Today in History

48 BC		On landing in Egypt, Pompey is murdered on the orders of Ptolemy.
855		The Emperor Lothar dies in Gaul, and his kingdom is divided between his three sons.
1066		William, Duke of Normandy, soon to be known as William the Conqueror invades England.
1106		King Henry of England defeats his brother Robert at the Battle of Tinchebrai and reunites England and Normandy.
1238		James of Aragon retakes Valencia, Spain, from the Arabs.
1607		Samuel de Champlain and his colonists return to France from Port Royal Nova Scotia.
1794		The Anglo-Russian-Austrian Alliance of St. Petersburg, which is directed against France, is signed.
1864		Union General William Rosecrans blames his defeat at Chickamauga on two of his subordinate generals. They are later exonerated by a court of inquiry.
1874		Colonel Ronald Mackenzie raids a war camp of Comanche and Kiowa at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, slaughtering 2,000 of their horses.
1904		A woman is placed under arrest for smoking a cigarette on New York's Fifth Avenue.
1912		W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues" is published.
1913		Race riots in Harriston, Mississippi, kill 10 people.
1924		Three U.S. Army aircraft arrive in Seattle, Washington after completing a 22-day round-the-world flight.
1928		Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin when he notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory; it remained for Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to isolate the active ingredient, allowing the "miracle drug" to be developed in the 1940s.
1939		Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland; Warsaw surrenders to German troops.
1958		France ratifies a new constitution.
1959		Explorer VI, the U.S. satellite, takes the first video pictures of earth.
1961		Military coup in Damacus ends the Egypt-Syria union known as the United Arab Republic that was formed Feb. 1, 1958.
1963		Roy Lichtenstein's pop art work Whaam!, depicting in comic-book style a US jet shooting down an enemy fighter, is exhibited for the first time; it will become one of the best known examples of pop art.
1995		Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat sign an interim agreement concerning settlement on the Gaza Strip.
1996		Afghanistan's former president (1986-92) Mohammad Najibullah tortured and murdered by the Taliban.
2008		SpaceX launches the first private spacecraft, Falcon 1.