TODAY IN HISTORY

On This Day in:

1190 – The Crusaders began the massacre of Jews in York, England.

1521 – Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines. He was killed the next month by natives.

1527 – The Emperor Babur defeated the Rajputs at the Battle of Kanvaha in India.

1621 – Samoset walked into the settlement of Plymouth Colony, later Plymouth, MA. Samoset was a native from the Monhegan tribe in Maine who spoke English.

1802 – The U.S. Congress established the West Point Military Academy in New York.

1836 – The Republic of Texas approved a constitution.

1850 – The novel “The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was published for the first time.

1882 – The U.S. Senate approved a treaty allowing the United States to join the Red Cross.

1883 – Susan Hayhurst graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. She was the first woman pharmacy graduate.

1907 – The world’s largest cruiser, the British Invincible was completed at Glasgow.

1908 – China released the Japanese steamship Tatsu Maru.

1909 – Cuba suffered its first revolt only six weeks after the inauguration of Gomez.

1913 – The 15,000-ton battleship Pennsylvania was launched at Newport News, VA.

1915 – The Federal Trade Commission began operation.

1917 – Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicated his throne.

1918 – Tallulah Bankhead made her New York acting debut with a role in “The Squab Farm.”

1926 – Physicist Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fuel rocket.

1928 – The U.S. planned to send 1,000 more Marines to Nicaragua.

1935 – Adolf Hitler ordered a German rearmament and violated the Versailles Treaty. 1939 – Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.

1945 – Iwo Jima was declared secure by the Allies. However, small pockets of Japanese resistance still existed.

1946 – Algerian nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas was freed after spending a year in jail.