Today In History...

Today In History...

   In 1496 Christopher Columbus concludes his second visit to the New World.

   In 1629 England's King Charles I dissolves Parliament.  He did not call it

           back for eleven years.

   In 1785 Thomas Jefferson is appointed minister to France, succeeding

           Benjamin Franklin.

   In 1848 The Senate ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war

           with Mexico.

   In 1849 Abraham Lincoln applies for a patent, the only U.S. president to do

           so.

   In 1864 Ulysses S. Grant becomes commander of the Union armies during the

           Civil War.

   In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell makes the first phone call in Boston, MA, to

           his assistant in the next room who heard "Mr. Watson, come here."

   In 1880 The Salvation Army arrives in the U.S. from England.

   In 1894 New York Governor Roswell P. Flower signs the nation's first dog

           licensing law. The license fee for a dog was $2.00, renewable each

           year for $1.00.

   In 1948 H.H. Hoover is the first civilian to exceed the speed of sound.

   In 1948 Czechoslovakia's anti-Communist foreign minister, Jan Masaryk

           plunges to his death in Prague.

   In 1949 Mildred Gillars, who made wartime broadcasts for the Nazis as "Axis

           Sally," is convicted of treason in Washington, DC.

   In 1969 James Earl Ray pleades guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther

           King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.

   In 1977 Rings of the planet Uranus are discovered during occultation of SAO.

   In 1978 Soyuz 28 returns to Earth.

   In 1980 The author of the "Scarsdale Diet," Dr. Herman Tarnover, is shot to

           death at his home in Purchase, New York. (Jean Harris was arrested

           and convicted of the crime).

   In 1983 Pope John Paul II returns to the Vatican from an eight-day tour of

           Central America.

   In 1983 Former British diplomat Donald Maclean, who betrayed his country by

           spying for the Soviet Union, dies in Moscow at age 69.

   In 1985 Soviet leader, Konstantin U. Chernenko dies at age 73.

   In 1986 Actor Ray Milland dies at age 78 and comedian Myron Cohen dies at

           age 83.

   In 1987 The Vatican issues a strong statement against test tube babies,

           surrogate motherhood and cloning.

   In 1988 Austrian President Kurt Waldheim apologizes on his country's behalf

           for atrocities committed by Austrian Nazis during World War II.

   In 1989 One day after the Senate rejected the defense secretary nomination

           of John Tower, President Bush announced he would nominate U.S. Rep.

           Dick Cheney.

   In 1990 Haitian ruler Lieutenant General Prosper Avril resigns.

   In 1991 Eight Arab governments endorse President Bush's Middle East peace

           proposal calling for Israel to relinquish territory, and reiterated

           their desire for a peace conference.

   In 1991 Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrate in Moscow, demanding

           that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev resign.

   In 1993 Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside a Pensacola, Florida,

           abortion clinic.

   In 1993 Authorities announce the arrest of Nidal Ayyad, a second suspect in

           the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

   In 1993 C. Northcote Parkinson, author of "Parkinson's Law," dies at age 83.

   In 1994 White House officials begin testifying before a federal grand jury

           regarding the Whitewater controversy.

   In 1995 Former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari flees to the U.S.

   In 1996 Hezbollah guerrillas launch a wave of bomb and rocket attacks on

           Israeli troops in south Lebanon.

   In 1997 The White House and the FBI clash in a rare public quarrel after

           President Clinton said he should have been alerted when the bureau

           told national security officials that the Chinese government might

           be trying to influence U.S. elections.

   In 1998 U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf get their first vaccinations against

           anthrax.

   In 1998 Indonesia's President Suharto is re-elected to a seventh term.

   In 1998 U.S. Air Force and Navy personnel in the Persian Gulf receive

           vaccinations against anthrax.

   In 1998 Actor Lloyd Bridges dies in Westwood, CA, at age 85.

   In 2002 Israeli helicopters destroy Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's

           office in Gaza City, hours after eleven Israelis were killed in a

           suicide bombing.

   In 2004 Teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo is sentenced to life in prison.