Today in History

Soviets forces begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The merchant ship Mayaguez is recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.

Gov. George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland.

U.S. Marines relieve army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.

The last Project Mercury space flight, carrying Gordon Cooper, is launched.

Sputnik III is launched by the Soviet Union.

The United States begins rationing gasoline.

Jasper Johns, Jr., painter, leader of the Pop Art movement.

Peter Shaffer, English playwright (Equus, Amadeus), twin brother of Anthony Shaffer.

Richard Avedon, photographer.

Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts receive the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They are the first Americans to win France’s highest military medal.

U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.

Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago through the 1960s and early 1970’s.

Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist (Notes of a Dead Man, Heart of a Dog).

Katherine Anne Porter, novelist (Ship of Fools).

Emily Dickinson dies in Amherst, Mass., where she had lived in seclusion for the previous 24 years.

At the Battle of New Market, Virginia Military Institute cadets repel a Union attack.

The Union ironclad Monitor and the gunboat Galena fire on Confederate troops at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia.

Ellen Louise Axson Wilson, first wife of President Woodrow Wilson.

Pierre Curie, physicist.

Emily Folger, Shakespeare scholar.

Lyman Frank Baum, author (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz).

Neapolitan troops enter Palermo, Sicily.

The U.S. Congress designates the slave trade a form of piracy.

Napoleon enters the Lombardian capital of Milan in triumph.

Prince Klemens Von Metternich, Chancellor of Austria.

By the Treaty of Versailles, France purchases Corsica from Genoa.

Following the resignation of Lord Townshend, Robert Walpole becomes the sole minister in the English cabinet.

The War of Spanish Succession begins.

Johannes Kepler discovers his harmonics law.

An aristocratic uprising in France ends with the Treaty of St. Menehould.

English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold discovers Cape Cod.

King John submits to the Pope, offering to make England and Ireland papal fiefs. Pope Innocent III lifts the interdict of 1208.

Abd-al-Rahman is proclaimed emir of Cordoba, Spain.