| 1190 | Frederick Barbarossa drowns in a river while leading an army of the Third Crusade. | |
| 1692 | Bridget Bishop is hanged in Salem, Mass., for witchcraft. | |
| 1776 | The Continental Congress appoints a committee to write a Declaration of Independence. | |
| 1801 | Tripoli declares war on the U.S. for refusing to pay tribute. | |
| 1854 | The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, holds its first graduation. | |
| 1861 | Dorothea Dix is appointed superintendent of female nurses for the Union army. | |
| 1864 | At the Battle of Brice's Crossroads in Mississippi, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest defeats the numerically superior Union troops. | |
| 1898 | U.S. Marines land in Cuba. | |
| 1905 | Japan and Russia agree to peace talks brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt. | |
| 1909 | An SOS signal is transmitted for the first time in an emergency when the Cunard liner SS Slavonia is wrecked off the Azores. | |
| 1916 | Mecca, under control of the Turks, falls to the Arabs during the Great Arab Revolt. | |
| 1920 | The Republican convention in Chicago endorses woman suffrage. | |
| 1924 | The Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti is kidnapped and assassinated by Fascists in Rome. | |
| 1925 | Tennessee adopts a new biology text book denying the theory of evolution. | |
| 1940 | The Norwegian army capitulates to the Germans. | |
| 1942 | Germany razes the town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia and kills more than 1,300 citizens in retribution of the murder of Reinhard Heydrich. | |
| 1943 | The Allies begin bombing Germany around the clock. | |
| 1944 | The U.S. VII and V corps, advancing from Normandy's beaches, link up and begin moving inland. | |
| 1948 | The news that the sound barrier has been broken is finally released to the public by the U.S. Air Force. Chuck Yeager, piloting the rocket airplane X-1, exceeded the speed of sound on October 14, 1947. | |
| 1963 | Buddhist monk Ngo Quang Duc dies by self immolation in Saigon to protest persecution by the Diem government. | |
| 1970 | A 15-man group of special forces troops begin training for Operation Kingpin, a POW rescue mission in North Vietnam. | |
| 1985 | The Israeli army pulls out of Lebanon after 1,099 days of occupation. | |
| 1999 | Serb forces begin their withdrawl from Kosovo after signing an agreement with the NATO powers. |
The 19 largest US banks are at least $50 billion short of meeting new capital requirements under the Basel III accords, according to rules proposed by the Federal Reserve.
The biggest among them would probably need billions of dollars more by the 2019 deadline to comply fully with the rules.
Smaller US lenders are about $10 billion short of the requirements, the Fed said on Thursday.
The Fed’s proposals, which will be phased in from next year, are part of a larger package implementing the Basel III accords in the US.
About 68 percent of Millennials say they never doubt the existence of God, a decline of 15 points since 2007, while the number of older Americans with a firm belief in God remains stable. Millennials are defined by Pew as those young Americans born in 1981 or later.
Other studies appear to confirm this trend - more than half of non-religious Millennials have abandoned their childhood faith, according to a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.
Syria's government was accused on Wednesday of carrying out a new massacre in a small village near the central city of Hama, with an opposition group claiming 100 people, including many women and children, had been killed.
"We have 100 deaths in the village of al-Qubair, among them 20 women and 20 children," said Mohammed Sermini, spokesman for the Syrian National Council, who accused the regime of being behind the incident.
The news looked certain to fuel a bitter debate about the increasingly bloody Syrian crisis and to underline the limits of what a deeply divided international community can achieve.
The store was open and full of customers when it was cleared about 6:15 p.m. Thursday after employees and then police discovered the possible hazardous situation involving the substances used to make methamphetamine, St. Louis County police Lt. Mark Cox said. The chemicals were discovered after police were called about a shoplifter. Cox did not yet know details of the "lab," how it was put together or where in the store it was located.UPDATE: It gets weirder. This local news report further clarifies that a woman detained for shoplifting at the Walmart "began to make meth in the loss prevention office."
It was where her four children and two dogs played, and where she drank coffee on sunny mornings. Then someone stole it. They didn’t even leave a note. Thompson and her children went away to visit her husband one morning. They returned to their Kilkenny neighborhood home. The family entered through the back door and everything seemed fine. Then Thompson opened the blinds on the large picture window in the front room. Oh my God, she thought, where is my grass?And believe it or not, that’s not even the weirdest theft story on this list!
She went outside to the swath of ugly, brown dirt that had replaced her lawn. She thought there might be a note to explain an accident, like when someone dings your car in the mall parking lot. There were no clues. Thompson canvassed neighbors and several reported a white truck and trailer parked at her house. No one thought it was suspicious. Just another landscaping job.
One of the most difficult times for the Monarchy was just after World War II. The raven population was down to just one — a raven named Grip. Most of the birds apparently flew the coop, it is believed, due to the disruption of the Blitz as the Germans bombed London relentlessly. It is rumored that one of the ravens was kidnapped. It seemed that perhaps the legend of the ravens could be true.Sure it’s probably just coincidence, but when a good luck charm works out for around 700 years, you tend to not want to test how effective it is.
Mite helps virus to wipe out bees
A parasitic mite has helped spread a lethal virus that has wiped
out millions of honeybee colonies worldwide, say scientists. BBC Nature
