Today in History

Today in History

1776 – British troops captured Fort Washington during the American Revolution.

1885 – Canadian rebel Louis Riel was executed for high treason.

1907 – Oklahoma was admitted as the 46th state.

1915 – Coca-Cola had its prototype for a countoured bottle patented. The bottle made its commercial debut the next year.

1933 – The United States and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations for the first time.

1952 – In the Peanuts comic strip, Lucy first held a football for Charlie Brown.

1957 – Jim Brown (Cleveland Browns) set an NFL season rushing record of 1163 yards after only eight games.

1966 – Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard was acquitted in his second trial of charges he had murdered his pregnant wife, Marilyn, in 1954.

1969 – The U.S. Army announced that several had been charged with massacre and the subsequent cover-up in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam on March 16, 1968.

1973 – Skylab 3 carrying a crew of three astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on an 84-day mission.

1973 – U.S. President Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.

1981 – A vaccine for hepatitis B was approved. The vaccine had been developed at Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research.

1982 – An agreement was announced on the 57th day of a strike by National Football League (NFL) players.

1985 – Colonel Oliver North was put in charge of the shipment of HAWK anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.

1988 – Estonia's parliament declared that the Baltic republic 'sovereign,' but stopped short of complete independence.

1994 – Major League Soccer announced that it would start its inaugural season in 1996.

1997 – China released Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy dissident from jail for medical reasons. He had been incarcerated for almost 18 years.

1998 – In Burlington, WIsconsin, five high school students, aged 15 to 16, were arrested in an alleged plot to kill a carefully selected group of teachers and students.

1998 – It was announced that Monica Lewinsky had signed a deal for the North American rights to a book about her affair with U.S. President Clinton.

1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court said that union members could file discrimination lawsuits against employers even when labor contracts require arbitration.

1999 – Johnny Depp received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 – Chrica Adams, the pregnant girlfriend of Rae Carruth, was shot four times in her car. She died a month later from her wounds. The baby survived. Carruth was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years and 11 months in prison for his role in the murder.

2000 – Bill Clinton became the first serving U.S. president to visit Communist Vietnam.

2001 – The movie 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' opened in the U.S. and U.K.

2004 – A NASA unmanned 'scramjet' (X-43A) reached a speed of nearly 10 times the speed of sound above the Pacific Ocean.

History