Today in History

1689   England's "Bloodless Revolution" reaches its climax when parliament invites William and Mary to become joint sovereigns.  
1807   President Thomas Jefferson exposes a plot by Aaron Burr to form a new republic in the Southwest.  
1813   During the War of 1812, British forces under Henry Proctor defeat a U.S. contingent planning an attack on Fort Detroit.  
1824   A British force is wiped out by an Asante army under Osei Bonsu on the African Gold Coast. This is the first defeat for a colonial power.  
1863   In an attempt to out flank Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, General Ambrose Burnside leads his army on a march to north Fredericksburg, but foul weather bogs his army down in what will become known as "Mud March."
 1879   Eighty-two British soldiers hold off attacks by 4,000 Zulu warriors at the Battle of Rorke's Drift in South Africa.  
1905   Russian troops fire on civilians beginning Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg.  
1912   Second Monte Carlo auto race begins.  
1913   Turkey consents to the Balkan peace terms and gives up Adrianople.  
1930   Admiral Richard Byrd charts a vast area of Antarctica.  
1932   Government troops crush a Communist uprising in Northern Spain.  
1939   A Nazi order erases the old officer caste, tying the army directly to the Party.
1943   Axis forces pull out of Tripoli for Tunisia, destroying bases as they leave.  
1944   U.S. troops under Major General John P. Lucas make an amphibious landing behind German lines at Anzio, Italy, just south of Rome.  
1971   Communist forces shell Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the first time.  
1979   Abu Hassan, the alleged planner of the 1972 Munich raid, is killed by a bomb in Beirut.  
1982   The pretender Ronny Raygun formally links progress in arms control to Soviet repression in Poland.