Today in History

1555		The Protestant martyrs Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley are burned at the stake for heresy in England.
1701		Yale University is founded as The Collegiate School of Killingworth, Connecticut by Congregationalists who consider Harvard too liberal.
1793		Queen Marie Antoinette is beheaded by guillotine during the French Revolution.
1813		The United States defeats the British Fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.
1859		Abolitionist John Brown, with 21 men, seizes the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. U.S. Marines capture the raiders, killing several. John Brown is later hanged in Virginia for treason.
1901		President Theodore Roosevelt incites controversy by inviting black leader Booker T. Washington to the White House.
1908		The first airplane flight in England is made at Farnborough, by Samuel Cody, a U.S. citizen.
1934		Mao Tse-tung decides to abandon his base in Jiangxi due to attacks from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. With his pregnant wife and about 30,000 Red Army troops, he sets out on the “Long March.”
1940		Benjamin O. Davis becomes the U.S. Army’s first African American Brigadier General.
1946		Ten Nazi war criminals are hanged in Nuremberg, Germany.
1973		Israeli General Ariel Sharon crosses the Suez Canal and begins to encircle two Egyptian armies.
1995		The Million Man March for ‘A Day of Atonement’ takes place in Washington, D.C.
1998		General Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, is arrested in London for extradition on murder charges