Today in History

Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.

Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is stripped of his boxing title.

The U.S. Army and Marines invade the Dominican Republic.

French troops evacuate northern Laos.

Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia.

The Allies indict Tojo on 55 counts of war crimes

Benito Mussolini is killed by Italian partisans.

Jean Redpath, Scottish folk singer.

Kenneth White, poet and essayist.

A yellow fever vaccine for humans is announced.

James Baker III, Cabinet secretary for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Harper Lee, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (To Kill a Mockingbird).

Azerbaijan joins the Soviet Union.

Les Irvin makes the first jump with an Army Air Corps parachute.

British declare martial law throughout Ireland.

Odette Hallowes, British secret agent.

The first night air flight is performed by Claude Grahame-White in England.

Johan Borgen, Norwegian novelist.

William Soutar, Scottish poet.

John Jacob Niles, American folk singer and folklorist.

Lionel Barrymore, American stage, screen and radio actor.

Yokut Indians repel an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in California.

President James Monroe proclaims naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.

The crew of the HMS Bounty mutinies against Captain William Bligh.

Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the constitution.

French forces besieging Quebec defeat the British in the second Battle on the Plains of Abraham.

James Monroe, fifth President of the United States (1817-1825).

Virginia Governor John Harvey is accused of treason and removed from office.

Edward IV, king of England (1461-1470, 1471-1483), first king of the House of York.

Villagers in Palermo lead a revolt against French rule in Sicily.

Constantius II visits Rome for the first time.