Today In History...

In 1643 Louis XIV becomes King of France at age four upon the death of his father Louis XIII.
In 1787 The U.S. Constitutional Convention begins in Philadelphia.
In 1796 English physician Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination to an 8-year-old boy.
In 1804 Lewis And Clark set out to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory from St. Louis. Instead, they went overland across the Rocky Mountains.
In 1811 Paraguay gains it's independence.
In 1853 Gail Borden applies for a patent for making condensed milk.
In 1898 Tennis ball-sized hailstones hit Kansas City, MO, shattering thousands of windows.
In 1904 The first American Olympic Games are held in St. Louis, MO.
In 1942 The Women's Auxiliary Army Corps are established.
In 1948 The independent state of Israel is proclaimed in Tel Aviv as British rule in Palestine comes to an end.
In 1955 Representatives from eight Communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign the Warsaw Pact in Poland.
In 1964 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev joins United Arab Republic President Gamel Abdel Nasser in setting off charges, diverting the Nile River from the site of the Aswan High Dam project.
In 1973 The United States launches "Skylab One," its first manned space station.
In 1975 U.S. forces raid the Cambodian island of Koh Tang and recapture the American merchant ship Mayaguez. All 40 crew members were released safely by Cambodia, but some 40 U.S. servicemen were killed in the military operation.
In 1980 President Carter inaugurates the Department of Health and Human Services replacing the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
In 1981 Soyuz 40 is launched putting the first Rumanian in space.
In 1983 Lebanese President Amin Gemayel's Cabinet votes unanimously to approve a U.S. sponsored troop withdrawal agreement with Israel.
In 1985 U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz raises human rights and arms control issues during a six-hour meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at the Soviet Embassy in Vienna.
In 1986 Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev announces in a televised address that casualties from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had risen to nine dead and 299 hospitalized, but said, "The worst is behind us."
In 1987 Actress Rita Hayworth dies in New York at age 68.
In 1988 Lee Chin Yong of Korea sets a world record by performing 373 continuous chin-ups.
In 1988 27 are killed when a church bus collides with a pickup traveling the wrong way on a highway near Carrollton, Kentucky.
In 1990 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev declares the republics of Estonia and Latvia had no legal basis for moving towards independence.
In 1991 President Bush announces his selection of Robert M. Gates to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
In 1991 Britain's Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Washington to begin a two-week visit to the U.S. She would become the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
In 1991 Forty-two people are killed in a train collision in western Japan.
In 1992 Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev appeals to the U.S. Congress to pass a bill aiding the people of the former Soviet Union.
In 1992 Football player Lyle Alzado dies at age 43.
In 1994 The West Bank town of Jericho sees its first full day of Palestinian self-rule following the withdrawal of Israeli troops, an event celebrated by Palestinians.
In 1995 Myrlie Evers-Williams is sworn in to head the NAACP, pledging to lead the civil rights group away from its recent troubles and restore it as a political and social force.
In 1996 A tornado kills more than 440 people and injures more than 33,000 while flattening 80 villages in northern Bangladesh.
In 1996 A jury in Pontiac, MI, acquits Dr. Jack Kevorkian of assisted suicide charges, his third legal victory in two years.
In 1997 Jurors at the Timothy McVeigh trial in Denver view black-and-white surveillance pictures of a Ryder truck moving toward the Oklahoma City federal building minutes before a bomb exploded.
In 1998 "Seinfeld" signs off after nine years on NBC-TV.
In 2000 The New York Democratic Party, meeting in Albany, nominates First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for the U.S. Senate.
In 2000 Tens of thousands of mothers rally in Washington to demand strict control of handguns.
In 2001 The Supreme Court rules, 8-0, that there is no exception in federal law for people to use marijuana to ease their pain from cancer, AIDS or other illnesses.
In 2002 NATO and Russia reach a historic agreement to combat common security threats in the post-September 11 era.
In 2002 Former President Carter addresses Cubans in an unprecedented hour of live, uncensored television - telling them that their country did not meet international standards of democracy.
In 2012 Stanford University scientists develop prototype bionic eye.

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