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Today in History


1494
Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica, which he names Santa Gloria.
1814
British attack the American forces at Ft. Ontario, Oswego, New York.
1821
Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on the island of St. Helena.
1834
The first mainland railway line opens in Belgium.
1862
Union and Confederate forces clash at the Battle of Williamsburg, part of the Peninsular Campaign.
1862
Mexican forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeat troops sent by Napoleon III in the Battle of Puebla.
1886
A bomb explodes on the fourth day of a workers' strike in Chicago.
1912
Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing.
1916
U.S. Marines invade the Dominican Republic.
1917
Eugene Jacques Bullard becomes the first African-American aviator when he earns a flying certificate with the French Air Service.

1920
Anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested for murder.
1935
American Jesse Owens sets the long jump record.
1942
General Joseph Stilwell learns that the Japanese have cut his railway out of China and is forced to lead his troops into India.
1945
Holland and Denmark are liberated from Nazi control.
1961
Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space.

1965
173rd Airborne Brigade arrives in Bien Hoa-Vung, Vietnam, the first regular U.S. Army unit deployed to that country.
1968
U.S. Air Force planes hit Nhi Ha, South Vietnam in support of attacking infantrymen.
1969
Pulitzer Prize awarded to Norman Mailer for his 'nonfiction novel' Armies of the Night, an account of the 1967 anti-Vietnam War march on the Pentagon.
1987
Congress opens Iran-Contra hearings.
2000
The Sun, Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn align - Earth's moon is also almost in this alignment - leading to Doomsday predictions of massive natural disasters, although such a 'grand confluence' occurs about once in every century.




Joke of the Day



A man is walking down the street, when he notices that his grandfather is sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, with nothing on from the waist down.
"Grandpa, what are you doing?" the man exclaims. The old man looks off in the distance and does not answer his grandson.
"Grandpa, what are you doing sitting out here with nothing on below the waist?" he asks again.
The old man slyly looks at him and says, "Well, last week I sat out here with no shirt on, and I got a stiff neck. This was your Grandma's idea!"