Today In History...

In 1787 The Constitutional Convention decides on a bi-cameral Congress.

In 1868 The first recorded bicycle race, 2 kilometers in Paris, France.

In 1879 The first electric railway opens at the Berlin Trades Exposition.

In 1889 More than 2,000 people perish when a dam breaks sending water through Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

In 1894 The U.S. Senate votes unanimously to declare a policy of non-interference in the Hawaiian Islands.

In 1910 The Union of South Africa is founded.

In 1913 The 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, is declared in effect.

In 1916 During World War I, British and German fleets fight the Battle of Justland off Denmark.

In 1919 The first wedding in an airplane takes place over Houston, Texas.

In 1945 World War II production of the B-24 Liberator bombers ended with 18,188 delivered. The largest quantity of one airplane ever made.

In 1961 South Africa becomes an independent republic.

In 1962 World War II Gestapo official Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel for his role in in the Nazi Holocaust.

In 1970 Tens of thousands of people in Peru die in an earthquake.

In 1974 Israel and Syria sign an agreement concerning the Golan Heights.

In 1976 Martha Mitchell, the estranged wife of former Attorney General John Mitchell, dies in New York.

In 1977 The trans-Alaska oil pipeline, three years in the making, is completed with the final weld made by construction workers near Pump Station Three.

In 1983 Jack Dempsey, heavyweight boxing champion from 1919 to 1926, dies in New York at age 87.

In 1983 The Philadelphia 76ers win the NBA championship, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers.

In 1985 88 are killed and more than 1,000 are injured when 41 tornados sweep through parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Ontario, Canada.

In 1987 Addressing an audience of AIDS research supporters in Washington, President Reagan said the epidemic called "for urgency, not panic."

In 1989 Veteran Texas U.S. Representative Jim Wright resigns as Speaker of the House, after being accused of ethics violations.

In 1989 In one of his last appearances as Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop suggested that the beer industry stop using celebrities as spokespeople.

In 1990 President Bush and his wife, Barbara, welcome Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in a ceremony at the White House.

In 1991 Leaders of Angola's two warring factions sign a peace treaty, ending a 16-year-old civil war.

In 1992 An estimated 50,000 people demonstrated in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, against Communist-organized elections.

In 1994 Rep. Dan Rostenkowski is indicted on 17 felony counts alleging he plundered nearly $700,000 from the U.S. government.

In 1994 The U.S. announces it is no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in former Soviet Union.

In 1995 Senator Bob Dole accused Hollywood of promoting violence, rape and casual sex in music and movies.

In 1996 Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu defeats Shimon Peres to become Israel's prime minister.

In 1997 Pope John Paul II begins an 11-day tour of his native Poland, his seventh visit since assuming the papacy.

In 1998 Storms from Pennsylvania to New England, kill several people and knock out power for nearly 1 million customers.

In 1999 The treason trial of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan opens in Turkey. (He was convicted and sentenced to death.)

In 2000 President Clinton, visiting Portugal, promises to share any new missile defense technology with U.S. allies.

In 2002 A three-judge federal panel in Philadelphia ruled that public libraries cannot be forced to install software that blocks sexually explicit web sites.

In 2003 President Bush visits the site of the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.

In 2003 Olympic Park bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph is arrested outside a grocery store in Murphy, N.C.

In 2003 Air France's Concorde returns to Paris in a final commercial flight.

In 2004 Alberta Martin, one of the last widows of a Civil War veteran, dies in Enterprise, Alabama, at age 97.

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