Today in History!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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1025 - Bolesław Chrobry is crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland.

1506 - The cornerstone of the current St. Peter's Basilica is laid in the Vatican.

1521 - Martin Luther confronted the emperor Charles V in the Diet of Worms and refused to retract his views that led to his excommunication.

1775 - American revolutionaries Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode though the towns of Massachusetts giving the warning that the Regulars were coming out. Later, the phrase "the British are coming" was attributed to Revere even though it is unlikely he used that wording since technically at the time we were all British but we fixed that.

1838 - The Wilkes' expedition to the South Pole set sail.

1847 - U.S. troops defeated almost 17,000 Mexican soldiers commanded by Santa Anna at Cerro Gordo during the Mexican-American War.

1861 - Colonel Robert E. Lee turned down an offer to command the Union armies during the U.S. Civil War.

1906 - San Francisco, CA, was hit with an earthquake. The original death toll was cited at about 700. Later information indicated that the death toll may have been 3 to 4 times the original estimate.

1937 - Leon Trotsky called for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

1942 - James H. Doolittle and his squadron, from the USS Hornet, raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities. This raid was Uncle Sam's first counter punch after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was remarkable since the aircraft involved B-25s were Army medium bombers never designed to operate from ships. The physical damage done to Japan from the 16 bombers was negligible but the strategic and psychological impact was tremendous. It forced the Japanese to keep aircraft at home for defense and destroyed forever the concept of Japanese invincibility. Recently the last of the Doolittle Raiders passed away. LTC Dick Cole has joined his squadron mates. Honors to LTC Cole and all the fliers of the Doolittle Raid. For the last time,"Army pilots! Man your planes!"

1942 - The Vichy government capitulated to Adolf Hitler and invited Pierre Laval to form a new government in France.

1943 - Traveling in a bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was shot down by American P-38 fighters.

1945 - American war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa. He was 44 years old.

1978 - The U.S. Senate approved the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999.

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1012 - Aelfheah was murdered by Danes who had been ravaging the south of England. Aelfhear became the 29th Archbishop of Canterbury in 1005.

1587 - English admiral Sir Francis Drake entered Cadiz harbor and sank the Spanish fleet.

1689 - Residents of Boston ousted their governor, Edmond Andros.

1713 - Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which gave women the rights of succession to Hapsburg possessions.

1764 - The English Parliament banned the American colonies from printing paper money.

1775 - The American Revolution began as fighting broke out at Lexington, MA.

1782 - The Netherlands recognized the new United States.

1861 - Thaddeus S. C. Lowe sailed 900 miles in nine hours in a hot air balloon from Cincinnati, OH, to Unionville, SC. Lowe later became important during the Civil War when he offered his services as an aeronaut to the Union forces by gathering real time battlefield intelligence.

1861 - The Baltimore riots resulted in four Union soldiers and nine civilians killed.

1861 - U.S. President Lincoln ordered a blockade of Confederate ports.

1909 - Joan of Arc receives beatification by the Roman Catholic Church.

1927 - In China, Hankow communists declared war on Chaing Kai-shek.

1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi rule began. The Jews were able to fight off the Germans for 28 days.

1951 - General Douglas MacArthur gave his "Old Soldiers" speech before the U.S. Congress after being relieved by U.S. President Truman. In the address General MacArthur said that "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

1967 - Surveyor 3 landed on the moon and began sending photos back to the U.S.

1989 - A gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa. 47 sailors were killed.

1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK, was destroyed by a bomb. It was the worst bombing on U.S. territory. 168 people were killed including 19 children, and 500 were injured. Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the bombing on June 2, 1997.

2002 - The USS Cole was relaunched. In Yemen, 17 sailors were killed when the ship was attacked by terrorists on October 12, 2000. The attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

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1534 - Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, set sail from St. Malo to explore the North American coastline.

1653 - In England, Oliver Cromwell expelled the Long Parliament for trying to pass the Perpetuation Bill that would have kept Parliament in the hands of only a few members.

1769 - Ottawa Chief Pontiac was murdered by an Illinois Indian in Cahokia.

1775 - American troops began the siege of British-held Boston.

1792 - France declared war on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia. It was the start of the French Revolutionary wars.

1836 - The U.S. territory of Wisconsin was created by the U.S. Congress.

1841 - In Philadelphia, PA, Edgar Allen Poe's first detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," was published in Graham's Magazine.

1861 - Robert E. Lee resigned from U.S. Army.

1902 - Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the radioactive element radium chloride.

1916 - Sir Roger Casement landed in Ireland to incite rebellion against the British. Casement, a British diplomat, was captured within hours and was hanged for high treason on August 3.

1945 - Soviet troops began their attack on Berlin.

1945 - During World War II, Allied forces took control of the German cities of Nuremberg and Stuttgart.

