Today in History

1492		Christopher Columbus and his crew land in the Bahamas.
1576		Rudolf II, the king of Hungary and Bohemia, succeeds his father, Maximilian II, as Holy Roman Emperor.
1702		Admiral Sir George Rooke defeats the French fleet off Vigo.
1722		Shah Sultan Husayn surrenders the Persian capital of Isfahan to Afghan rebels after a seven month siege.
1809		Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, dies under mysterious circumstances in Tennessee.
1899		The Anglo-Boer War begins.
1872		Apache leader Cochise signs a peace treaty with General Howard in Arizona Territory.
1915		Despite international protests, Edith Cavell, an English nurse in Belgium, is executed by Germans for aiding the escape of Allied prisoners.
1943		The U.S. Fifth Army begins an assault crossing of the Volturno River in Italy.
1944		The Axis occupation of Athens comes to an end. The occupation has ruined the Greek economy and brought about terrible hardships for the Greek civilian population, more than 40,000 of whom have died in Athens alone from starvation.
1960		Inejiro Asanuma, leader of the Japan Socialist Party, is assassinated during a live TV broadcast.
1964		The USSR launches Voskhod I, the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew; it is also the first mission in which the crew does not wear space suits.
1970		Nixon announces the pullout of 40,000 more American troops in Vietnam by Xmas.
1971		The House of Representatives passes the Equal Rights Amendment 354-23.
1984		The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonates a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; 5 people are killed and 31 wounded.
1999		Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf seizes power in Pakistan through a bloodless military coup.
2000		Suicide bombers at Aden, Yemen, damage the USS Cole; 17 crew members are killed and over 35 are wounded.
2002		Terrorist bombers kill over 200 and wound over 300 more at the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali.