Today in History

630		Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.
1556		Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
1617		Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.
1788		Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is destroyed by fire.
1806		Lewis and Clark begin their trip home after an 8,000 mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.
1865		The Battle of Bentonville, N.C. ends, marking the last Confederate attempt to stop Union General William Sherman.
1851		Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.
1858		British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.
1906		Ohio passes a law that prohibits hazing by fraternities.
1908		Frenchman Henri Farman carries a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.
1910		The U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt an annual pension of $10,000.
1918		The Germans launch the 'Michael' offensive, better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.
1928		President Calvin Coolidge presents the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh, a captain in the US Army Air Corps Reserve, for making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. On June 11, 1927, Lindbergh had received the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded.
1939		Singer Kate Smith records "God Bless America" for Victor Records.
1941		The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, falls to the British.
1951		Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.
1963		Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.
1965		The United States launches Ranger 9, last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.
1971		Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.
1975		As North Vietnamese forces advance, Hue and other northern towns in South Vietnam are evacuated.
1980		President Jimmy Carter announces to the U.S. Olympic Team that they will not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1984		A Soviet submarine crashes into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.