Today In History...

In 1777 During the American Revolution, forces under General George Washington suffer defeat at the hands of the British in the Battle of Brandywine near Wilmington, Delaware.
In 1789 Alexander Hamilton is appointed the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
In 1814 An American fleet scores a decisive victory over the British in the Battle of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812.
In 1853 The electric telegraph is used for the first time.
In 1910 The first commercial electric bus line opens in Hollywood, CA.
In 1919 The U.S. marines invade Honduras.
In 1936 President Franklin Roosevelt dedicates Boulder Dam, now known as Hoover Dam, by pressing a key in Washington to signal the startup of the dam's first hydroelectric generator in Nevada.
In 1941 Aviation hero Charles Lindbergh charges "the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration" were trying to draw the United States into World War II.
In 1944 President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet in Canada at the second Quebec Conference.
In 1946 The first mobile long-distance car-to-car telephone conversation.
In 1947 The U.S. Defense Department is formed.
In 1950 The "Dick Tracy" TV show sparks an uproar concerning violence.
In 1954 The Miss America beauty pageant makes its network TV debut on ABC. Miss California, Lee Ann Meriwether, was crowned the winner.
In 1967 The TV variety series "The Carol Burnett Show" begins its eleven year run on CBS.
In 1967 U.S. Surveyor V makes the first chemical analysis of lunar material.
In 1971 Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev dies of a heart attack at age 77.
In 1972 The troubled Munich Summer Olympic Games come to an end.
In 1973 Chilean President Salvador Allende dies in a violent military coup.
In 1978 Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian defector, dies at a British hospital four days after he was stabbed by a man wielding a poisoned umbrella tip.
In 1982 46 people are killed in a U.S. Army helicopter crash near Mannheim, West Germany.
In 1984 Secretary of State George Schultz confirms publicly that thousands of children fathered by American G.I.s were still in Vietnam.
In 1984 Hurricane Diana slams into North Carolina's southeastern coast with winds clocked at 100 mph.
In 1985 Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds cracked career hit number 4,192 off Eric Show of the San Diego Padres, eclipsing the record held by Ty Cobb.
In 1985 A U.S. satellite glides through the tail of the Giacobini-Zinner comet in the first-ever on-the-spot sampling of a comet.
In 1986 Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered biggest one-day decline ever, plummeting 86.61 points to 1,792.89.
In 1987 Actor Lorne Green ("Bonanza") dies at age 72.
In 1989 The exodus of East German refugees from Hungary to West Germany by way of Austria begins.
In 1990 President Bush addresses Congress on the Persian Gulf crisis, vowing that "Saddam Hussein will fail" in his takeover of Kuwait.
In 1991 Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announces that thousands of troops would be withdrawn from Cuba, a move bitterly denounced by the Havana government.
In 1992 Hurricane Iniki strikes Hawaii, leaving at least 5 people dead and more than 10,000 homes damaged or destroyed.
In 1992 President Bush announces he was approving the sale of 72 F-15 jet fighters to Saudi Arabia.
In 1993 Antoine Izmery, a prominent supporter of exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is shot and killed outside a church in Port-au-Prince.
In 1994 Actress Jessica Tandy dies in Easton, CT, at age 85.
In 1994 Andre Agassi wins the men's championship at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, defeating Michael Stich.
In 1996 Two top officials with the Health and Human Services Department resigned over President Clinton's signing of the Republican welfare overhaul bill. (Another official had resigned the month before).
In 1997 According to Army's largest-ever study of the problem, "sexual harassment exists throughout the Army, crossing gender, rank and racial lines."
In 1997 Scotland creates its own Parliament after 290 years of union with England.
In 1998 Independent counsel Kenneth Starr sends his report to Congress, which included explicit testimony of President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. The report accused him of 11 possible impeachable offenses.
In 1999 Serena Williams wins the U.S. Open women's title, beating top-seeded Martina Hingis.
In 2000 A FTC report says the movie, video game and music industries aggressively marketed to underage youths violent products that carry adult ratings.
In 2001 Terrorists crash 2 hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York, bringing down the twin 110-story towers, killing more than 3000 people. Another hijacked plane slams into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, killing at least 189 people. A fourth hijacked plane crashes in rural southern Pennsylvania, killing 44 people aboard. It was worst single act of terrorism ever committed on U.S. soil.
In 2002 Johnny Unitas, the Football Hall-of-Famer quarterback that won three championships with the Baltimore Colts and broke nearly every passing record, dies of a heart attack at age 69.
In 2003 Actor John Ritter ("Three's Company") dies at age 54.
In 2004 Svetlana Kuznetsova overwhelms Elena Dementieva 6-3, 7-5, in the first all-Russian U.S. Open final.

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