Today in History

1327   Edward III is coronated King of England.  
1587   Elizabeth I, Queen of England, signs the Warrant of Execution for Mary Queen of Scots.  
1633   The tobacco laws of Virginia are codified, limiting tobacco production to reduce dependence on a single-crop economy.
1793   France declares war on Britain and the Netherlands.  
1861   A furious Governor Sam Houston storms out of a legislative session upon learning that Texas has voted 167-7 to secede from the Union.  
1902   U.S. Secretary of State John Hay protests Russian privileges in China as a violation of the "open door policy."  
1905   Germany contests French rule in Morocco.  
1909   U.S. troops leave Cuba after installing Jose Miguel Gomez as president.  
1930   A Loening Air Yacht of Air Ferries makes its first passenger run between San Francisco and Oakland, California..  
1942   Planes of the U.S. Pacific fleet attack Japanese bases in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.  
1943   American tanks and infantry are battered at German positions at Fais pass in North Africa.  
1944   U.S. Army troops invade two Kwajalein Islands in the Pacific.  
1945   U.S. Rangers and Filipino guerrillas rescue 513 American survivors of the Bataan Death March.  
1951   Third A-bomb tests are completed in the desert of Nevada.  
1960   Four black students stage a sit-in at a segregated Greensboro, N.C. lunch counter.
1964   President Lyndon B. Johnson rejects Charles de Gaulle's plan for a neutral Vietnam.  
1965   Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 others are arrested in protest against voter discrimination in Alabama.
1968   U.S. troops drive the North Vietnamese out of Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon.  
1968   South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu declares martial law.  
1986  Two days of anti-government riots in Port-au-Prince result in 14 dead.