Today in History

841   Charles the Bald and Louis the German defeat Lothar at Fontenay.
1658   Aurangzeb proclaims himself emperor of the Moghuls in India.  
1767   Mexican Indians riot as Jesuit priests are ordered home.  
1857   Gustave Flaubert goes on trial for public immorality regarding his novel, Madame Bovary.  
1862   The first day of the Seven Days' campaign begins with fighting at Oak Grove, Virginia.
1864   Union troops surrounding Petersburg, Virginia, begin building a mine tunnel underneath the Confederate lines.  
1868   The U.S. Congress enacts legislation granting an eight-hour day to workers employed by the federal government.  
1876   General George A. Custer and over 260 men of the Seventh Cavalry are wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Little Big Horn in Montana.  
1903   Marie Curie announces her discovery of radium.  
1920   The Greeks take 8,000 Turkish prisoners in Smyrna.  
1921   Samuel Gompers is elected head of the American Federation of Labor for the 40th time.  
1941   Finland declares war on the Soviet Union.  
1946   Ho Chi Minh travels to France for talks on Vietnamese independence.  
1948   The Soviet Union tightens its blockade of Berlin by intercepting river barges heading for the city. 1950   North Korea invades South Korea, beginning the Korean War.  
1959   The Cuban government seizes 2.35 million acres under a new agrarian reform law.  
1962   The U.S. Supreme Court bans official prayers in public schools.  
1964   President Lyndon Johnson orders 200 naval personnel to Mississippi to assist in finding three missing civil rights workers.  
1973   White House Counsel John Dean admits President Nixon took part in the Watergate cover-up.  
1986   Congress approves $100 million in aid to the Contras fighting in Nicaragua.