Today in History

1492		Catholic forces under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella take the town of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain.
1758		The French begin bombardment of Madras, India.
1839		Photography pioneer Louis Daguerre takes the first photograph of the moon.
1861		The USS Brooklyn is readied at Norfolk to aid Fort Sumter.
1863		In the second day of hard fighting at Stone’s River, near Murfreesboro, Tenn., Union troops defeat the Confederates.
1903		President Theodore Roosevelt closes a post office in Indianola, Mississippi, for refusing to hire a Black postmistress.
1904		U.S. Marines are sent to Santo Domingo to aid the government against rebel forces.
1905		After a six-month siege, Russians surrender Port Arthur to the Japanese.
1918		Russian Bolsheviks threaten to re-enter the war unless Germany returns occupied territory.
1932		Japanese forces in Manchuria set up a puppet government known as Manchukuo.
1936		In Berlin, Nazi officials claim that their treatment of Jews is not the business of the League of Nations.
1942		In the Philippines, the city of Manila and the U.S. Naval base at Cavite fall to Japanese forces.
1943		The Allies capture Buna in New Guinea.
1963		In Vietnam, the Viet Cong down five U.S. helicopters in the Mekong Delta. 30 Americans are reported dead.
1966		American G.I.s move into the Mekong Delta for the first time.
1973		The United States admits the accidental bombing of a Hanoi hospital.
1980		President Jimmy Carter asks the U.S. Senate to delay the arms treaty ratification in response to Soviet action in Afghanistan.
1981		British police arrest the “Yorkshire Ripper” serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe.
1999		A severe winter storm hits the Midwestern US; in Chicago temperatures plunge to -13 ºF and19 inches of snow fell; 68 deaths are blamed on the storm.
2006		A coal mine explosion in Sago, West Virginia, kills 12 miners and critically injures another. This accident and another within weeks lead to the first changes in federal mining laws in decades.