Today in History

536   Having captured Naples earlier in the year, Belisarius takes Rome.  
1861   The U.S. Senate approves establishment of a committee that would become the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War.  
1863   Major General John G. Foster replaces Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside as Commander of the Department of Ohio.  
1867   The capital of Colorado Territory is moved from Golden to Denver.  
1872   P.B.S. Pinchback becomes the first African-American governor of Louisiana.
1900   The Russian czar rejects Boer Paul Kruger's pleas for aid in South Africa against the British.  
1908   A child labor bill passes in the German Reichstag, forbidding work for children under age 13.  
1917   The new Finnish Republic demands the withdrawal of Russian troops.  
1940   The British army seizes 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.  
1941   Franklin D. Roosevelt tells Americans to plan for a long war.  
1948   The United States abandons a plan to de-concentrate industry in Japan.  
1949   The United Nations takes trusteeship over Jerusalem.
1950   President Harry Truman bans U.S. exports to Communist China.  
1950   Harry Gold gets 30 years imprisonment for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II.  
1955   Sugar Ray Robinson knocks out Carl Olson to regain the world middleweight boxing title.  
1960   The Laos government flees to Cambodia as the capital city of Vientiane is engulfed in war.  
1990   Lech Walesa is elected president of Poland.  
1992   U.S. Marines land in Somalia to ensure food and medicine reaches the deprived areas of that country.   
2008   Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is arrested on federal charges, including an attempt to sell the US Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.