florence Nightingale and her nurses arrive in the Crimea.
1863 From the main Confederate Army at Chattanooga, Tennessee, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's troops are sent northeast to besiege Knoxville.
1918 Austria signs an armistice with the Allies.
1922 The U.S. Postmaster General orders all homes to get mailboxes or relinquish delivery of mail.
1922 The entrance to King Tut's tomb is discovered.
1924 Calvin Coolidge is elected 30th president of the United States.
1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross and Miriam Ferguson are elected first and second women governors (Wyoming and Texas).
1946 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is established.
1952 General Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected 34th president of the United States.
1956 Russian troops attack Budapest, Hungary.
1979 At the American Embassy in Teheran, Iran, 90 people, including 63 Americans, are taken hostage by militant student followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. The students demand the return of Shah Mohammad Reza Pablavi, who is undergoing medical treatment in New York City.
1980 Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th president of the United States.
1992 Carol Moseley Braun becomes the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
1219 The port of Damietta falls to the Crusaders after a siege.
1556 The Emperor Akbar defeats the Hindus at Panipat and secures control of the Mogul Empire.
1605 Guy Fawkes is betrayed and arrested in an attempt to blow up the British Parliament in the "Gunpowder Plot." Ever since, England has celebrated Guy Fawkes Day.
1653 The Iroquois League signs a peace treaty with the French, vowing not to wage war with other tribes under French protection.
1757 Frederick II of Prussia defeats the French at Rosbach in the Seven Years War.
1768 William Johnson, the northern Indian Commissioner, signs a treaty with the Iroquois Indians to acquire much of the land between the Tennessee and Ohio rivers for future settlement.
1814 Having decided to abandon the Niagara frontier, the American army blows up Fort Erie.
1840 Afghanistan surrenders to the British army.
1854 British and French defeat the Russians at Inkerman, Crimea.
1862 President Abraham Lincoln relieves General George McClellan of command of the Union armies and names Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside commander of the Army of the Potomac.
1872 Susan B. Anthony is arrested for trying to vote.
1911 Calbraith P. Rodgers ends first transcontinental flight--49 days from New York to Pasadena, Calif.
1912 Woodrow Wilson is elected 28th president of the United States.
1914 France and Great Britain declare war on Turkey.
1917 General John Pershing leads U.S. troops into the first American action against German forces.
1930 Sinclair Lewis becomes the first American to win a Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel Babbit.
1935 Parker Brothers company launches "Monopoly," a game of real estate and capitalism.
1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt is re-elected for third term.
1968 Richard Nixon is elected 37th president of the United States.
1968 Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn, New York, becomes the first elected African American woman to serve in the House of Representatives.
1665 The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published.
1811 Rebellious Indians in a conspiracy organized in defiance of the United States government by Tecumseh, Shawnee chief, are defeated during his absence in the Battle of the Wabash (or Tippecanoe) by William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory.
1814 Andrew Jackson attacks and captures Pensacola, Florida, defeating the Spanish and driving out a British force.
1846 Zachary Taylor, one of the heroes of the Mexican War, is elected president.
1861 Union General Ulysses S. Grant launches an unsuccessful raid on Belmont, Missouri.
1876 Rutherford B. Hayes is elected 19th president of the United States.
1881 Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, two participants in Tombstone, Arizona's, famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, are jailed as the hearings on what happened in the fight grow near.
1916 President Woodrow Wilson is re-elected, but the race is so close that all votes must be counted before an outcome can be determined, so the results are not known until November 11.
1916 Jeannette Rankin (R-Montana) is elected the first congresswoman.
1917 British General Sir Edmond Allenby breaks the Turkish defensive line in the Third Battle of Gaza.
1917 The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, take power in Russia.
1921 Benito Mussolini declares himself to be leader of the National Fascist Party in Italy.
1940 Tacoma Bridge in Washington State collapses.
1943 British troops launch a limited offensive along the coast of Burma.
1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to a fourth term by defeating Thomas Dewey.
1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
392 Theodosius of Rome passes legislation prohibiting all pagan worship in the empire.
1226 Louis IX succeeds Louis VIII as king of France.
1576 The 17 provinces of the Netherlands form a federation to maintain peace.
1620 The King of Bohemia is defeated at the Battle of Prague.
1685 Fredrick William of Brandenburg issues the Edict of Potsdam, offering Huguenots refuge.
1793 The Louvre opens in Paris. But wasn't it already a Palace and it merely opens to the people?
1861 Charles Wilkes seizes Confederate commissioners John Slidell and James M. Mason from the British ship Trent.
1864 President Abraham Lincoln is re-elected in the first wartime election in the United States.
1887 Doc Holliday, who fought on the side of the Earp brothers during the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral 6 years earlier, dies of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
1889 Montana becomes the 41st state of the Union.
1900 Theodore Dresier's first novel Sister Carrie is published by Doubleday, but is recalled from stores shortly due to public sentiment.
1904 President Theodore Roosevelt is elected president of the United States. He had been vice president until the shooting death of President William McKinley.
1910 The Democrats prevail in congressional elections for the first time since 1894.
1923 Adolf Hitler attempts a coup in Munich, the "Beer Hall Putsch," and proclaims himself chancellor and Ludendorff dictator. .
1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected 32nd president of the United States.
1938 Crystla Bird Fauset of Pennsylvania, becomes the first African-American woman to be elected to a state legislature.
1942 The United States and Great Britain invade Axis-occupied North Africa.
1960 John F. Kennedy is elected 35th president, defeating Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the closest election, by popular vote, since 1880.
1966 Republican Edward Brooke of Massachusetts becomes the first African American elected to the Senate in 85 years.
1983 Wilson B. Goode is elected as the first black mayor of the city of Philadelphia.
1988 George H. Bush is elected the 41st president of the United States.
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte participates in a coup and declares himself dictator of France.
1848 The first U.S. Post Office in California opens in San Francisco at Clay and Pike streets. At the time there are only about 15,000 European settlers living in the state.
1900 Russia completes its occupation of Manchuria.
1906 President Theodore Roosevelt leaves Washington, D.C., for a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official visit outside of the United States.
1914 The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney wrecks the German cruiser Emden, forcing her to beach on a reef on North Keeling Island in the Indian Ocean.
1918 Germany is proclaimed a republic as the kaiser abdicates and flees to the Netherlands.
1935 Japanese troops invade Shanghai, China.
1938 Nazis kill 35 Jews, arrest thousands and destroy Jewish synagogues, homes and stores throughout Germany. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of the shattered glass.
1965 Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old former seminarian and a member of the Catholic worker movement, immolates himself at the United Nations in New York City in protest of the Vietnam War.
1965 Nine Northeastern states and parts of Canada go dark in the worst power failure in history, when a switch at a station near Niagara Falls fails.
1967 NASA launches Apollo 4 into orbit with the first successful test of a Saturn V rocket.
1972 Bones discovered by the Leakeys push human origins back 1 million years.
1983 Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, is kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million.
1989 The Berlin Wall is opened after dividing the city for 28 years.
