On This Day in:

1215 – King John of England put his seal on the Magna Carta.

1381 – The English peasant revolt was crushed in London.

1389 – Ottoman Turks crushed Serbia in the Battle of Kosovo.

1607 – Colonists in North America completed James Fort in Jamestown, VA.

1667 – Jean-Baptiste Denys administered the first fully-documented human blood transfusion. He successfully transfused the blood of a sheep to a 15-year old boy.

1752 – Benjamin Franklin experimented by flying a kite during a thunderstorm. The result was a little spark that showed the relationship between lightning and electricity.

1775 – George Washington was appointed head of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.

1836 – Arkansas became the 25th U.S. state.

1844 – Charles Goodyear was granted a patent for the process that strengthens rubber.

1846 – The United States and Britain settled a boundary dispute concerning the boundary between the U.S. and Canada, by signing a treaty.

1864 – An order to establish a military burial ground was signed by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The location later became known as Arlington National Cemetery.

1866 – Prussia attacked Austria.

1877 – Henry O. Flipper became the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

1898 – The U.S. House of representatives approved the annexation of Hawaii.

1909 – Benjamin Shibe patented the cork center baseball.

1911 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. was incorporated in the state of New York. The company was later renamed International Business Machines (IBM) Corp.

1916 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America.

1917 – Great Britain pledged the release of all the Irish captured during the Easter Rebellion of 1916.

1919 – Captain John Alcock and Lt. Arthur W. Brown won $50,000 for successfully completing the first, non-stop trans-Atlantic plane flight.

1938 – Johnny Vandemeer (Cincinnati Reds) pitched his second straight no-hitter.

1940 – The French fortress of Verdun was captured by Germans.

1944 – American forces began their successful invasion of Saipan during World War II.

1947 – The All-Indian Congress accepted a British plan for the partition of India.

1948 – Soviet authorities announced that the Autobahn would be closed indefinitely 'for repairs.'

1958 – Greece severed military ties to Turkey because of the Cypress issue.

1964 – The last French troops left Algeria.

1978 – King Hussein of Jordan married 26-year-old American Lisa Halaby, who became Queen Noor.

1981 – The U.S. agreed to provide Pakistan with $3 billion in military and economic aid from October 1982 to October 1987.

1982 – In the capital city of Stanley, the Falklands war ended as Argentine troops surrendered to the British.

1983 – The U.S. Supreme Court reinforced its position on abortion by striking down state and local restriction on abortions.

1986 – Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, reported that the chief engineer of the Chernobyl nuclear plant was dismissed for mishandling the incident at the plant.

1992 – It was ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court that the government could kidnap criminal suspects from foreign countries for prosecution.

1992 – U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle instructed a student to spell 'potato' with an 'e' on the end during a spelling bee. He had relied on a faulty flash card that had been written by the student's teacher.

1994 – Israel and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations.

1999 – South Korean naval forces sank a North Korean torpedo boat during an exchange in the disputed Yellow Sea.

Edward the Black 1330 – Prince of Wales Erik H. Erickson 1902 – Psychologist and psychoanalyst Waylon Jennings 1937 – Singer (The Highwaymen) Janet Lennon 1946 – Singer (The Lennon Sisters) Jim Varney 1949 – Actor (Earnest film series) Russell Hitchcock 1949 – Musician (Air Supply) Steve Walsh 1951 – Musician (Kansas) Jim Belushi 1954 – Actor (Saturday Night Live) Julie Hagerty 1955 – Actress (Airplane!) Brett Butler 1957 – Baseball player Wade Boggs 1958 – Baseball player Helen Hunt 1963 – Actress (Mad About You) Scott Rockenfield 1963 – Musician (Queensryche)