Today in History

1606   Guy Fawkes is hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up Parliament.  
1620   Virginia colony leaders write to the Virginia Company in England, asking for more orphaned apprentices for employment.  
1788   The Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart dies.  
1835   A man with two pistols misfires at President Andrew Jackson at the White House.  
1865   House of Representatives approves a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.  
1911   The German Reichstag exempts royal families from tax obligations.  
1915   Germans use poison gas on the Russians at Bolimov.
1915   German U-boats sink two British steamers in the English Channel.  
1916   President Woodrow Wilson refuses the compromise on Lusitania reparations.
1917   Germany resumes unlimited sub warfare, warning that all neutral ships that are in the war zone will be attacked.  
1935   The Soviet premier tells Japan to get out of Manchuria.  
1943   The Battle of Stalingrad ends as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth Army surrender to the victorious Red Army forces.  
1944   U.S. troops under Vice Adm. Spruance land on Kwajalien atoll in the Marshall Islands.  
1950   Paris protests the Soviet recognition of Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1966   U.S. planes resume bombing of North Vietnam after a 37-day pause.  
1968   In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive begins as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers attack strategic and civilian locations throughout South Vietnam.  
1976   Ernesto Miranda, famous from the Supreme Court ruling on Miranda vs. Arizona is stabbed to death.  
1981   Lech Walesa announces an accord in Poland, giving Saturdays off to laborers.