On This Day in:

1306 – Robert the Bruce was crowned king of Scotland.

1609 – Henry Hudson left on an exploration for Dutch East India Company.

1634 – Lord Baltimore founded the Catholic colony of Maryland.

1655 – Christian Huygens discovered Titan. Titan is Saturn's largest satellite.

1669 – Mount Etna in Sicily erupted destroying Nicolosi. 20,000 people were killed.

1774 – English Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill.

1776 – The Continental Congress authorized a medal for General George Washington.

1802 – France, Netherlands, Spain and England signed the Peace of Amiens.

1807 – The first railway passenger service began in England.

1807 – British Parliament abolished the slave trade.

1813 – The frigate USS Essex flew the first U.S. flag in battle in the Pacific.

1857 – Frederick Laggenheim took the first photo of a solar eclipse.

1865 – The SS General Lyon at Cape Hatteras caught fire and sank. 400 people were killed.

1900 – The U.S. Socialist Party was formed in Indianapolis.

1901 – 55 people died when a Rock Island train derailed near Marshalltown, IA.

1902 – Irving W. Colburn patented the sheet glass drawing machine.

1902 – In Russia, 567 students were found guilty of 'political disaffection.' 95 students were exiled to Siberia.

1905 – Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War were returned to the South.

1909 – In Russia, revolutionary Popova was arrested on 300 murder charges.

1911 – In New York City, 146 women were killed in fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City. The owners of the company were indicted on manslaughter charges because some of the employees had been behind locked doors in the factory. The owners were later acquitted and in 1914 they were ordered to pay damages to each of the twentythree families that had sued.

1931 – Fifty people were killed in riots that broke out in India. Gandhi was one of many people assaulted.

1931 – The Scottsboro Boys were arrested in Alabama.

1940 – The U.S. agreed to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.

1941 – Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers.

1941 – The first paprika mill was incorporated in Dollon, SC.

1947 – A coalmine explosion in Centralia, IL, killed 111 people.

1947 – John D. Rockefeller III presented a check for $8.5 million to the United Nations for the purchase of land for the site of the U.N. center.

1954 – RCA manufactured its first color TV set and began mass production.

1960 – A guided missile was launched from a nuclear powered submarine for the first time.

1965 – Martin Luther King Jr. led a group of 25,000 to the state capital in Montgomery, AL.

1970 – The Concorde made its first supersonic flight.

1981 – The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador was damaged when gunmen attacked using rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.

1981 – The Down Jones industrial avarage of selected stocks on the New York Stock Exchanged closed at its highest level since 1973.

1983 – The U.S. Congress passed legislation to rescue the U.S. social security system from bankruptcy.