Today in History

1629		A Royal charter is granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1743		First American town meeting is held at Boston's Faneuil Hall.
1757		British Admiral John Byng is executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty.
1794		Inventor Eli Whitney receives a patent for his cotton gin.
1900		United States currency goes on the gold standard.
1903		The Senate ratifies the Hay-Herran Treaty, guaranteeing the United states the right to build a canal in Panama.
1912		An anarchist named Antonio Dalba unsuccessfully attempts to kill Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III in Rome.
1915		The British Navy sinks the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.
1918		An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratifies a peace treaty with the Central Powers.
1923		President Warren G. Harding becomes the first U.S. President to file an income tax report.
1936		Adolf Hitler tells a crowd of 300,000 that Germany's only judge is God and itself.
1939		The Nazis dissolve the republic of Czechoslovakia.
1943		The Germans reoccupy Kharkov in the Soviet Union.
1947		The United States signs a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.
1951		U.N. forces recapture Seoul for the second time during the Korean War.
1954		The Viet Minh launch an assault against the French Colonial Forces at Dien Bien Phu.
1964		A Dallas jury finds Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
1967		John F. Kennedy's body is moved from a temporary grave to a permanent one in Arlington Cemetery.
1978		An Israeli force of 22,000 invades south Lebanon, hitting the PLO bases.
1990		Mikhail S. Gorbachev becomes president of the Soviet Congress.
1991		The "Birmingham Six," imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, are set free after a court agrees that the police fabricated evidence.