On this date

1778 — American forces entered Philadelphia as the British withdrew during the Revolutionary War. 1812 — The War of 1812 began as the United States Congress approved, and President James Madison signed, a declaration of war against Britain. 1815 — Napoleon Bonaparte met his Waterloo as British and Prussian troops defeated the French in Belgium. 1817 — London’s original Waterloo Bridge, commemorating Britain’s victory over France two years earlier, was opened by the Prince Regent (the future King George IV) and the Duke of Wellington. 1873 — Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was found guilty by a judge in Canandaigua, New York, of breaking the law by casting a vote in the 1872 presidential election. (The judge fined Anthony $100, but she never paid the penalty.) 1908 — William Howard Taft was nominated for president by the Republican National Convention in Chicago. 1953 — Egypt’s 148-year-old Muhammad Ali Dynasty came to an end with the overthrow of the monarchy and the proclamation of a republic. 1964 — President Lyndon B. Johnson and Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda spoke to each other by telephone as they inaugurated the first trans-Pacific cable completed by AT&T between Japan and Hawaii. 1979 — President Jimmy Carter and Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev signed the SALT II strategic arms limitation treaty in Vienna. 1983 — Astronaut Sally K. Ride became America’s first woman in space as she and four colleagues blasted off aboard the space shuttle Challenger on a six-day mission. 1986 — Twenty-five people were killed when a twin-engine plane and helicopter carrying sightseers collided over the Grand Canyon. 1992 — The U.S. Supreme Court, in Georgia v. McCollum, ruled that criminal defendants could not use race as a basis for excluding potential jurors from their trials.

Thought for today ‘Every great dream begins with a dreamer.’ Harriet Tubman American abolitionist (1820-1913)