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Today in History



1512
The laws of Burgos give New World natives legal protection against abuse and authorize Negro slavery.
1831
HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, departs from Plymouth. It will eventually visit the Galapagos Islands where Darwin will form his theories on evolution.
1862
Union General William Rosecrans' army begins moving slowly toward Murfreesboro, Tennessee, from Nashville.
1913
Charles Moyer, president of the Miners Union, is shot in the back and dragged through the streets of Chicago.
1915
In Ohio, iron and steel workers go on strike for an eight-hour day and higher wages.
1932
Radio City Music Hall opens.
1933
Josef Stalin calls tensions with Japan a grave danger.
1939
A series of vicious earthquakes take 11,000 lives in Turkey.
1941
Japanese bombers attack Manila, despite its claim as an open city.
1944
General George S. Patton's Third Army, spearheaded by the 4th Armored Division, relieves the surrounded city of Bastogne in Belgium.

1945
The International Monetary Fund and the Bank for Reconstruction and Development are created.
1947
The new Italian constitution is promulgated in Rome.
1950
The United States and Spain resume relations for the first time since the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
1956
Segregation on buses in Tallahassee, Florida, is outlawed.
1968
The United States agrees to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

1979
President Hafizullah Amin of Afghanistan is ousted and murdered in a coup backed by the Soviet Union, beginning a war that will last more than 10 years.
1983
President Reagan takes all responsibility for the lack of security in Beirut that allowed a terrorist on a suicide mission to kill 241 Marines.
1984
Four Polish officers are tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko.
1985
Palestinian guerrillas kill 18 people at airports in Rome and Vienna.
1996
Taliban forces retake strategic Bagram Airfield during Afghan civil war.

2001
China receives permanent normal trade relations with the US.
2004
Radiation reaches Earth from the brightest extrasolar event ever witnessed, an explosion of magnetar SGR 1806-20.
2007
After Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of Kenya's presidential elections, rioting begins in Mombasa, precipitating an economic, humanitarian and political crisis.
2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated.


Joke of the Day



A man was watching TV and enjoying a beer. "Don't go," he yelled at the screen. "Do not enter that building. Walk away. Argh, you stupid man!"
His wife called from the kitchen, "What on earth are you watching?"
"Our wedding video."