Today In History...

In 1718, Hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some settling in present-day New Orleans.
In 1822 William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus, died at age 85.
In 1825, Uruguay declared independence from Brazil.
In 1830, Belgium began a revolt against the Netherlands.
In 1835, 1835 The New York Sun published a moon hoax story about John Herschel.
In 1835, Ann Ruthledge, said by some to be the early true love of Abraham Lincoln, died in Illinois at age 22.
In 1875, Captain Matthew Webb became the first to swim across the English Channel, traveling from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.
In 1900 Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche dies in Weimar, Germany.
In 1908, The first $50,000 trotting race in the United States, the American Trotting Derby, was won by Allen Winter.
In 1916, The National Park Service is1916 The National Park Service was established within the U.S. Department of the Interior.
In 1919, The first scheduled passenger service was by airplane (Paris-London).
In 1921, The U.S. signed a peace treaty with Germany.
In 1943, 1943 U.S. forces overrun New Georgia in the Solomon Islands during World War II.
In 1944, Romania declared war on Germany.
In 1944, Allied forces liberated Paris from 4 years of German occupation during World War II.
In 1950, President Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.
In 1981, Voyager II's approach to Saturn discovered thousands of rings.
In 1983, The U.S. and the Soviet Union signed a $10 billion grain pact requiring the Soviets to purchase at least 9 million metric tons of American grain each year for five years.
In 1984, The French ship Mont Louis, carrying 4 tons of radioactive materials, collided with a Ferry and sank off the Belgium coast.
In 1984, Truman Capote, author of "In Cold Blood," was found dead in Los Angeles at 59.
In 1985, 19-year-old Dwight Gooden was the youngest pitcher to win 20 games in one season.
In 1985, Samantha Smith, the schoolgirl whose letter to Yuri Andropov resulted in her famous peace tour of the Soviet Union, is killed with her father in an airliner crash in Maine.
In 1986, The reported death toll continued to climb in the central African nation of Cameroon, where toxic gas from a volcanic lake killed more than 1,700 people.
In 1987, The Dow Jones average of industrial stocks reached a record 2722.42.
In 1987a, Amy Biehl was slain by a South African mo; Saudi Arabia denounced Iran's government as a "group of terrorists" and said its forces would deal firmly with Iranian attempts to attack the Saudis' Muslim holy places or vast oil fields.
In 1989, Congressman Barney Frank, D-MA, acknowledged hiring a male prostitute as a personal employee, then firing him after suspecting the aide was selling sex from Frank's apartment.
In 1991, Thousands of abortion foes rallied at a stadium in Wichita, KS, where six weeks of anti-abortion protests led by Operation Rescue resulted in more than 2,600 arrests.
In 1992, Hurricane Andrew slammed into the Louisiana coast.
In 1993, a Fulbright scholar from Newport Beach, California.
In 1993, The U.S. issued limited sanctions against China and Pakistan after the Chinese had sold missile technology to the Pakistanis.
In 1994, The Senate passed a $30 billion crime bill by a 61-38 vote.
In 1995, Chinese-American human rights activist Harry Wu, safely back on U.S. soil after two months in Chinese detention, said the spying case against him was "all lies."
In 1996, President Clinton began a whistlestop train trip in Huntington, WV, that took him to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In 1997, Egon Krenz, the East German communist leader who opened the Berlin Wall 8 years previous, was convicted of the deaths of citizens trying to flee to the West during the Cold War.
In 1997, The Dow Corning Corp. offered $2.4 billion to settle claims from more than 200,000 women with ills related to silicone breast implants.
In 1997, Chang Sung Gil, North Korea's ambassador to Egypt, defects to the U.S., the first top diplomat to abandon the communist state.
In 1997, The tobacco industry agreed to an $11.3 billion settlement with the state of Florida.
In 1998, 7 Cuban-Americans were indicted by a federal grand jury in Puerto Rico on conspiracy to murder Fidel Castro.
In 1998, Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell died Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell died at age 90.
In 2001, Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby, a single mother and former waitress, married Norway's Crown Prince Haakon in Oslo.
In 2002 Former Swedish diplomat Per Anger, who'd worked with Raoul Wallenberg in shielding thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps, died in Stockholm, Sweden, at age 88.

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