Today in History

The U.S. Marines launch Operation Holt in an attempt to finish off a Vietcong battalion in Thua Thien Province in Vietnam.

The U.S. postmaster introduces the ZIP code.

Diana Frances Spencer, Princess of Wales.

American ground troops arrive in South Korea to halt the advancing North Korean army.

The New York State Commission Against Discrimination is established–the first such agency in the United States.

Axis troops capture Sevastopol, Crimea, in the Soviet Union.

Roland Robert Tuck, British fighter ace during World War II.

Jean Stafford, American writer (The Mountain Lion).

Amy Johnson, English aviator.

William Wyler, film director (The Best Years of Our Lives, Ben Hur).

Thomas Dorsey, American songwriter, singer and pianist, the “father of gospel music.”

American troops take San Juan Hill and El Caney, Cuba, from the Spaniards.

James M. Cain, author (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce).

Susan Glaspell, playwright, (Alison’s House).

Canada, by the terms of the British North America Act, becomes an independent dominion.

In the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg, Federal forces retreat through the town and dig in at Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill.

Union artillery stops a Confederate attack at Malvern Hill, Virginia.

Charles Darwin presents a paper on his theory of evolution to the Linnean Society in London.

George Sand (Amandine-Aurore Lucile Dupin), French novelist.

Napoleon Bonaparte takes Alexandria, Egypt.

British troops depart from their base at the Bouquet River to head toward Ticonderoga, New York.

Led by Marshall Luxembourg, the French defeat the forces of the Grand Alliance at Fleurus in the Netherlands.

Gottfried Von Leibniz, German philosopher and mathematician.

An English fleet under the Earl of Essex, Lord Howard of Effingham and Francis Vere capture and sack Cadiz, Spain.

England and Scotland sign the Peace of Greenwich.

Vespasian, a Roman army leader, is hailed as a Roman emperor by the Egyptian legions.