Today in History

1799		Napoleon Bonaparte participates in a coup and declares himself dictator of France.
1848		The first U.S. Post Office in California opens in San Francisco at Clay and Pike streets. At the time there are only about 15,000 European settlers living in the state.
1900		Russia completes its occupation of Manchuria.
1906		President Theodore Roosevelt leaves Washington, D.C., for a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official visit outside of the United States.
1914		The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney wrecks the German cruiser Emden, forcing her to beach on a reef on North Keeling Island in the Indian Ocean.
1918		Germany is proclaimed a republic as the kaiser abdicates and flees to the Netherlands.
1935		Japanese troops invade Shanghai, China.
1938		Nazis kill 35 Jews, arrest thousands and destroy Jewish synagogues, homes and stores throughout Germany. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of the shattered glass.
1965		Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old former seminarian and a member of the Catholic worker movement, immolates himself at the United Nations in New York City in protest of the Vietnam War.
1965		Nine Northeastern states and parts of Canada go dark in the worst power failure in history, when a switch at a station near Niagara Falls fails.
1967		NASA launches Apollo 4 into orbit with the first successful test of a Saturn V rocket.
1972		Bones discovered by the Leakeys push human origins back 1 million years.
1983		Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, is kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million.
1989		The Berlin Wall is opened after dividing the city for 28 years.