Today In History...

In 1506 Christopher Columbus dies in poverty in Spain.
In 1639 The city council of Dorchester, MA, establishes the first school funded by community taxes.
In 1830 The first railroad timetable is published, in the newspaper the Baltimore American.
In 1861 North Carolina votes to secede from the Union.
In 1861 The capital of the Confederacy is moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia.
In 1862 President Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law, which opened millions of acres of free land to settlers in the West.
In 1874 Levi Strauss markets his blue jeans with copper rivets, priced at $13.50 a dozen.
In 1875 The International Bureau of Weights & Measures is established by treaty.
In 1892 George Sampson patents the clothes dryer.
In 1902 The United States ends its occupation of Cuba.
In 1926 Thomas Edison boldly predicts that Americans would always like silent movies better than talking pictures.
In 1927 At 7:40am, Charles Lindbergh takes off in the "Spirit of St. Louis" from Long Island, New York, on his historic solo flight across Atlantic to France.
In 1932 Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
In 1939 Regular transatlantic air service begins as a Pan American Airways plane, the "Yankee Clipper," takes off from Port Washington, NY, bound for Europe.
In 1961 A white mob attacks a busload of "Freedom Riders" in Montgomery, AL, prompting the federal government to send in U.S. Marshals.
In 1963 The U.S. Supreme Court sets aside the convictions of 31 students arrested for staging sit-in civil-rights protests at lunch counters in four southern states.
In 1969 U.S. and South Vietnamese forces capture Apbia Mountain, referred to as "Hamburger Hill" by the Americans, following one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.
In 1970 100,000 people demonstrate in New York's Wall Street district in support of U.S. policy in Vietnam and Cambodia.
In 1974 Soyuz 14 returns to Earth.
In 1977 A color TV trade restraint agreement is made between the U.S. and Japan.
In 1981 Radio personality Gary Owens is awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1984 Former Argentine President Isabel Peron, ousted from office by a military coup in 1976, returns to her homeland.
In 1985 The U.S.'s Radio Marti begins broadcasting to Cuba.
In 1985 The FBI arrests John A. Walker Jr., who was later convicted for spying for the Soviet Union.
In 1985 Israel releases more than 1,100 Arab prisoners in exchange for three Israeli soldiers.
In 1986 President Reagan urges the Senate to adopt, without changes, a major tax-overhaul bill reducing the top individual rate to 27 percent.
In 1988 30-year-old Laurie Dann walks into a Winnetka, IL, elementary school classroom, where she shot to death an 8-year-old student and wounded several others. After wounding a young man at his home, Dann takes her own life.
In 1990 An Israeli opens fire on a group of Palestinian laborers south of Tel Aviv and kills seven of them.
In 1990 The Hubble Space Telescope sends back its first photographs.
In 1991 Lawmakers in the Soviet Union voted to liberalize foreign travel and emigration.
In 1991 The American Red Cross announces measures aimed at screening blood more carefully for the AIDS virus.
In 1992 Claiming innocence to the end, Roger Keith Coleman is executed in Virginia's electric chair for the 1981 rape-murder of his sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy.
In 1993 An estimated 93 million people tune in for the final first-run episode of "Cheers" on NBC-TV.
In 1995 President Clinton announces that the two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House is permanently closed to motor vehicles.
In 1996 The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down, 6-3, a Colorado measure banning laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination.
In 1997 The U.S. Senate approves legislation to ban certain late-term abortions, but fell three votes shy of the total needed to override President Clinton's threatened veto.
In 2000 The five nuclear powers on the UN Security Council agree to eventually eliminate their nuclear arsenals, as part of a new disarmament agenda approved by 187 countries.
In 2002 President Bush refuses to budge toward easing restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba until Fidel Castro's government took steps to hold free and fair elections.
In 2003 The U.S. bans all beef imports from Canada after a lone case of mad cow disease was discovered in the heart of Canada's cattle country.
In 2013 Yahoo! purchases Tumblr for $1.1 billion.

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