Today in History ...

Posted
44 BC – Casca and Cassius decide, on the night before the Assassination of Julius Caesar, that Mark Antony should stay alive. 313 – Emperor Jin Huidi is executed by Liu Cong, ruler of the Xiongnu state (Han Zhao). 1381 – Chioggia concludes an alliance with Zadar and Trogir against Venice, which becomes changed in 1412 in Šibenik. 1489 – The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice. 1590 – Battle of Ivry: Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots defeat the forces of the Catholic League under the Charles, Duke of Mayenne during the French Wars of Religion. 1592 – Ultimate Pi Day: the largest correspondence between calendar dates and significant digits of pi since the introduction of the Julian calendar. 1647 – Thirty Years' War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm. 1757 – Admiral Sir John Byng is executed by firing squad aboard HMS Monarch for breach of the Articles of War. 1780 – American Revolutionary War: Spanish forces capture Fort Charlotte in Mobile, Alabama, the last British frontier post capable of threatening New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana. 1782 – Battle of Wuchale: Emperor Tekle Giyorgis I pacifies a group of Oromo near Wuchale. 1794 – Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin. 1885 – The Mikado, a light opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, receives its first public performance in London. 1900 – The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard. 1903 – The Hay–Herrán Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the United States Senate. The Colombian Senate would later reject the treaty. 1903 – The Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is established by US President Theodore Roosevelt. 1910 – Lakeview Gusher, the largest U.S. oil well gusher near Bakersfield, California, vents to atmosphere. 1915 – World War I: Cornered off the coast of Chile by the Royal Navy after fleeing the Battle of the Falkland Islands, the German light cruiser SMS Dresden is abandoned and scuttled by her crew. 1926 – El Virilla train accident, Costa Rica: A train falls off a bridge over the Río Virilla between Heredia and Tibás. 248 are killed and 93 wounded. 1931 – Alam Ara, India's first talking film, is released. 1936 – The first all-sound film version of Show Boat opens at Radio City Music Hall. (There had been a part-talkie, part-silent version of Show Boat in 1929.) 1939 – Slovakia declares independence under German pressure. 1942 – Orvan Hess and John Bumstead became the first in the United States successfully to treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin. 1943 – World War II: The Kraków Ghetto is "liquidated". 1945 – World War II: The R.A.F.'s first operational use of the Grand Slam bomb, Bielefeld, Germany. 1951 – Korean War: For the second time, United Nations troops recapture Seoul. 1964 – A jury in Dallas finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy. 1967 – The body of U.S. President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery. 1972 – Italian publisher and former partisan Giangiacomo Feltrinelli is killed by an explosion near Segrate. 1978 – The Israel Defense Forces invade and occupies southern Lebanon, in Operation Litani. 1979 – In China, a Hawker Siddeley Trident crashes into a factory near Beijing, killing at least 200. 1980 – In Poland, LOT Flight 7 crashes during final approach near Warsaw, killing 87 people, including a 14-man American boxing team. 1984 – Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast. 1988 – Johnson South Reef Skirmish: Chinese forces defeat Vietnamese forces in Johnson South Reef, disputed Spratly Islands. 1994 – Timeline of Linux development: Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released. 1995 – Space exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on board a Russian launch vehicle. 2006 – Members of the Chadian military fail in an attempted coup d'état. 2007 – The Left Front government of West Bengal sends at least 3,000 police to Nandigram in an attempt to break Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee resistance there; the resulting clash leaves 14 dead. 2007 – The first World Maths Day was celebrated 2008 – A series of riots, protests, and demonstrations erupt in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet.