Today in History

1346		Charles IV of Luxembourg is elected Holy Roman Emperor.
1509		Henry VIII of England marries Catherine of Aragon.
1770		Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef.
1798		Napoleon Bonaparte takes the island of Malta.
1861		Union forces under General George B. McClellan repulse a Confederate force at Rich Mountain in western Virginia.
1865		Major General Henry W. Halleck finds documents and archives of the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia. This discovery will lead to the publication of the official war records.
1895		Charles E. Duryea receives the first U.S. patent granted to an American inventor for a gasoline-driven automobile.
1903		King Alexander and Queen Draga of Belgrade are assassinated by members of the Serbia army.
1915		British troops take Cameroon in Africa.
1927		Charles Lindbergh, a captain in the US Army Air Corps Reserve, receives the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded, for his solo trans-Atlantic Flight.
1930		William Beebe, of the New York Zoological Society, dives to a record-setting depth of 1,426 feet off the coast of Bermuda, in a diving chamber called a bathysphere.
1934		The Disarmament Conference in Geneva ends in failure.
1940		The Italian Air Force bombs the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean.
1943		The Italian island of Pantelleria surrenders after a heavy air bombardment.
1944		U.S. carrier-based planes attack Japanese airfields on Guam , Rota, Saipan and Tinian islands, preparing for the invasion of Saipan.
1963		Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is arrested in Florida for trying to integrate restaurants.
1967		Israel and Syria accept a U. N. cease-fire.
1987		Margaret Thatcher wins her third consecutive term as Prime Minister.