This Day in History
• 1632 - Battle of Rain; Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeat Count Tilly of the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War.
• 1654 - England & Netherlands sign peace treaty
• 1689 - French King Louis XIV declares war on Spain
• 1697 - Charles XII succeeds Charles XI as King of Sweden
• 1788 - Britain, Netherlands & Prussia sign peace treaty
• 1858 - Battle of Azimghur, Mexicans defeat Spanish loyalists
• 1865 - Abraham Lincoln dies 9 hours after he is shot attending the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington
• 1892 - General Electric Company formed by merger of Thomas Edison's General Electric Company with Thomson-Houston Electric Company, arranged by J. P. Morgan and incorporated in NY
• 1902 - Rioting and arson continue in Russia with peasants plundering estates to find food.
• 1902 - Russian minister of interior and head of secret police, Sipyengin, is assassinated by the 'Terror Brigade' of the Socialist Revolutionaries
• 1912 - RMS Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland as the band plays on, with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 people
• 1918 - Georges Clémenceau publishes secret French/ Austrian documents
• 1923 - Insulin becomes generally available for diabetics
• 1927 - Switzerland & USSR agree to diplomatic relations
• 1940 - British troops land at Narvik, Norway
• 1945 - British Army liberates Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen
• 1945 - US troops occupy concentration camp Colditz
• 1948 - 1st Jewish-Arab military battle, arabs defeated
• 1948 - Indian territory of Himachal Pradesh created
• 1959 - Fidel Castro begins US goodwill tour
• 1969 - North Korea shoots at US airplane above Japanese sea
• 1974 - Military coup in Niger, president Diori Hamani deposed
• 1978 - Great Britain performs nuclear test
• 1982 - Apollo Computer announces DN400, DN420, & landscape display
• 1983 - Tokyo Disneyland opens
• 1984 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
• 1991 - Europe foreign ministers lift most remaining sanctions against S Afr
• 1992 - The National Assembly of Vietnam adopts the 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.