Today in History

1666		The Great Fire of London, which devastates the city, begins.
1789		The Treasury Department, headed by Alexander Hamilton, is created in New York City.
1792		Verdun, France, surrenders to the Prussian Army.
1798		The Maltese people revolt against the French occupation, forcing the French troops to take refuge in the citadel of Valletta in Malta.
1870		Napoleon III capitulates to the Prussians at Sedan, France.
1885		In Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, 28 Chinese laborers are killed and hundreds more chased out of town by striking coal miners.
1898		Sir Herbert Kitchener leads the British to victory over the Mahdists at Omdurman and takes Khartoum.
1910		Alice Stebbins Wells is admitted to the Los Angeles Police Force as the first woman police officer to receive an appointment based on a civil service exam.
1915		Austro-German armies take Grodno, Poland.
1944		Troops of the U.S. First Army enter Belgium.
1945		Japan signs the document of surrender aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II
1945		Vietnam declares its independence and Nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaims himself its first president.
1956		Tennessee National Guardsmen halt rioters protesting the admission of 12 African-Americans to schools in Clinton.
1963		Alabama Governor George Wallace calls state troopers to Tuskegee High School to prevent integration.
1963		The US gets its first half-hour TV weeknight national news broadcast when CBS Evening News expands from 15 to 30 minutes.
1970		NASA cancels two planned missions to the moon.
1975		Joseph W. Hatcher of Tallahassee, Florida, becomes the state’s first African-American supreme court justice since Reconstruction.
1992		The US and Russia agree to a joint venture to build a space station.
1996		The Philippine government and Muslim rebels sign a pact, formally ending a 26-year long insurgency.
1998		Jean Paul Akayesu, former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, found guilty of nine counts of genocide by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.