Today In History...

In 1709 Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is rescued.
In 1790 The U.S. Supreme Court convenes for the first time, at the Royal Exchange Building on Broad Street in New York.
In 1861 Texas votes to secede from the Union during the Civil War.
In 1862 The "Battle Hymn of the Republic," a poem by Julia Ward Howe, is published in the Atlantic Monthly.
In 1867 Bricklayers start working 8-hour days.
In 1893 Thomas Edison completes work on the world's first motion picture studio, in West Orange, New Jersey.
In 1898 The Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, CT, issues the first auto insurance policy to Dr. Truman J. Martin of Buffalo, New York, for $11.05.
In 1914 Pennsylvania creates the first movie censorship board.
In 1920 The first armored car is introduced.
In 1920 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is formed when the Royal Northwest Mounted Police merge with the Dominion Police.
In 1943 One of America's most decorated military units of World War II, the 442nd Regimental Combat team, made up of almost entirely Japanese-Americans, is authorized.
In 1946 Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie is chosen to be the first secretary-general of the United Nations.
In 1951 An atomic explosion is first broadcast on television.
In 1951 The first X-ray moving picture process is demonstrated.
In 1958 Egypt and Syria form the United Arab Republic.
In 1960 Four black students stage the first civil rights sit-in at a "whites-only" lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In 1961 "The Misfits," Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe's last film, opens.
In 1967 Buick begins offering 8-track stereo options in their cars.
In 1968 During the Vietnam War, Saigon's police chief, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, executes a Viet Cong officer with a single pistol shot to the head in a scene captured in a now-famous photograph.
In 1972 First scientific hand-held calculator, the HP-35, is introduced.
In 1978 President Jimmy Carter gives a speech favoring the return of the Canal back to Panama.
In 1979 Ayatollah Khomeni returns after 15 years of exile to lead Iran following the overthrow of the Shah.
In 1979 Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, whose prison sentence for bank robbery had been commuted by President Carter, leaves a federal prison near San Francisco.
In 1983 Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov rejects President Reagan's proposal for a summit to sign a ban on medium-range nuclear missles.
In 1985 Paul G. Kirk Jr. is elected chairman of the Democratic Party, defeating former North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford.
In 1987 Steelworkers take pay cuts and return to their jobs, ending a six month shutdown of USX.
In 1987 Wall Street Journal reporter Gerald Seib is detained in Iran on charges of being a spy.
In 1988 Denying any wrongdoing, Attorney General Edwin Meese III said he didn't recall part of a memo about a proposed Iraqi pipeline project that referred to a plan to bribe Israeli officials.
In 1989 In his first diplomatic mission of the Bush administration, Vice President Dan Quayle begins a trip to Venezuela and El Salvador.
In 1990 East Germany's Communist premier, Hans Modrow, appeals for negotiations with West Germany to forge a "united fatherland."
In 1992 President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin meet at Camp David.
In 1992 Irving R. Kaufman, the federal judge who sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death, dies in New York at age 81.
In 1993 Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announces that Israel would repatriate about 100 Palestinians deported to Lebanon, an offer rejected bythe deportees.
In 1994 Jeff Gillooly pleads guilty to racketeering and strikes deal with prosecutors to testify his ex-wife, Tonya Harding, approved assault on Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan.
In 1995 The Federal Reserve boosts interest rates by 0.5 percent, the seventh rate hike in a year.
In 1997 Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori promises to open "preliminary dialogue" with rebels holding 72 hostages in Lima.
In 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Herb Caen dies at age 80.
In 1998 U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright concedes she had made little progress with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in a visit to the region aimed at bringing the two sides closer together.
In 1999 Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky gives a deposition that was videotaped for senators weighing impeachment charges against President Clinton.
In 2003 At least 50 people are killed in a Zimbabwe train collision.
In 2004 The New England Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers, 32-29, at Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston.
In 2024 Black History Month begins.