Today in History

1399 - Henry IV is proclaimed King of England.
1452 - First printed book, the Johann Gutenberg Bible.
1470 - Henry VI of England returns to the throne after Earl of Warwick defeats Yorkists in battle.
1831 - In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave revolt in United States history.
1864 - Helena, Montana is founded after four prospectors discover gold at "Last Chance Gulch."
1867 - United States takes control of Midway Island.
1882 - The world's first hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) began operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin.
1888 - Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.
1895 - Madagascar becomes a French protectorate.
1905 - Tsar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia's first constitution, creating a legislative assembly.
1925 - John Logie Baird creates Great Britain's first television transmitter.
1935 - "The Adventures of Dick Tracy" first heard on the Mutual Radio Network.
1938 - Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing a nationwide panic.
1941 - World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves US$1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.
1947 - World Series, featuring New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time.
1949 - Berlin Airlift ends.
1953 - Cold War: US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
1954 - The submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the first nuclear reactor powered vessel.
1960 - The last episode of "The Howdy Doody Show" airs on NBC.
1961 - Mayor Snyder of Oregon writes a check for $1.96 to cover the cost of the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party.
1961 - Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates a 58 megaton yield hydrogen bomb over Novaya Zemlya (this is still the largest nuclear device to ever be detonated).
1962 - James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying segregation.
1965 - Riots break out in Indonesia, resulting in the deaths of local communists and ethnic Chinese.
1965 - Vietnam War: Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by wave after wave of Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas.
1966 - Botswana declares its independence.
1967 - Launch of BBC Radio 1; other national BBC radio stations also adopt numeric names.
1968 - The film The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn, debuts.
1970 - In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.
1972 - US President Richard Nixon approves legislation to increase Social Security spending by US$5.3 billion.
1974 - "The Rumble in The Jungle": Muhammad Ali knocks out George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire to regain the World Heavyweight Boxing championship.
1975 - Prince Juan Carlos becomes King of Spain after dictator Francisco Franco concedes that he is too ill to govern.
1980 - El Salvador and Honduras sign a peace treaty to put the border dispute fought over in 1969's Football War before the International Court of Justice.
1980 - Ethernet specifications published by Xerox working with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation.
1982 - Cyanide-laced Tylenol kills six people in the Chicago, Illinois area. Seven were killed in all. The incident is known as the Tylenol scare.
1982 - The popular TV sitcom Cheers premieres.
1983 - The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule are held.
1987 - In Japan, NEC releases the first 16-bit home entertainment system, the PC-Engine.
1988 - Philip Morris buys Kraft Foods for US$13.1 billion.
1989 - Foreign Minister of Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher's speech from the balcony of the German embassy in Prague
1991 - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is forced from office.
1995 - Quebec separatists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote was 50.6 % to 49.4 %).
1999 - Japan's worst nuclear accident at a uranium reprocessing facility in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, Japan. Workers overload a container with uranium, exposing workers and local residents to very high radiation levels.
2001 - Michael Jordan returns to the National Basketball Association with the Washington Wizards after 3 1/2 years (the Wizards lose 93-91 to the New York Knicks).
2004 - Daenielle writes another blog.