Today in History

1762		The British fleet bombards and captures Spanish-held Manila in the Philippines.
1795		The day after he routed counterrevolutionaries in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte accepts their formal surrender.
1813		U.S. victory at the Battle of the Thames, in Ontario, broke Britain's Indian allies with the death of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, and made the Detroit frontier safe.
1821		Greek rebels capture Tripolitza, the main Turkish fort in the Peloponnese area of Greece.
1864		At the Battle of Allatoona, a small Union post is saved from Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood's army.
1877		Nez Perce Chief Joseph surrenders to Colonel Nelson Miles in Montana Territory, after a 1,700-mile trek to reach Canada falls 40 miles short.
1880		The first ball-point pen is patented on this day by Alonzo T. Cross.
1882		Outlaw Frank James surrenders in Missouri six months after brother Jesse's assassination.
1915		Germany issues an apology and promises for payment for the 128 American passengers killed in the sinking of the British ship Lusitania.
1915		Bulgaria enters World War I on the side of the Central Powers.
1921		The World Series is broadcast on radio for the first time.
1931		Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon complete the first heavier than air nonstop flight over the Pacific. Their flight, begun October 3, lasted 41 hours, 31 minutes and covered 5,000 miles. They piloted their Bellanca CH-200 monoplane from Samushiro, 300 miles north of Tokyo, Japan, to Wenatchee, Washington.
1938		Germany invalidates Jews' passports.
1943		Imperial Japanese forces execute 98 American POWs on Wake Island.
1947		US President Harry S Truman delivers the first televised White House address.
1948		A magnitude 7.3 earthquake near Ashgabat in the USSR kills tens of thousands; estimates range from 110,000 to 176,000.
1955		The first James Bond film, Dr. No starring Sean Connery, debuts.
1965		U.S. forces in Saigon receive permission to use tear gas.
1966		A sodium cooling system malfunction causes a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration breeder reactor near Detroit. Radiation is contained.
1968		Police attack civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland; the event is considered to be the beginning of "The Troubles."
1969		Monty Python's Flying Circus debuts on BBC One.
1970		The US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is established.
1970		Members of the Quebec Liberation Front (QLF) kidnap British Trade Commissioner James Cross in Montreal, resulting in the October Crisis and Canada's first peacetime use of the War Measures Act.
1986		Britain's The Sunday Times newspaper publishes details of Israel's secret nuclear weapons development program.
1988		Brazil's Constituent Assembly authorizes the nation's new constitution.
2000		Slobodan Milosevic, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, resigns in the wake of mass protest demonstrations.