Today In History...

   In 1533 Pope Clement VII excommunicates England's King Henry VIII.
   In 1798 The U.S. Marine Corps is created by an act of Congress.
   In 1804 Vice-president Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Treasury Secretary
           Alexander Hamilton in a pistol duel near Weehawken, New Jersey.
   In 1864 General Jubal Early's Confederate troops begin the invasion of
           Washington, DC, but turn back the next day.
   In 1921 Mongolia gains its independence from China.
   In 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first president to
           travel through the Panama Canal while in office, aboard the crusier
           Houston.
   In 1952 The Republican National Convention, meeting in Chicago, nominates
           Dwight D. Eisenhower for president and Richard M. Nixon for vice
           president.
   In 1955 The new U.S. Air Force Academy is dedicated at Lowry Air Base in
           Colorado.
   In 1962 Cosmonaut Micolaev sets a longevity space flight record of 4 days.
   In 1974 The World Football League plays its first games.
   In 1977 The Medal of Freedom is awarded posthumously to Martin Luther King.
   In 1978 216 people are killed when a tanker truck overfilled with propylene
           gas explodes on a coastal highway south of Tarragona, Spain, setting
           off a fireball.
   In 1979 The abandoned U.S. space station Skylab returns to Earth, burning up
           in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and
           Australia.
   In 1980 American hostage Richard I. Queen is freed by Iran.
   In 1983 An Ecuadorean jetliner crashes into a mountain and explodes, killing
           all 119 people aboard.
   In 1984 Congress passes a law stating that all new cars must have air
           airbags, unless two thirds of the states pass seat belt laws.
   In 1984 Two cleaning women aboard a jet airliner find an $80,000 ring
           belonging to the wife of South Africa's Prime Mininster P.K. Botha.
   In 1985 Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros becomes the first pitcher in major
           league baseball to strike out 4000 batters.
   In 1986 An Air Force plane crashes in Sequoia National Forest in California.
           Officials revealed little, but experts speculated the plane was a
           radar-evading stealth fighter, a plane whose existence had yet to be
           officially confirmed.
   In 1989 U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp states
           that some $2 billion had been lost due to "fraud and mismanagement."
   In 1989 Laurence Olivier, considered by many the finest English-speaking
           actor of his generation, dies at age 82.
   In 1990 Leaders of the so-called "Group of Seven" nations conclude their
           summit in Houston.
   In 1991 A solar eclipse casts a blanket of darkness stretching 9,000 miles
           from Hawaii to South America, lasting nearly seven minutes.
   In 1991 A Nigerian Airlines jet carrying Muslim pilgrims crashes at the
           Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, international airport, killing all 261 people
           on board.
   In 1992 Undeclared presidential hopeful Ross Perot, addressing the NAACP
           convention in Nashville, TN, startled and offended his listeners by
           referring to the predominantly black audience as "you people."
   In 1993 President Clinton wraps up his visit to South Korea with a visit to
           the Demilitarized Zone separating South and North Korea.
   In 1993 In Des Moines, Iowa, severe flooding shuts down a water system
           serving 250,000 residents.
   In 1994 Haiti's army-backed regime orders the expulsion of international
           human rights observers.
   In 1994 Shawn Eckardt was sentenced in Portland, OR, to 1 1/2 years in
           prison for his role in the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.
   In 1995 The U.S. normalizes relations with Vietnam.
   In 1996 An Air Force jet trying to make an emergency landing slams into a
           house in Pensacola, FL, setting it on fire, killing a 4-year-old
           boy and badly burning his mother. (The pilot ejected safely.)
   In 1997 Doctors announce the first embryonic cell tissue transplant in U.S.
           to slow spinal cord damage in paralyzed man.
   In 1997 Fire breaks out at the Royal Jomtien Hotel in Pattaya, Thailand,
   In 197C illing 91 tourists.
   In 1998 Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie, a casualty of the Vietnam War, is
           laid to rest near his Missouri home after the positive ID of his
           remains, which had been enshrined at the Tomb of the Unknowns.
   In 1999 A U.S. Air Force cargo jet, braving the Antarctic winter, swept down
           over the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Center to drop off
           emergency medical supplies for Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a physician at the
           center who had discovered a lump in her breast.
   In 2000 A Middle East Summit, hosted by President Clinton, opens at Camp
           David between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian
           leader Yasser Arafat.
   In 2000 The African Methodist Episcopal Church, the nation's oldest black
           church, elects Reverand Vashti McKenzie of Baltimore as its first
           female bishop.
   In 2001 The Democratic-led U.S. Senate votes to bar coal mining and oil and
           gas drilling on pristine federally protected land in the West.
   In 2003 The World Trade Organization rules that heavy duties on steel
           imports imposed by the U.S. violated global trade rules.
   In 2004 Joe Gold, the founder of the original Gold's Gym in 1965, dies at 82.

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