Today in History

1135		Henry I of England dies and the crown is passed to his nephew, Stephen of Blois.
1581		Edmund Champion and other Jesuit martyrs are hanged at Tyburn, England, for sedition, after being tortured.
1861		The U.S. gunboat Penguin seizes the Confederate blockade runner Albion carrying supplies worth almost $100,000.
1862		Lincoln gives the State of the Union address to the 37th Congress.
1863		Belle Boyd, a Confederate spy, is released from prison in Washington.
1881		Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp are exonerated in court for their action in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, AZ.
1900		Kaiser Wilhelm II refuses to meet with Boer leader Paul Kruger in Berlin.
1905		Twenty officers and 230 guards are arrested in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the revolt at the Winter Palace.
1908		The Italian Parliament debates the future of the Triple Alliance and asks for compensation for Austria’s action in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1909		President William Howard Taft severs official relations with Nicaragua’s Zelaya government and declares support for the revolutionaries.
1916		King Constantine of Greece refuses to surrender to the Allies.
1918		An American army of occupation enters Germany.
1925		After a seven-year occupation, 7,000 British troops evacuate Cologne, Germany.
1933		Nazi storm troops become an official organ of the Reich.
1934		Josef Stalin’s aide, Sergei Kirov, is assassinated in Leningrad.
1941		Japan’s Tojo rejects U.S. proposals for a Pacific settlement as fantastic and unrealistic.
1941		Great Britain declares a state of emergency in Malaya following reports of Japanese attacks.
1941		The first Civil Air Patrol is organized in the United States.
1942		National gasoline rationing goes into effect in the United States.
1955		Rosa Parks refuses to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, defying the South’s segregationist laws.
1969		America’s first draft lottery since 1942 is held.
1971		The Indian Army recaptures part of Kashmir, which had been occupied by Pakistan.
1981		The AIDS virus is officially recognized.
1986		Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North pleads the 5th Amendment before a Senate panel investigating the Iran-Contra arms sale.
1988		Benazir Bhutto, politician, becomes the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Pakistan and the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state
1989		East Germany’s parliament changes its constitution, abolishing a section that gave the Communist Party the leading role in the state.
1990		Channel Tunnel sections from France and the UK meet beneath the English Channel.
1991		Ukraine’s voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the USSR.
2001		Trans World Airlines’ final flight takes place following the carrier’s purchase by American Airlines; TWA began operating 76 years earlier. The final flight, 220, piloted by Capt. Bill Compton, landed at St. Louis International Airport.