Today in History

97		To placate the Praetorians of Germany, Nerva of Rome adopts Trajan, the Spanish-born governor of lower Germany.
1553		Michael Servetus, who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood, is burned for heresy in Switzerland.
1612		A Polish army that invaded Russia capitulates to Prince Dimitri Pojarski and his Cossacks.
1791		President George Washington transmits to Congress the results of the first US census, exclusive of South Carolina which had not yet submitted its findings.
1806		Emperor Napoleon enters Berlin.
1809		President James Madison orders the annexation of the western part of West Florida. Settlers there had rebelled against Spanish authority.
1862		A Confederate force is routed at the Battle of Georgia Landing, near Bayou Lafourche in Louisiana.
1870		The French fortress of Metz surrenders to the Prussian Army.
1873		Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applies for a patent on barbed wire. Glidden eventually received five patents and is generally considered the inventor of barbed wire.
1891		D. B. Downing, inventor, is awarded a patent for the street letter (mail) box.
1904		The New York subway officially opens running from the Brooklyn Bridge uptown to Broadway at 145th Street.
1907		The first trial in the Eulenberg Affair ends in Germany.
1917		20,000 women march in a suffrage parade in New York. As the largest state and the first on the East Coast to do so, New York has an important effect on the movement to grant all women the vote in all elections.
1922		In Italy, liberal Luigi Facta's cabinet resigns after threats from Mussolini that "either the government will be given to us or we will seize it by marching on Rome." Mussolini calls for a general mobilization of all Fascists.
1927		Fox Movie-tone news, the first sound news film, is released.
1941		In a broadcast to the nation on Navy Day, President Franklin Roosevelt declares: "America has been attacked, the shooting has started." He does not ask for full-scale war yet, realizing that many Americans are not yet ready for such a step.
1954		Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the US Air Force.
1962		American U-2 reconnaissance plane shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Cuba, killing the pilot, Maj. Rudolf Anderson, the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1962		Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev offers to remove Soviet missile bases in Cuba if the U.S. removes its missile bases in Turkey.
1964		The political career of future US president Ronald Reagan is launched when he delivers a speech on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
1971		The Democratic Republic of the Congo renamed Zaire.
1986		London Stock Exchange rules change as Britain suddenly deregulates financial markets, an event called the Big Bang.
1988		US President Ronald Reagan decides to tear down a new US Embassy in Moscow because Soviet listening devices were built into the structure.
1997		Stock markets crash around the world over fears of a global economic meltdown.