ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1719 Philip V of Spain declares war on France.
1776 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, a scathing attack on King George III’s reign over the colonies and a call for complete independence.
1792 The Ottomans sign a treaty with the Russians, ending a five-year war.
1793 Jean Pierre Blanchard makes the first balloon flight in North America. 1861 Mississippi secedes from the Union. 1908 Count Zeppelin announces plans for his airship to carry 100 passengers.
1909 A Polar exploration team lead by Ernest Shackleton reaches 88º, 23 minutes south longitude, 162º east latitude. They are 97 nautical miles short of the South Pole, but the weather is too severe to continue.
1912 Colonel Theodore Roosevelt announces that he will run for president if asked.
1915 Pancho Villa signs a treaty with the US, halting border conflicts.
1924 Ford Motor stock is valued at nearly $1 billion.
1943 Soviet planes drop leaflets on the surrounded Germans in Stalingrad requesting their surrender with humane terms. The Germans refuse.
1945 US troops land on Luzon, in the Philippines, 172km from Manila.
1947 French General Leclerc breaks off all talks with Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh.
1952 Jackie Robinson becomes the highest paid player in Brooklyn Dodger in history.
1964 US forces kill six Panamanian students protesting in the canal zone.
1974 Cambodian government troops open a drive to avert an insurgent attack on Phnom Penh.
1992 The Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaims the creation of a new state within Yugoslavia, the Rupublika Srpska.
1996 A raid by Chechen separatists in the city of Kizlyar turns into a hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.
2005 Mahmoud Abbas wins election to replace Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian National Authority.
2005 The Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end the Second Sudanese Civil War is signed by the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.
2007 Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, unveils the first iPhone.