Today in History

1660   The first Shakespearian actress to appear on an English stage (she is believed to be a Ms. Norris) makes her debut as Desdemona.  
1861   CSS Sumter captures the whaler Eben Dodge in the Atlantic. The American Civil War is now affecting the Northern whaling industry.  
1863   Union General William Averell's cavalry destroys railroads in the southwestern part of West Virginia.  
1914   The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Liepzig are sunk by a British force in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.  
1920   President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.  
1932   Japan tells the League of Nations that it has no control over her designs in China.  
1941   Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita begins his attack against the British army at Singapore.  
1943   U.S. carrier-based planes sink two cruisers and down 72 planes in the Marshall Islands.  
1944   The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.  
1948   The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.  
1967   In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed.  
1968   South Vietnam's Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky arrives in Paris for peace talks.
1980   John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.  
1982   The Washington, D.C., police shoot and kill a man threatening to blow up the Washington Monument.  
1987   The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed.
1987   An Israeli army tank transporter kills 4 Palestinian refugees and injures 7 others during a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, leading to the First Intifada.  
1991   The leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine sign an agreement that dissolves the Soviet Union and establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States.  
2004   The Cuzco Declaration signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations.  
2010   SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.  
2010   The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus.