Today in History

49 BC   Julius Caesar leads his army across the Rubicon River, plunging Rome into civil war.  
1843   Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled Banner," dies in Baltimore.  
1861   Alabama secedes from the Union.  
1862   Lincoln accepts Simon Cameron's resignation as Secretary of War.  
1887   At Fort Smith, Arkansas, hangman George Maledon dispatches four victims in a multiple hanging.  
1904   British troops massacre 1,000 dervishes in Somaliland.  
1916   Russian General Yudenich launches a WWI winter offensive and advances west.  
1923   The French enter the town of Essen in the Ruhr valley, to extract Germany's resources as war payment.  
1934   The German police raid the homes of dissident clergy in Berlin.  
1940   Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., becomes the U.S. Army's first black general, his son would later become a general as well.  

1941   Adolf Hitler orders forces to be prepared to enter North Africa to assist the Italian effort, marking the establishment of the Afrika Korps.   
1942   Japan invades the Dutch East Indies at Borneo.  
1943   The Soviet Red Army encircles Stalingrad.  
1948   President Harry S. Truman proposes free, two-year community colleges for all who want an education.  
1949   Negotiations in China between the Nationalists and Communists open as Tientsin is virtually lost to the Communists.
1964   A collection of previously unexhibited paintings by Pablo Picasso are displayed for the first time in Toronto.  
1980   Honda announces it will build the first Japanese-owned passenger-car assembly plant in the United States–in Ohio.  
1994   The Irish Government announces an end to a 15-year ban on broadcasting by the IRA and its political branch, Sinn Fein.  
2003   Illinois Gov. George Ryan commutes the death sentences of 167 prisoners on the state's death row in the wake of allegations that Chicago police detective and commander Jon Burge tortured confessions from some 200 suspects over a 19 year period.