Today in History_____________

Today in History_____________

History

1492 Catholic forces under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella take the town of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain.

1758 The French begin bombardment of Madras, India.

1839 Photography pioneer Louis Daguerre takes the first photograph of the moon.

1861 The USS Brooklyn is readied at Norfolk to aid Fort Sumter.

1863 In the second day of hard fighting at Stone’s River, near Murfreesboro, TN, Union troops defeat the Confederates.

1903 President Theodore Roosevelt closes a post office in Indianola, Mississippi, for refusing to hire a Black postmistress.

1904 U.S. Marines are sent to Santo Domingo to aid the government against rebel forces.

1905 After a six-month siege, the Russians surrender Port Arthur to the Japanese.

1918 Russian Bolsheviks threaten to re-enter World War I unless Germany returns occupied territory.

1932 Japanese forces in Manchuria set up a puppet government known as Manchukuo.

1936 In Berlin, Nazi officials claim that their treatment of Jews is not the business of the League of Nations.

1942 In the Philippines, the city of Manila and the U.S. Naval base at Cavite fall to Japanese forces.

1943 The Allies capture Buna in New Guinea.

1963 In Vietnam, the Viet Cong down five U.S. helicopters in the Mekong Delta. 30 Americans are reported dead.

1966 American G.I.S move into the Mekong Delta for the first time.

1973 The United States admits the accidental bombing of a Hanoi hospital.

1980 President Jimmy Carter asks the U.S. Senate to delay the arms treaty ratification in response to Soviet action in Afghanistan.

1981 British police arrest the “Yorkshire Ripper” serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe.

1999 A severe winter storm hits the Midwestern US; in Chicago temperatures plunge to -13 °F and 19 inches of snow fell; 68 deaths are blamed on the storm.

2006 A coal mine explosion in Sago, West Virginia, kills 12 miners and critically injures another. This accident and another within weeks lead to the first changes in federal mining laws in decades.

Born

1861 Helen Herron Taft, First Lady to President William Howard Taft.

1866 Gilbert Murray, Australian-born scholar; chairman of the League of Nations, (1923-1928).

1920 Isaac Asimov, American writer of over 300 books including Foundation and I, Robot.

1925 William J. Crowe, US admiral; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under US presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush; he was ambassador to the UK under President Bill Clinton.

1936 Roger Miller, singer, songwriter, actor (“King of the Road,” 'Dang Me”).

1942 Hugh Shelton, US general; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1997-2001 ; the Sept. 11,

2001, terrorist attacks in the US occurred near the end of his term.

1948 Judith Miller, journalist; while working for the New York Times, she was involved in two major controversies, one concerning faulty information in her coverage of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the other concerning the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

1968 Cuba Gooding Jr., actor; won an Academy Award for Jerry Maguire.