Today in history
1807 - The United States Embargo Act takes effect, banning trade with Britain, France and the rest of the world.
1860 - First British Open golf tournament is played at Prestwick, Scotland.
1895 - The first X-ray photograph, of the bones of a woman’s hands, is made by William Conrad Roentgen in Germany.
1941 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington for a wartime conference with President Roosevelt.
1943 - Death of British author Beatrix Potter.
1963 - Greek liner Laconia catches fire and sinks in North Atlantic with loss of 150 lives.
1968 - Eighty-two crewmen of US intelligence ship Pueblo are released by North Korea at Panmunjom, 11 months after their capture off North Korea.
1975 - Pro-palestinian terrorists end 20-hour siege of headquarters of OPEC in Vienna, take hostages and airliner provided by Austria, and begin flight to several Middle East capitals.
1987 - Zimbabwean Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and chief opposition leader Joshua Nkomo sign an agreement to unite their political parties and establish a one-party Marxist-leninist state.
1989 - Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is overthrown in a revolution after 24 years of hardline rule.
1993 - South Africa’s white parliament buries apartheid, voting 237 to 45 to adopt an interim constitution leading to majority rule and the country’s first all-race election.
1994 - Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigns after his government is toppled by a mutiny by the Northern League coalition party.
2001 - Richard Reid, a passenger on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, tries to ignite explosives in his shoes, but is subdued by flight attendants and fellow passengers.
2003 - The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts pays US$85 million to 542 plaintiffs who agreed to a sexual abuse settlement.
2009 - Assailants gun down the mother, aunt and siblings of a marine killed in a raid that took out one of Mexico’s most powerful cartel leaders - sending a chilling message to troops battling the drug war: You go after us, we wipe out your families.
Today’s Birthdays:
Diane Sawyer, US broadcast journalist (1945-); Robin and Maurice Gibb, English-born pop singers (1949-2012 and 1949-2003 respectively); Ralph Fiennes, English actor (1962-); Jordin Sparks, American singer, (1989-).