Today In History

1666		The Great Fire of London is extinguished after two days.
1664		After days of negotiation, the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam surrenders to the British, who will rename it New York.
1792		Maximilien Robespierre is elected to the National Convention in France.
1804		US Navy lieutenant Richard Somers and members of his crew are buried at Tripoli; they died when the USS Intrepid exploded while entering Tripoli harbor on a mission to destroy the enemy fleet there during the First Barbary War.
1816		Louis XVIII of France dissolves the chamber of deputies, which has been challenging his authority.
1859		Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig, is published. It is the first U.S. novel by an African-American woman.
1867		The first shipment of cattle leaves Abilene, Kansas, on a Union Pacific train headed to Chicago.
1870		Author Victor Hugo returns to Paris from the Isle of Guernsey where he had lived in exile for almost 20 years.
1877		The great Sioux warrior Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted at age 36 by a soldier at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.
1878		Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman and Clay Allison, four of the West’s most famous gunmen, meet in Dodge City, Kansas.
1905		The Russian-Japanese War ends as representatives of the combating empires, meeting in New Hampshire, sign the Treaty of Portsmouth. Japan achieves virtually all of its original war aims.
1910		Marie Curie demonstrates the transformation of radium ore to metal at the Academy of Sciences in France.
1944		Germany launches its first V-2 missile at Paris, France.
1958		Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested in an Alabama protest for loitering and fined $14 for refusing to obey police.
1960		Leopold Sedar Senghor, poet and politician, is elected president of Senegal, Africa.
1969		Charges are brought against US lieutenant William Calley in the March 1968 My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War.
1972		“Black September,” a Palestinian terrorist group takes 11 Israeli athletes hostage at the Olympic Games in Munich; by midnight all hostages and all but 3 terrorists are dead.
1975		Ford evades an assassination attempt in Sacramento, California.
1977		Hanns-Martin Schleyer, a German business executive who headed a powerful organization and had been an SS officer during WW2, is abducted by the left-wing extremist group Red Army Faction, who execute him on Oct. 18.
1977		Voyager 1 space probe launched.
1978		Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat begin discussions on a peace process, at Camp David, Md.
1980		The world’s longest tunnel opens; Switzerland’s St. Gotthard Tunnel stretches 10.14 miles (16.224 km) from Goschenen to Airolo.
1984		The Space Shuttle Discovery lands afters its maiden voyage.
1996		Hurricane Fran comes ashore near Cape Fear, No. Car. It will kill 27 people and cause more than $3 billion in damage.