1953 - Operation Little Switch began in Korea. It was the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war. Thirty Americans were freed.

1967 - U.S. planes bombed Haiphong for first time during the Vietnam War.

1972 - The manned lunar module from Apollo 16 landed on the moon.

1984 - Britain announced that its administration of Hong Kong would cease in 1997.

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753 BC - Today is the traditional date of the foundation of Rome.

43 BC - Marcus Antonius was defeated by Octavian near Modena, Italy.

1526 - Battle at Panipat: Central Asian conqueror Babur defeats Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, establishing the Mughal Empire in India.

1649 - The Maryland Toleration Act was passed, allowing all freedom of worship.

1689 - William III and Mary II were crowned joint king and queen of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1789 - John Adams was sworn in as the first U.S. Vice President.

1836 - General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. This battle decided the independence of Texas. The battle lasted eighteen minutes the Texan forces rallied with cries of "Remember the Alamo", and "Remember Goliad".

1862 - The U.S. Congress established the U.S. Mint in Denver, CO.

1898 - The Spanish-American War began.

1916 - Bill Carlisle, the infamous ‘last train robber,’ robbed a train in Hanna, WY.

1918 - German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, "The Red Baron," was shot down and killed during World War I. Credit for the "Kill" is debated between a Canadian fighter pilot and an Australian machine gunner.

1943 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt announced that several Doolittle pilots had been executed by the Japanese.

1967 - Svetlana Alliluyeva (Svetlana Stalina) defected in New York City. She was the daughter of Joseph Stalin.

1972 - Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explored the surface of the moon.

1989 - Thousands of Chinese crowd into Beijing's Tiananmen Square cheering students demanding greater political freedom. This was a significant expansion of the protest that had begun on 15 April.

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1500 - Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil.

1509 - Henry VIII ascended to the throne of England upon the death of his father Henry VII.

1529 - Spain and Portugal divided the Eastern hemisphere in the Treaty of Saragosa.

1792 - U.S. President George Washington proclaimed American neutrality in the war in Europe.

1861 - Robert E. Lee was named commander of Virginia forces.

1864 - The U.S. Congress passed legislation that allowed the inscription "In God We Trust" to be included on one-cent and two-cent coins.

1898 - The first shot of the Spanish-American war occurred when the USS Nashville captured a Spanish merchant ship.

1915 - At the Second Battle Ypres the Germans became the first country to use poison gas.

1918 - British naval forces attempted to sink block-ships in the German U-boat bases at the Battle of Zeeburgge.

1930 - The U.S., Britain and Japan signed the London Naval Treaty, which regulated submarine warfare and limited shipbuilding.

1931 - James G. Ray landed an autogyro on the lawn of the White House.

1952 - An atomic test conducted in Nevada was the first nuclear explosion shown on live network television.

1993 - The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, DC.

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1014 - King Brian Boru of Ireland defeats Viking forces at Battle of Clontarf, freeing Ireland from foreign control.

1348 - The first English order of knighthood was founded. It was the Order of the Garter.

1500 - Pedro Cabal claimed Brazil for Portugal. Not sure why it took him a full day to do this, it's not like he was checking with the indigenous people first.

1521 - The Comuneros were crushed by royalist troops in Spain. The "Comuneros" was the short name given to forces of the War of the Communities of Castile. These communities were in revolt against the Spanish King Charles I.

1597 - William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is first performed, with Queen Elizabeth I of England in attendance.

1759 - The British seized Basse-Terre and Guadeloupe in the Antilies from France.

1789 - U.S. President George Washington moved into Franklin House, New York. It was the first executive mansion.

1895 - Russia, France, and Germany forced Japan to return the Liaodong peninsula to China.

1908 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signed an act creating the U.S. Army Reserve.

1924 - The U.S. Senate passed the Soldiers Bonus Bill.

1950 - Chaing evacuated Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao and the communists.

1967 - The Soyuz 1 was launched by Russia.

1984 - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that Dr. Robert Gallo and his colleagues had found the cause of AIDS. It was a retrovirus the labled HTLV-III.

1985 - The Coca-Cola Company announced that it was changing its 99-year-old secret formula. New Coke was not successful, which resulted in the resumption of selling the original version.

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1184 BC - The Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date).

1519 - Envoys of Montezuma II attended the first Easter mass in Central America.

1547 - Charles V's troops defeated the Protestant League of Schmalkalden at the battle of Muhlburg.

1558 - Mary, Queen of Scotland, married the French dauphin, Francis.

1800 - The Library of Congress was established with a $5,000 allocation.

1805 - The U.S. Marines attacked and captured the town of Derna in Tripoli.

1877 - In the U.S., federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans. This was the end to the North's post-Civil War rule in the South.

