Today in History

1523   Gustav Vasa becomes king of Sweden.  
1641   Spain loses Portugal.  
1674   Sivaji crowns himself King of India.  
1813   The United States invasion of Canada is halted at Stony Creek, Ontario.  
1862   The city of Memphis surrenders to the Union navy after an intense naval engagement on the Mississippi River.  
1865   Confederate raider Wiliam Quantrill dies from a wound received while escaping a Union patrol near Taylorsville, Kentucky.
1918   U.S. Marines enter combat at the Battle of Belleau Wood.  
1924   The German Reichstag accepts the Dawes Plan, an American plan to help Germany pay off its war debts. 1930   Frozen foods are sold commercially for the first time.  
1934   President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission.  
1941   The U.S. government authorizes the seizure of foreign ships in U.S. ports.  
1944   D-Day: Operation Overlord lands 400,000 Allied American, British, and Canadian troops on the beaches of Normandy in German-occupied France.  
1961   Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founders of modern psychiatry, dies.  
1966   African American James Meridith is shot and wounded while on a solo march in Mississippi to promote voter registration among blacks.  
1982   Israel invades southern Lebanon.   
1985   The body of Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele is located and exhumed near Sao Paolo, Brazil.