Today In History...

In 1776 British troops capture Fort Washington during the American Revolution.
In 1864 Union General William T. Sherman begins his "March to the Sea" through Georgia during the Civil War.
In 1885 Canadian rebel Louis Riel is executed for high treason.
In 1901 Three race cars break the 60mph "barrier" in the same race at Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway.
In 1907 Oklahoma becomes the 46th U.S. state.
In 1914 The twelve Federal Reserve Banks open.
In 1926 Ohio State University honors Maurine Ormsby, an award-winning purebred Holstein cow, as homecoming queen.
In 1933 The U.S. establishes diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.
In 1933 Brazil's President Getulio Vargas assumes dictatorial powers.
In 1941 Nazi Germany launches a second assault on Moscow during World War II, again doomed to failure.
In 1950 The U.N. gets U.S. government approval to issue postage stamps.
In 1955 The first speed-boat to exceed 200 mph (D.M. Campbell).
In 1961 House Speaker Samuel T. Rayburn dies in Bonham, TX, having served as speaker since 1940 except for two terms.
In 1965 Plans for Walt Disney World are announced.
In 1966 Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard is acquitted in his second trial, of charges he had murdered pregnant wife, Marilyn, in 1954.
In 1968 The Soviet Union announces it had launched the world's largest space ship to date, the Proton Four.
In 1969 News of the Vietnam My Lai massacre breaks.
In 1970 Pakistani officials say the death toll in a typhoon and tidal wave that struck the Bay of Bengal may reach 500,000.
In 1972 The U.S. and several European allies invite the Soviet Union to participate in exploratory talks on reducing military forces in Central Europe.
In 1973 Skylab III carrying a crew of three American astronauts is launched on a 84-day mission.
In 1973 President Nixon signs the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.
In 1977 The Shah of Iran, leaving Tehran for a meeting with President Jimmy Carter, says he will work against an increase in oil prices.
In 1979 The FAA fines American Airlines $500,000 for poor maintenance.
In 1981 Actor William Holden, age 63, is found dead in his Santa Monica, California, apartment.
In 1982 NFL players end an 8-week walkout.
In 1983 A jury in Gretna, Louisiana, acquits California feminist leader Ginny Foat of the murder of an Argentine businessman during a robbery outside New Orleans in 1965.
In 1984 The space shuttle Discovery lands at Cape Canaveral, FL, carrying on board the first two satellites ever salvaged from outer space.
In 1987 The U.S. Supreme Court, by an 8-0 vote, upholds the federal mail and wire fraud convictions former Wall Street Journal reporter R.Foster Winans in connection with an insider-trading scheme.
In 1988 Voters in Pakistan cast ballots in their first open election in more than a decade.
In 1989 The heart of an Israeli soldier ambushed and killed by Arabs in the occupied territories is transplanted into the chest of a dying Palestinian man.
In 1989 Six Jesuit priests and two other people are slain by uniformed gunmen at the Jose Simeon Canas University in El Salvador in an attack later blamed on army troops.
In 1990 Hungary announces it will unilaterally scrap its Soviet-made ground-to-ground missiles.
In 1990 Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev tells an angry legislature he would fire any officials blocking his reform plans.
In 1991 Boris Yeltsin announces the transfer of control of his republic's economy from Soviet central government to the Russian Federation.
In 1992 The UN Security Council votes to authorize a naval blockade on the Danube River and the Adriatic coast to tighten economic sanctions on Yugoslavia.
In 1993 The Senate votes, 69-30, to approve a measure designed to protect people who provide or seek abortions from physical attacks or intimidation by abortion opponents.
In 1994 A federal judge issues a temporary restraining order prohibiting California from implementing Proposition 187, the voter-approved measure that would deny most public services to illegal aliens.
In 1995 U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno discloses she has Parkinson's disease.
In 1997 Wei Jingsheng, China's most prominent pro-democracy campaigner, is freed on medical parole after nearly 18 years in prison and flownto the U.S. for treatment.
In 1997 Most Arab nations boycott the Middle East Economic summit in Qatar in protest of Israel's hard-line policies.
In 1998 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that union members can file discrimination lawsuits against employers even when labor contracts require arbitration.
In 1999 13-year-old Nathaniel Abraham, among the youngest murder defendants in U.S. history, is convicted in Pontiac, MI, of second-degree murder for shooting a stranger outside a convenience store with a rifle when he was 11.
In 2000 Bill Clinton arrives in Vietnam, becoming the first U.S. president to visit Hanoi.
In 2004 President Bush chooses National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to be his new secretary of state, succeeding Colin Powell.

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