Today in History

1537   Pope Paul III bans the enslavement of Indians in the New World.  
1774   The Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to allow British soldiers into their houses, is reenacted.  
1793   Maximillian Robespierre, a member of France's Committee on Public Safety, initiates the "Reign of Terror."  
1818   The British army defeats the Maratha alliance in Bombay, India. 1859   French forces cross the Ticino River.  
1865   At Galveston, Texas, Confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith surrenders the Trans-Mississippi Department to Union forces.  
1883   The first baseball game under electric lights is played in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  
1886   Grover Cleveland becomes the first American president to wed while in office.  
1910   Charles Stewart Rolls, one of the founders of Rolls-Royce, becomes the first man to fly an airplane nonstop across the English Channel both ways. Tragically, he becomes Britain's first aircraft fatality the following month when his biplane breaks up in midair.  
1924   The United States grants full citizenship to American Indians.  
1928   Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek captures Peking, China, in a bloodless takeover.  
1942   The American aircraft carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown move into their battle positions for the Battle of Midway.  
1944   Allied "shuttle bombing" of Germany begins, with bombers departing from Italy and landing in the Soviet Union.  
1946   Italian citizens vote by referendum for a republic.  
1948   Jamaican-born track star Herb McKenley sets a new world record for the 400 yard dash.  
1953   Elizabeth II is crowned queen of England at Westminster Abbey.  
1954   Senator Joseph McCarthy charges that there are communists working in the CIA and atomic weapons plants.  
1969   The Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne slices the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half off the shore of South Vietnam.