Today in History

240 BC   Eratosthenes estimates the circumference of Earth using two sticks.  
1536   Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, is beheaded.
1778   General George Washington's troops finally leave Valley Forge after a winter of training.  
1821   The Ottomans defeat the Greeks at the Battle of Dragasani.  
1846   The New York Knickerbocker Club plays the New York Club in the first baseball game at Elysian Field, Hoboken, New Jersey.  
1848   The first Women's Rights Convention convenes in Seneca Falls, New York.  
1861   Virginians, in what will soon be West Virginia, elect Francis Pierpoint as their provisional governor. 1862   President Abraham Lincoln outlines his Emancipation Proclamation. News of the document reaches the South.  
1864   The USS Kearsarge sinks the CSS Alabama off of Cherbourg, France.  
1867   Mexican Emperor Maximillian is executed.  
1885   The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York City from France.  
1903   The young school teacher, Benito Mussolini, is placed under investigation by police in Bern, Switzerland.  
1919   Mustafa Kemal founds the Turkish National Congress at Ankara and denounces the Treaty of Versailles.  
1933   France grants Leon Trotsky political asylum.  
1934   The National Archives and Records Administration is established.  
1937   The town of Bilbao, Spain, falls to the Nationalist forces.  
1942   Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington D.C. to discuss the invasion of North Africa with President Roosevelt.  
1944   U.S. Navy carrier-based planes shatter the remaining Japanese carrier forces in the Battle of the Marianas.  
1951   President Harry S. Truman signs the Universal Military Training and Service Act, which extends Selective Service until July 1, 1955 and lowers the draft age to 18.  
1958   Nine entertainers refuse to answer a congressional committee's questions on communism.  
1961   Kuwait regains complete independence from Britain.  
1963   Soviet cosmonaut, Valentia Tereshkova, becomes the first woman in space.  
1965   Air Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky becomes South Vietnam's youngest premier at age 34.  
1968   Over 50,000 people march on Washington, D.C. to support the Poor People's Campaign.  
1973   The Case-Church Amendment prevents further U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.  
1987   The U.S. Supreme Court voids the Louisiana law requiring schools to teach creationism.  
1995   The Richmond Virginia Planning Commission approves plans to place a memorial statue of tennis professional Arthur Ashe.