Today in History

1580		Sir Francis Drake returns to Plymouth, England, aboard the Golden Hind, after a 33-month voyage to circumnavigate the globe.
1777		The British army launches a major offensive, capturing Philadelphia.
1786		France and Britain sign a trade agreement in London.
1820		The legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone dies quietly at the Defiance, Mo., home of his son Nathan, at age 85.
1826		The Persian cavalry is routed by the Russians at the Battle of Ganja in the Russian Caucasus.
1829		Scotland Yard, the official British criminal investigation organization, is formed.
1864		General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men assault a Federal garrison near Pulaski, Tennessee.
1901		Leon Czolgosz, who murdered President William McKinley, is sentenced to death..
1913		The first boat is raised in the locks of the Panama Canal.
1914		The Federal Trade Commission is established to foster competition by preventing monopolies in business.
1918		German Ace Ernst Udet shoots down two Allied planes, bringing his total for the war up to 62.
1937		Bessie Smith, known as the 'Empress of the Blues,' dies in a car crash in Mississippi.
1940		During the London Blitz, the underground Cabinet War Room suffers a hit when a bomb explodes on the Clive Steps.
1941		The U.S. Army establishes the Military Police Corps.
1950		General Douglas MacArthur's American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, links up with the U.S. Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter.
1955		The New York Stock Exchange suffers a $44 million loss.
1960		Vice President Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy participate in the first nationally televised debate between presidential candidates.
1961		Nineteen-year-old Bob Dylan makes his New York singing debut at Gerde's Folk City.
1967		Hanoi rejects a U.S. peace proposal.
1969		The Beatles last album, Abbey Road, is released.
1972		Richard M. Nixon meets with Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage, Alaska, the first-ever meeting of a U.S. President and a Japanese Monarch.
1977		Israel announces a cease-fire on Lebanese border.
1983		In the USSR Stanislav Petrov disobeys procedures and ignores electronic alarms indicating five incoming nuclear missiles, believing the US would launch more than five if it wanted to start a war. His decision prevented a retaliatory attack that would have begun a nuclear war between the superpowers..
1984		The UK agrees to transfer sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China.
1997		Two earthquakes strike Italy, causing part of the Basilica of St. Francis to collapse, killing four people and destroying much of the cycle of frescoes depicting the saint's life.
2008		Yves Rossy, a Swiss pilot and inventor, is the first person to fly a jet-powered wing across the English Channel.