Today in History

1517		The famous Flemish composer Heinrich Issac dies.
1799		Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine.
1804		Congress orders the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana.
1804		The territory of New Orleans is organized in the Louisiana Purchase.
1827		German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven dies in Vienna. He had been deaf for the later part of his life, but said on his death bed “I shall hear in heaven.”
1832		Famed western artist George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri River aboard the American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone.
1885		Eastman Film Co. manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
1913		The Balkan allies take Adrianople.
1918		On the Western Front, the Germans take the French towns Noyon, Roye and Lihons.
1938		Hermann Goering warns all Jews to leave Austria.
1942		The Germans begin sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
1950		Senator Joe McCarthy names Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
1951		The United States Air Force flag design is approved.
1953		Eisenhower offers increased aid to the French fighting in Indochina.
1953		Dr. Jonas Salk announces a new vaccine against polio.
1954		The United States sets off an H-bomb blast in the Marshall Islands, the second in four weeks.
1961		John F. Kennedy meets with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in Washington to discuss increased Communist involvement in Laos.
1969		The Soviet weather Satellite Meteor 1 is launched.
1969		Writer John Kennedy Toole commits suicide at the age of 32. His mother helps get his first and only novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. It goes on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.
1979		The Camp David treaty is signed between Israel and Egypt.
1982		Ground is broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1989		The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected.
1992		An Indianapolis court finds heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson guilty of rape.