Today in History

Today in History

1477 Swiss troops defeat the forces under Charles the Bold of Burgundy at the Battle of Nancy.

1815 Federalists from all over New England, angered over the War of 1812, draw up the Hartford Convention, demanding several important changes in the U.S. Constitution.

1861 The merchant vessel Star of the West sets sail from New York to Fort Sumter, in response to a rebel attack, carrying supplies and 250 troops.

1904 American Marines arrive in Seoul, Korea, to guard the U.S. legation there.

1914 Henry Ford astounds the world as he announces that he will pay a minimum wage of $5 a day and will share with employees $10 million in the previous year’s profits.

1917 Bulgarian and German troops occupy the Port of Braila.

1919 British ships shell the Bolshevik headquarters in Riga.

1920 GOP women demand equal representation at the Republican National Convention in June.

1921 Wagner’s “Die Walkyrie” opens in Paris. This is the first German opera performed in Paris since the beginning of World War I.

1923 The U.S. Senate debates the benefits of peyote for the American Indian.

1925 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is sworn in as the first female governor in the United States.

1936 Daggha Bur, Ethiopia, is bombed by the Italians.

1942 U.S. and Filipino troops complete their withdrawal to a new defensive line along the base of the Bataan peninsula.

1947 Great Britain nationalizes its coal mines.

1951 Inchon, South Korea, the site of General Douglas MacArthur’s amphibious flanking maneuver, is abandoned by United Nations forces to the advancing Chinese Army.

1952 Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington to confer with President Harry S. Truman.

1968 U.S. forces in Vietnam launch Operation Niagara I to locate enemy units around the Marine base at Khe Sanh.

1969 President Richard M. Nixon appoints Henry Cabot Lodge as negotiator at the Paris Peace Talks.

1971 President Richard M. Nixon names Robert Dole as chairman of the Republican National Party.

1982 A Federal judge voids a state law requiring balanced classroom treatment of evolution and creationism.

1991 The South Ossetia War (1991-92) begins as Georgian forces enter Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia, Georgia.

2005 Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, is discovered in images taken Oct. 21,

2003, at the Palomar Observatory.

Born

1779 Stephen Decatur; American naval hero during actions against the Barbary pirates in the War of 1812.

1876 Conrad Adenauer, first chancellor of post-World War II West Germany.

1928 Walter Mondale, 42nd Vice President of the United States; he was the Democratic presidential nominee who lost to Ronald Reagan in 1984, and Ambassador to Japan (1993-1996).

1932 Umberto Eco, Italian novelist (The Name of the Rose).

1938 Juan Carlos I, King of Spain.Í

History