Today in History

1776		Americans begin shelling British troops in Boston.
1781		Maryland ratifies the Articles of Confederation. She is the last state to sign.
1797		The Directory of Great Britain authorizes vessels of war to board and seize neutral vessels, particularly if the ships are American.
1815		To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declares war on Algiers.
1836		Texas declares independence from Mexico on Sam Houston's 43rd birthday.
1853		The Territory of Washington is organized.
1865		President Abraham Lincoln rejects Confederate General Robert E. Lee's plea for peace talks, demanding unconditional surrender.
1867		The first Reconstruction Act is passed by Congress.
1877		Rutherford B. Hayes is declared president by one vote the day before the inauguration.
1889		Congress passes the Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.
1896		Bone Mizell, the famed cowboy of Florida, is sentenced to two years of hard labor in the state pen for cattle rustling. He would only serve a small portion of the sentence.
1901		Congress passes the Platt amendment, which limits Cuban autonomy as a condition for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
1908		An international conference on arms reduction opens in London.
1908		Gabriel Lippman introduces the new three-dimensional color photography at the Academy of Sciences.
1917		Congress passes the Jones Act making Puerto Rico a territory of the United States and makes the inhabitants U.S. citizens.
1923		In Italy, Mussolini admits that women have a right to vote, but declares that the time is not right.
1930		Novelist D.H. Lawrence dies of tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Vence, France, at the age of 45.
1943		The center of Berlin is bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs are dropped in a half hour.
1945		MacArthur raises the U.S. flag on Corregidor in the Philippines.
1946		Ho Chi Minh is elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1951		The U.S. Navy launches the K-1, the first modern submarine designed to hunt enemy submarines.
1955		Claudette Colvin refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous arrest for the same offense.
1956		France grants independence to Morocco.
1965		More than 150 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes bomb two bases in North Vietnam in the first of the "Rolling Thunder" raids.
1968		The siege of Khe Sanh ends in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there are still in control of the mountain top.
1973		Federal forces surround Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which is occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who are holding at least 10 hostages.
1974		A grand jury in Washington, D.C. concludes that President Nixon was indeed involved in the Watergate cover-up.
1978		Czech pilot Vladimir Remek becomes the first non-Russian, non-American in space.
1981		The United States plans to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.