Today in History

1721		The Peace of Nystad ends the Second Northern War between Sweden and Russia, giving Russia considerably more power in the Baltic region.
1781		The French fleet arrives in the Chesapeake Bay to aid the American Revolution.
1813		Creek Indians massacre over 500 whites at Fort Mims, Alabama.
1861		Union General John Fremont declares martial law throughout Missouri and makes his own emancipation proclamation to free slaves in the state. Lincoln overrules the general.
1932		Nazi leader Hermann Goering is elected president of the Reichstag.
1944		Ploesti, the center of the Rumanian oil industry, falls to Soviet troops.
1963		A Hot Line communications link is installed between Moscow and Washington, DC.
1967		The US Senate confirms Thurgood Marshall as the first African-American Supreme Court justice.
1982		Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is forced out of Lebanon after 10 years in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.
1983		Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford, Jr., becomes the first African-American astronaut to travel in space.
1986		The KGB arrests journalist Nicholas Daniloff (US News World Report) on a charge of spying and hold him for 13 days.