This Day in History......

1099, Members of the First Crusade witness an eclipse of the moon and interpret it as a sign they will recapture Jerusalem. 1568, Ferdinand, the Duke of Alba, crushes the Calvinist insurrection in Ghent. 1595, Henry IV's army defeats the Spanish at the Battle of Fontaine-Francaise. 1637, American settlers in New England massacre a Pequot Indian village. 1783, Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier make the first public balloon flight. 1794, The U.S. Congress prohibits citizens from serving in any foreign armed forces. 1827, Athens falls to Ottoman forces. 1851, Harriet Beecher Stow publishes the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin in The National Era. 1856, U.S. Army troops in the Four creeks region of California, head back to quarters, officially ending the Tule River War. Fighting, however, will continue for a few more years. 1863, The Confederate raider CSS Alabama captures the Talisman in the Mid-Atlantic. 1872, The Republican National Convention, the first major political party convention to includes blacks, commences. 1880, Wild woman of the west Myra Maybelle Shirley marries Sam Starr even though records show she was already married to Bruce Younger. 1900, British troops under Lord Roberts seize Pretoria from the Boers. 1940, The German army begins its offensive in Southern France. 1944, The first B-29 bombing raid strikes the Japanese rail line in Bangkok, Thailand. 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall outlines "The Marshall Plan," a program intended to assist European nations, including former enemies, to rebuild their economies. 1956, Premier Nikita Khrushchev denounces Josef Stalin to the Soviet Communist Party Congress. 1967, The Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan begins. 1968, Sirhan Sirhan shoots Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy after Kennedy's victory in the pivotal California primary election. 1973, Doris A. Davis becomes the first African-American woman to govern a city in a major metropolitan area when she is elected mayor of Compton, California.