Today in History

96		Vespasian, a Roman army leader, is hailed as a Roman emperor by the Egyptian legions.
1543		England and Scotland sign the Peace of Greenwich.
1596		An English fleet under the Earl of Essex, Lord Howard of Effingham and Francis Vere capture and sack Cadiz, Spain.
1690		Led by Marshall Luxembourg, the French defeat the forces of the Grand Alliance at Fleurus in the Netherlands.
1777		British troops depart from their base at the Bouquet river to head toward Ticonderoga, New York.
1798		Napoleon Bonaparte takes Alexandria, Egypt.
1838		Charles Darwin presents a paper on his theory of evolution to the Linnean Society in London.
1862		Union artillery stops a Confederate attack at Malvern Hill, Virginia.
1863		In the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg, Federal forces retreat through the town and dig in at Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill.
1867		Canada, by the terms of the British North America Act, becomes an independent dominion.
1876		Montenegro declares war on the Turks.
1898		American troops take San Juan Hill and El Caney, Cuba, from the Spaniards.
1916		The Battle of the Somme begins. Approximately 30,000 men are killed on the first day, two-thirds of them British.
1942		Axis troops capture Sevestapol, Crimea, in the Soviet Union.
1945		The New York State Commission Against Discrimination is established–the first such agency in the United States.
1950		American ground troops arrive in South Korea to halt the advancing North Korean army.
1961		British troops land in Kuwait to aid against Iraqi threats.
1963		The U.S. postmaster introduces the ZIP code.
1966		The U.S. Marines launch Operation Holt in an attempt to finish off a Vietcong battalion in Thua Thien Province in Vietnam.