Today in History

1285		Philip III of Spain is succeeded by Philip IV ("the Fair").
1503		Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.
1676		Bacon's Rebellion begins in the New World.
1773		To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.
1774		Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France.
1775		American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.
1794		Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded.
1796		Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.
1840		Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.
1857		The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British.
1863		General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville.
1865		Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia.
1869		The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah.
1859		French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.
1872		Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman nominated for U.S. president.
1917		Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic.
1924		J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1928		WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming.
1933		Nazis begin burning books by "unGerman" writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.
1940		German forces begin a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line.
1940		Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister.
1941		England's House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs.
1960		The USS Nautilus completes first circumnavigation of globe underwater.
1994		Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa's first black president.