Today In History...

In 1783 Man's first free-flight took place in France in a Hot Air Balloon.
In 1789 North Carolina becomes the 12th U.S. state.
In 1877 Thomas Edison announces he's invented the phonograph, which he calls a "talking machine."
In 1922 Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia is the first woman to serve as a member of the U.S. Senate.
In 1933 W.C. Bullitt is the first U.S. ambassador to USSR.
In 1942 The Alaska highway across Canada formally opens.
In 1945 American humorist Robert Benchley dies at age 56.
In 1952 The first two color U.S. postage stamp is introduced.
In 1959 Jack Benny (violin) and Vice President Richard Nixon (piano) play their famed duet.
In 1963 President Kennedy and wife Jacqueline arrive in San Antonio for a 2-day tour of Texas.
In 1964 The Verrazano Narrows, the world's longest suspension bridge at the time, opens linking Brooklyn and Staten Island.
In 1967 The single kite altitude record is set at 28,000 feet.
In 1969 The Senate votes, 55-45, against the nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth to the U.S. Supreme Court, the first time a candidate for the nation's highest court was rejected since 1930.
In 1973 President Nixon's attorney J. Fred Buzhardt reveals the presence of an 18 1/2 minute gap in the White House recordings related to Watergate.
In 1979 A mob sets the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan on fire, killing two Americans.
In 1980 "The Who Shot J.R." episode of "Dallas" premieres on CBS-TV.
In 1980 87 people die in a fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas.
In 1982 The NFL resumed its season following a 57-day players' strike.
In 1984 More than 140 people are injured when two Philadelphia-bound commuter trains collide at a suburban station during morning rush-hour.
In 1985 Hurricane Kate hits Mexico Beach, Florida, with 100mph winds.
In 1985 Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard is accused of spying for Israel.
In 1985 President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev conclude their Geneva summit.
In 1986 CIA director William Casey defends secret U.S. arms sales to Iran during closed-door sessions with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
In 1987 An 8-day siege begins at a detention center in Oakdale, Louisiana, as Cuban detainees seized the facility and took hostages.
In 1988 Canada's Progressive Conservative Party, led by Prime MinisterBrian Mulroney, wins the country's general election.
In 1989 The proceedings of Britain's House of Commons are televised livefor the first time.
In 1990 President Bush arrives in Saudi Arabia, where he conferred with Saudi King Fahd and Kuwait's exiled emir.
In 1990 Junk-bond financier Michael R. Milken, who had pleaded guilty to six felony counts, is sentenced by a federal judge in New York to ten years in prison. (Milken served two.)
In 1991 The U.N. Security Council chooses Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt to be the new Secretary-General.
In 1991 President Bush signs a civil rights bill, then sought to calm a storm of controversy by withdrawing a tentative order to end government hiring preferences for blacks and women.
In 1992 Oregon Senator Bob Packwood issues an apology but refused to discuss allegations that he'd made unwelcome sexual advances toward ten women over the years.
In 1993 Actor Bill Bixby dies at age 59 of cancer.
In 1993 The U.S. House of Representatives vote, 277-153, against making the District of Columbia the 51st U.S. state.
In 1994 Senator Jesse Helms remarks in a newspaper interview that President Clinton "had better have a bodyguard" if he travels to military bases in North Carolina. Helms later called his comment "a mistake."
In 1995 The Dow Jones industrial average closes above the 5,000 mark forthe first time.
In 1995 Balkan leaders meeting in Dayton, OH, initial a peace plan to end 3 1/2 years of ethnic fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In 1995 France detonates a fourth underground nuclear blast at its test site in the South Pacific.
In 1996 33 people are killed, more than 100 injured, when an gas explosion destroys a 6-story building in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
In 1998 President Clinton, visiting South Korea, warns North Korea to forsake nuclear weapons and urged the North to seize a "historic opportunity" for peace with the South.
In 1999 China completes its first unmanned test of a spacecraft meant to carry astronauts.
In 1999 Quentin Crisp, best-known for his autobiography "The Naked Civil Servant," dies in Manchester, England, at age 90.
In 2000 In a setback for George W. Bush, the Florida Supreme Court grantsAl Gore's request to keep the presidential recounts going.
In 2001 Ottilie Lundgren, a 94-year-old resident of Oxford, CT, dies of inhalation anthrax in a case that baffled investigators.
In 2003 More than a dozen rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraq's Oil Ministry and two downtown Baghdad hotels used by foreign journalists and civilian defense contractors.
In 2004 Donald Trump's casino empire files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
In 2004 The NBA suspends Indiana's Ron Artest for the rest of the season following a brawl that broke out at the end of a game against the Detroit Pistons.

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