Today in history
In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, drew up a declaration of rights and liberties.
In 1812 French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte began their retreat from Moscow.
In 1864 Confederate Gen. Jubal Early attacked Union forces at Cedar Creek, Va.; the Union troops were able to rally and defeat the Confederates.
In 1951 President Harry Truman signed an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.
In 1960 the United States imposed an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.
In 1987 the stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22.6 percent in value.
In 2000 a government advisory panel of scientists declared that phenylpropanolamine, an ingredient used in dozens of popular over-the-counter medicines, could not be classified as safe, saying it could be the cause of several hundred hemorrhagic strokes suffered annually by people younger than 50.
In 2001 U.S. special forces began operations on the ground in Afghanistan, opening a significant new phase of the assault against the Taliban and al-Qaida. Also in 2001 about 374 people died when their ferry sank off Indonesia while en route to Australia; most of the victims were believed to be asylum-seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2002 a 37-year-old man was seriously wounded outside a steakhouse in Ashland, Va., in a shooting linked by authorities to the Washington sniper case. Also in 2002, in York, Pa., former mayor Charlie Robertson was acquitted and two other men were convicted in the shotgun slaying of Lillie Belle Allen, a young black woman, during race riots in 1969.
In 2003 Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa during a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square.
In 2004 insurgents in Iraq abducted Margaret Hassan, the local director of CARE International, from her car in Baghdad. (Hassan is believed to have been slain by her captors.) Also in 2004 former arms control adviser Paul Nitze died in Washington; he was 97.
In 2017 Piotr Szczesny, a 54-year-old chemist, lit himself on fire, explaining in a letter that he was protesting Poland’s populist, right-leaning government; Szczesny died more than a week later.