Today in History

President Ronald Reagan formally links progress in arms control to Soviet repression in Poland.

Abu Hassan, the alleged planner of the 1972 Munich raid, is killed by a bomb in Beirut.

Communist forces shell Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the first time.

U.S. troops under Major General John P. Lucas make an amphibious landing behind German lines at Anzio, Italy, just south of Rome.

Axis forces pull out of Tripoli for Tunisia, destroying bases as they leave.

A Nazi order erases the old officer caste, tying the army directly to the Party.

Government troops crush a Communist uprising in Northern Spain.

Admiral Richard Byrd charts a vast area of Antarctica.

Turkey consents to the Balkan peace terms and gives up Adrianople.

Second Monte Carlo auto race begins.

Willa Brown-Chappell, pioneer aviator.

Russian troops fire on civilians beginning Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg.

Fred Vinson, Thirteenth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Eighty-two British soldiers hold off attacks by 4,000 Zulu warriors at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in South Africa.

D.W. [David Wark] Griffith, influential U.S. film director (The Birth of A Nation, Intolerance).

In an attempt to out flank Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia, General Ambrose Burnside leads his army on a march to north Fredericksburg, but foul weather bogs his army down in what will become known as the “Mud March.”

A British force is wiped out by an Asante army under Osei Bonsu on the African Gold Coast. This is the first defeat for a colonial power.

During the War of 1812, British forces under Henry Proctor defeat a U.S. contingent planning an attack on Fort Detroit.

President Thomas Jefferson exposes a plot by Aaron Burr to form a new republic in the Southwest.

Lord George Byron, English romantic poet (“Lara,” “Don Juan.”)

England’s “Bloodless Revolution” reaches its climax when parliament invites William and Mary to become joint sovereigns.

Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher, statesman, essayist (The Advancement of Learning).

Ivan III (the Great), grand prince of Russia.