Today In History...

Today In History...

   In 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from the island of Elba to begin his

           second conquest of France.

   In 1848 The Second French Republic is proclaimed.

   In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln signs the National Currency Act.

   In 1869 The 15th Amendment to the U.S. constitution, guaranteeing right to

           vote, is sent to states.

   In 1870 New York City's first pneumatic-powered subway line is opened.

   In 1895 Michael Owens of Toledo, Ohio, patents a glass-blowing machine.

   In 1907 Congress now makes $7500 a year; V.P. gets $12,000 a year.

   In 1916 The world's worst marine diaster is recorded when the French cruiser

           Province sinks in the Mediterranean Sea with a loss of 3100 lives.

   In 1919 Congress establishes the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

   In 1929 President Calvin Coolidge signs a measure establishing Grand Teton

           National Park.

   In 1930 New York City installs traffic lights.

   In 1940 The United States Air Defense Command is created.

   In 1951 The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, limiting

           the President to two terms in office.

   In 1952 Winston Churchill announces that Britain had developed its own

           atomic bomb.

   In 1960 Home fallout shelter kits go on the market in New York for $105.

   In 1962 Astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, speaks

           to a joint meeting of Congress.

   In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a $11.5 billion tax cut.

   In 1965 Indonesia seizes U.S. rubber plantations.

   In 1966 The first Apollo test flight is a success.

   In 1969 Levi Eshkol dies and Golda Meir becomes premiere of Israel.

   In 1972 Unmanned Soviet lunar probe, Luna XX, returns moon rocks to Earth.

   In 1979 A total solar eclipse casts a moving shadow 175 miles wide from

           Oregon to North Dakota before moving north into Canada.

   In 1981 The Corporation for Public Broadcasting receives a $150 million

           pledge from TV Guide publisher Walter Annenberg.

   In 1984 The Rev. Jesse Jackson acknowledges in Concord, NH, using the word

           "Hymie" to refer to Jews during a private conversation, saying it

           was "insensitive and wrong."

   In 1986 Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Robert Penn Warren is named

           the first "poet laureate" of the United States.

   In 1987 The Tower Commission issues a report on the Iran/Contra affair

           rebuking President Reagan for failing to control his national

           security staff.

   In 1988 The Soviet Union's hockey team wins the gold medal at the Winter

           Olympics in Calgary, Canada.

   In 1988 Eric Arturo Delvalle, ousted as president of Panama by the country's

           National Assembly, calls for a national strike to repudiate General

           Manuel Antonio Noriega.

   In 1990 Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega concedes defeat to his opponet,

           Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, in an election upset.

   In 1991 Kuwaiti resistance leaders assume control of their capital,

           following nearly 7 months of Iraqi occupation. Iraqi President

           Saddam Hussein orders his forces to withdraw from Kuwait.

   In 1992 The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that sexually harassed

           students may sue to collect monetary damages from their schools and

           school officials.

   In 1992 The Supreme Court of Ireland clears the way for a 14-year-old girl

           to leave the country for an abortion.

   In 1993 A bomb built by a group of Islamic extremists explodes in the

           parking garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people

           and injuring more than 1000 others.

   In 1994 All defendants in the Branch Davidians trial are acquitted of

           first-degree murder but four convicted of voluntary manslaughter;

           two convicted of weapons charges and four acquitted of all charges.

   In 1995 The first of 1,800 U.S. Marines land in Somalia to evacuate the last

           U.N. peacekeepers.

   In 1995 Barings PLC, Britain's oldest investment banking firm, collapses

           after Nick Leeson, a 28-year-old British securities dealer loses

           over $1.4 billion gambling in Asian futures markets.

   In 1996 President Clinton steps up economic sanctions on Cuba in response to

           Cuba's downing of two unarmed airplanes belonging to the

           Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue.

   In 1997 In a first for a major city, Pittsburgh announces a plan to repair a

           police department accused of a pattern of abuse and misconduct.

   In 1997 Israel's cabinet votes to build a new Jewish neighborhood in

           disputed east Jerusalem.

   In 1998 Michael Milken agrees to pay $47 million to settle civil charges he

           violated lifelong ban from Wall Street.

   In 1998 A jury rejects an $11 million lawsuit filed by Texas cattlemen who

           blamed Oprah Winfrey for price fall after on-air comment about

           mad-cow disease.

   In 2000 Pope John Paul II visits Mount Sinai in Egypt, where he prayed for

           religious tolerance in a garden under the peak revered as the place

           where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

   In 2001 A UN tribunal convicts a Bosnian Croat political leader (Dario

           Kordic) and a military commander (Mario Cerkez) of war crimes for

           ordering the systematic murder of Muslim civilians.

   In 2002 Pharmacist Robert R. Courtney pleaded guilty in Kansas City,

           Missouri, to watering down chemotherapy drugs. (He was later

           sentenced to 30 years in prison.)