Today in History

1346   Charles IV of Luxembourg is elected Holy Roman Emperor.  
1509   Henry VIII of England marries Catherine of Aragon. 1770   Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef.  
1798   Napoleon Bonaparte takes the island of Malta.  
1861   Union forces under General George B. McClellen repulse a Confederate force at Rich Mountain in western Virginia.  
1865   Major General Henry W. Halleck finds documents and archives of the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia. This discovery will lead to the publication of the official war records.  
1895   Charles E. Duryea receives the first U.S. patent granted to an American inventor for a gasoline-driven automobile.  
1903   King Alexander and Queen Draga of Belgrade are assassinated by members of the Serbia army. 1915   British troops take Cameroon in Africa.  
1930   William Beebe, of the New York Zoological Society, dives to a record-setting depth of 1,426 feet off the coast of Bermuda, in a diving chamber called a bathysphere.  
1934   The Disarmament Conference in Geneva ends in failure.  
1940   The Italian Air Force bombs the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean.  
1943   The Italian island of Pantelleria surrenders after a heavy air bombardment.  
1944   U.S. carrier-based planes attack Japanese airfields on Guam , Rota, Saipan and Tinian islands, preparing for the invasion of Saipan.  
1963   Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is arrested in Florida for trying to integrate restaurants.  
1967   Israel and Syria accept a U. N. cease-fire.  
1987   Margaret Thatcher wins her third consecutive term as Prime Minister.