Today In History...

In 1704 The first American newspaper published on a regular basis, the Boston News Letter, is published for the first time.

In 1800 Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, appropriating $5,000 "for the purchase of such books as may be necessary."

In 1833 The soda fountain is patented by Jacob Ebert and George Dulty.

In 1877 Federal troops end occupation of New Orleans, ending the North's post-Civil War rule in the South.

In 1888 The first Kodak camera hits the market.

In 1897 William Price begins work for the Washington Star, where he becomes the first reporter to cover the White House on a regular basis.

In 1898 Spain declares war on the U.S. after rejecting America's ultimatum to get out of Cuba.

In 1908 Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Murdock become the first to travel across the U.S. by car. They traveled from Los Angeles to New York in a Packard in 32 days, 5 hours and 25 minutes.

In 1913 The Woolworth Building opens in New York.

In 1915 The Ottoman Turkish Empire begins brutal mass deportation of Armenians during World War I.

In 1916 Some 1,600 Irish nationalists launch the Easter Rising by seizing several key sites in Dublin, including the General Post Office. (The rising was put down by British forces several days later.)

In 1944 The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.

In 1953 British statesman Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

In 1961 Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy issues a statement accepting "sole responsibility."

In 1962 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieves the first satellite relay of a television signal, between Camp Parks, CA, and Westford, MA.

In 1967 Cosmonaut Komarov is the first to die in space aboard Soyuz 1 when are-entry parachute malfunctions.

In 1968 Leftist students at Columbia University begin a week-long occupation of several campus buildings.

In 1970 China launches its first satellite into orbit, which kept transmitting a song, "The East is Red."

In 1971 Soyuz 10 returns to Earth.

In 1980 An America hostage rescue attempt is botched in Iran when rescue aircraft collide on the ground in an Iranian desert killing eight.

In 1981 IBM introduces the "Personal Computer."

In 1983 Austria's governing Socialists lose their absolute majority in  Parliament during national elections, prompting Chancellor Bruno Kreisky to announce he would resign after 13 years in office.

In 1984 The Dominican Republic reports 29 dead in riots over food prices.

In 1986 Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, the woman for whom King Edward VIII had given up the British throne, dies at age 89.

In 1987 18 people, including 12 U.S. military personnel, are injured when a roadside bomb exploded in the Greek port of Piraeus; the guerrilla group November 17 claimed responsibility.

In 1988 Three sailors are killed and 22 injured when fire breaks out aboard the submarine USS Bonefish off the Florida coast.

In 1988 The ultralight Daedalus sets the human-powered flight record of 74 miles on a three and a half hour crossing of the Aegean Sea.

In 1989 Richard M. Daley is inaugurated as the 45th mayor of Chicago.

In 1989 President Bush leads a memorial service at the Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia for the 47 sailors killed in a gun-turret explosion aboard the USS Iowa.

In 1990 East and West Germany agree to merge currency and economies on July first.

In 1990 The space shuttle Discovery is launched carrying with it the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.

In 1991 A Kurdish rebel leader announces the guerrillas had reached an agreement in principle with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to end the Kurds' two-week rebellion.

In 1993 The Irish Republican Army exploded a truck bomb in the City of London financial district, killing one man and causing millions of dollars' worth of damage.

In 1993 Former African National Congress president Oliver Tambo dies in Johannesburg, South Africa, at age 75.

In 1994 Bosnian Serbs, threatened with NATO air strikes, grudgingly give up their three-week assault on Gorazde, burning houses and blowing up a water treatment plant as they withdrew.

In 1995 A package bomb linked to the Unabomber explodes inside the offices of a lobbying group for the wood products industry, killing chief lobbyist Gilbert B. Murray.

In 1996 The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization votes to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.

In 1997 The prosecution and defense present opening statements in the Oklahoma City bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh.

In 1997 The U.S. Senate votes, 74-to-26, to approve the chemical weapons treaty, five days before it was to take effect.

In 2000 Teen-age gunmen wound four and kill one at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.

In 2001 A New Zealand air force plane rescues four ailing Americans at an Antarctic research station.

In 2001 The U.S. Supreme Court rules, 5-4, that police can arrest and handcuff people for minor traffic offenses.

In 2001 Rev. Leon Sullivan, a pioneering civil rights crusader credited with helping end South Africa's system of apartheid, dies at age 78.

In 2004 Vitali Klitschko stops Corrie Sanders late in the eighth round in Los Angeles to win the WBC heavyweight title vacated by the retirement of Lennox Lewis.

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