Today in History

786		Harun al-Rashid succeeds his older brother the Abbasid Caliph al-Hadi as Caliph of Baghdad.
1194		Richard I, King of England, is freed from captivity in Germany.
1508		The Proclamation of Trent is made.
1787		Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising of debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers against the new U.S. government, fails.
1789		George Washington is unanimously elected the first president of the United States by the Electoral College. He will be unanimously elected again in 1792 and will remain the only U.S. president in history to receive the totality of electoral votes.
1795		France abolishes slavery in her territories and confers slaves to citizens.
1889		Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, “the Sundance Kid.”
1899		After an exchange of gunfire, fighting breaks out between American troops and Filipinos near Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War
1906		The New York Police Department begins finger print identification.
1909		California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren.
1915		Germany decrees British waters as part of the war zone; all ships to be sunk without warning.
1923		French troops take the territories of Offenburg, Appenweier and Buhl in the Ruhr as a part of the agreement ending World War I.
1932		Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurates the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.
1941		The United Service Organization (U.S.O.) is formed to cater to armed forces and defense industries.
1944		The Japanese attack the Indian Seventh Army in Burma.
1945		The Big Three, American, British and Soviet leaders, meet in Yalta to discuss the war aims.
1966		Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins televised hearings on the Vietnam War.
1974		Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, beginning one of the most bizarre cases in FBI history.
1980		Syria withdraws its peacekeeping force in Beirut.
1986		The U.S. Post Office issues a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.