Today in History

1757   Robert Francois Damiens makes an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate King Louis XV of France.  
1863   Union General Henry Halleck, by direction of President Abraham Lincoln, orders General Ulysses Grant to revoke his infamous General Order No. 11 that expelled jews from his operational area.
1896   Utah becomes the 45th state of the Union.  
1902   France offers to sell their Nicaraguan Canal rights to the United States.  
1904   The U.S. Supreme Court decides in the Gonzales v. Williams case that Puerto Ricans are not aliens and can enter the United States freely, yet stops short of awarding citizenship.  
1920   The Negro National League, the first black baseball league, is organized by Rube Foster.  
1923   The Paris Conference on war reparations hits a deadlock as the French insist on the hard line and the British insist on Reconstruction.  
1935   President Franklin D. Roosevelt claims in his State of the Union message that the federal government will provide jobs for 3.5 million Americans on welfare.  
1936   Billboard magazine publishes its first music Hit Parade.  
1941   On the Greek-Albanian front, the Greeks launch an attack towards Valona from Berat to Klisura against the Italians.  
1942   Japanese forces begin the evacuation of Guadalcanal.
1951   UN forces abandon Seoul, Korea, to the Chinese Communist Army.  
1952   The French Army in Indochina launches Operation Nenuphar in hopes of ejecting a Viet Minh division from the Ba Tai forest.
1969   Spain returns the Ifni province to Morocco.  
1970   A 7.7 earthquake kills 15,000+ people in Tonghai County, China.  
1972   Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London, England.
1974   President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.  
1975   The Khmer Rouge launches its newest assault in its five-year war in Phnom Penh. The war in Cambodia would go on until the spring of 1975.
1976   The Ulster Volunteer Force kills six Irish Catholic civilians in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The next day 10 Protestant civilians are murdered in retaliation.  
1979   Ohio officials approve an out-of-court settlement awarding $675,000 to the victims and families in the 1970 shootings at Kent State University, in which four students were killed and nine wounded by National Guard troops.
1990   Over 300 people die and more than 700 are injured in Pakistan's deadliest train accident, when an overloaded passenger train collides with an empty freight train.
1999   Jesse "The Body" Ventura, a former professional wrestler, is sworn in as populist governor of Minnesota.  
1999   The euro, the new money of 11 European nations, goes into effect on the continent of Europe.    
2004   NASA Mars rover Spirit successfully lands on Mars.    
2004   Mikheil Saakashvili is elected President of Georgia following the Rose Revolution of November 2003.    
2007   Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) became the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.    
2010   Burj Khalifa (Khalifa tower) officially opens in Dubai, UAE. At 2,722 ft (829.8 m) it is the world's tallest man-made structure.