Today in History

1285   Philip III of Spain is succeeded by Philip IV ("the Fair").
1503   Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.  
1676   Bacon's Rebellion begins in the New World.
1773   To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.  
1774   Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France.  
1775   American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.
1794   Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded.
1796   Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.  
1840   Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.  
1857   The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British.
1863   General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville.  
1865   Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia.  
1869   The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah.  
1859   French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.  
1872   Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman nominated for U.S. president.  
1917   Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic.  
1924   J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  
1928   WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming.  
1933   Nazis begin burning books by "unGerman" writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.  
1940   German forces begin a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line.  
1940   Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister.
1941   England's House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs.  
1960   The USS Nautilus completes first circumnavigation of globe underwater.  
1994   Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa's first black president.