Today in History

1244		The Sixth Crusade ends when an Egyptian-Khwarezmian force almost annihilates the Frankish army at Gaza.
1529		Henry VIII of England strips Thomas Wolsey of his office for failing to secure an annulment of his marriage.
1346		English forces defeat the Scots under David II during the Battle of Neville’s Cross, Scotland.
1777		British Maj. Gen. John Burgoyne surrenders 5,000 men at Saratoga, N.Y.
1781		British peer and Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown, marking a decisive victory by a combined force of American Continental Army troops led by General George Washington and French Army troops led by the Comte de Rochambeau. The culmination of the Yorktown campaign, the siege proves to be the last major land battle of the Revolutionary War in the North American theater, as the surrender by Cornwallis, and the capture of both him and his army, prompt the British government to negotiate an end to the conflict.
1815		Napoleon Bonaparte arrives at the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he has been banished by the Allies.
1863		General Ulysses S. Grant is named overall Union Commander of the West.
1877		Brigadier General Alfred Terry meets with Sitting Bull in Canada to discuss the Indians’ return to the United States.
1913		Zeppelin LII explodes over London, killing 28.
1933		Due to rising anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism in Hitler’s Germany, Albert Einstein, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist, flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States. He will become an American citizen in 1940 and on the eve of World War II warn President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the potential development of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type,” recommending that the United States begin similar research.
1941		The U.S. destroyer Kearny is damaged by a German U-boat torpedo off Iceland; 11 Americans are killed.
1972		Peace talks between the Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao government begin in Vietnam.
1994		Dmitry Kholodov, a Russian journalist, is assassinated while investigating corruption in the armed forces; his murder begins a series of killings of journalists in Russia.
2001		Rehavam Ze’evi, Israeli tourism minister and founder of the right-wing Moledet party, is assassinated by a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); he was the first Israeli minister ever assassinated.