1884 - Otto von Bismarck cabled Cape Town that South Africa was now a German colony.

1898 - Spain declared war on the U.S., rejecting America's ultimatum for Spain to withdraw from Cuba.

1915 - During World War I, the Ottoman Turkish Empire began the mass deportation of Armenians. Some historians regard this as the start of the Armenian Genocide.

1916 - Irish nationalist launched the Easter Rebellion against British occupation forces. They were overtaken several days later.

1953 - Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

1961 - U.S. President Kennedy accepted "sole responsibility" following Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

1967 - Soviet astronaut Vladimir Komarov died when his craft crashed with a tangled parachute.

1989 - Thousands of students began striking in Beijing.

1990 - The space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Cape Canaveral, FL. It was carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.

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1590 - The Sultan of Morocco launched his successful attack to capture Timbuktu.

1660 - English Convention Parliament meets and votes to restore Charles II.

1792 - Guillotine first used in France, executes highwayman Nicolas Pelletier.

1846 - Thornton Affair: Open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican-American War.

1859 - Work began on the Suez Canal in Egypt.

1860 - The first Japanese diplomats to visit a foreign power reached Washington, DC. They remained in the U.S. capital for several weeks while discussing expansion of trade with the United States.

1862 - Union Admiral Farragut occupied New Orleans, LA.

1898 - The U.S. declared war on Spain. Spain had declared war on the U.S. the day before.

1915 - During World War I, Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli in Turkey in hopes of attacking the Central Powers from below. The attack was unsuccessful.

1926 - In Iran, Reza Kahn was crowned Shah and choose the name "Pehlevi."

1945 - U.S. and Soviet forces met at Torgau, Germany on Elbe River.

1945 - Delegates from about 50 countries met in San Francisco to organize the United Nations.

1953 - Dr. James D. Watson and Dr. Francis H.C. Crick suggested the double helix structure of DNA.

1962 - The U.S. spacecraft, Ranger, crashed on the Moon.

1980 - In Iran, a commando mission to rescue hostages was aborted after mechanical problems disabled three of the eight helicopters involved. During the evacuation, a helicopter and a transport plan collided and exploded. Eight U.S. servicemen were killed. The mission was aimed at freeing American hostages that had been taken at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. The event took place April 24th Washington, DC, time.

1983 - The Pioneer 10 spacecraft crossed Pluto's orbit, speeding on its endless voyage through the Milky Way.

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1514 - Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.

1607 - The British established an American colony at Cape Henry, Virginia. It was the first permanent English establishment in the Western Hemisphere.
Colonists from Cape Henry would voyage further up the James River and establish Williamsburg.

1865 - Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee to Sherman during the American Civil War.

1865 - John Wilkes Booth was killed by the U.S. Federal Cavalry. Booth was shot by one cavalryman named Boston Corbett acting against orders to take Booth alive. Corbett was arrested for disobeying orders but was later released by order of Secretary of War Stanton. If you read a little of the history of Corbett you will soon realize that the man wasn't wrapped too tightly.

1921 - Weather broadcasts were heard for the first time on radio in St. Louis, MO.

1929 - First non-stop flight from England to India was completed.

1937 - German planes attacked Guernica, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War for the Spanish nationalist government. This raid is considered one of the first to be attacks on a civilian population by a modern air force.

1945 - Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France's Vichy government during World War II, was arrested.

1964 - The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.

1982 - The British announced that Argentina had surrendered on South Georgia.

1986 - The world’s worst nuclear disaster to date occurred at Chernobyl, in Kiev. Thirty-one people died in the incident and thousands more were exposed to radioactive material.

2002 - In Erfurt, Germany, an expelled student killed 17 people at his former school. The student then killed himself.

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1296 - The Scots were defeated by Edward I at the Battle of Dunbar.

1509 - Pope Julius II excommunicated the Italian state of Venice.

1521 - Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines.

1565 - The first Spanish settlement in Philippines was established in Cebu City.

1805 - A force led by U.S. Marines captured the city of Derna, on the shores of Tripoli.

1861 - West Virginia seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union during the American Civil War.

1861 - U.S. President Lincoln issued an order to General Winfield Scott that authorized him to suspend the writ of habeas corpus between Philadelphia and Washington at or near any military line.

1865 Steamboat "SS Sultana" explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. Most were former Union POWs on their way home.

1909 - The sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II, was overthrown.

1945 - The Second Republic was founded in Austria.

1945 - Italian partisans capture Benito Mussolini at Dongo (Lake Como).

1975 - Saigon was encircled by North Vietnamese troops.

1978 - Pro-Soviet Marxists seized control of Afghanistan.

1982 - The trial of John W. Hinckley Jr. began in Washington. Hinckley was later acquitted by reason of insanity for the shooting of U.S. President Reagan and three others.