Today in History

1477   Swiss troops defeat the forces under Charles the Bold of Burgundy at the Battle of Nancy.  
1815   Federalists from all over New England, angered over the War of 1812, draw up the Hartford Convention, demanding several important changes in the U.S. Constitution.  
1861   The merchant vessel Star of the West sets sail from New York to Fort Sumter, in response to rebel attack, carrying supplies and 250 troops.  
1904   American Marines arrive in Seoul, Korea, to guard the U.S. legation there.
1914   Henry Ford astounds the world as he announces that he will pay a minimum wage of $5 a day and will share with employees $10 million in the previous year's profits.  
1917   Bulgarian and German troops occupy the Port of Braila.  
1919   British ships shell the Bolshevik headquarters in Riga.  
1920   repugican women demand equal representation at the repugican national coven in June.  
1921   Wagner's "Die Walkyrie" opens in Paris. This is the first German opera performed in Paris since the beginning of World War I.  
1923   The U.S. Senate debates the benefits of Peyote for the American Indian.  
1925   Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is sworn in as the first woman governor in the United States.  
1936   Daggha Bur, Ethiopia, is bombed by the Italians.  
1942   U.S. and Filipino troops complete their withdrawal to a new defensive line along the base of the Bataan peninsula.  
1947   Great Britain nationalizes its coal mines.  
1951   Inchon, South Korea, the sight of General Douglas MacArthur's amphibious flanking maneuver, is abandoned by United Nations force to the advancing Chinese Army.  
1952   Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington to confer with President Harry S. Truman.  
1968   U.S. forces in Vietnam launch Operation Niagara I to locate enemy units around the Marine base at Khe Sanh.  
1969   Pretender Richard M. Nixon appoints Henry Cabot Lodge as negotiator at the Paris Peace Talks.  
1971   Pretender Richard M. Nixon names Robert Dole as chairman of the repugican national cabal.
1982   A Federal judge voids a state law requiring balanced classroom treatment of evolution and creationism.  
1991   The South Ossetia War (1991-92) begins as Georgian forces enter Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia, Georgia.  
2005  Eris, largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System is discovered in images taken Oct. 21, 2003, at Palomar Observatory.