Highlights in history on this date:
1781 - Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Amaru II is forced to witness the execution of his family by the Spanish in the main plaza in Cuzco and is then tortured and beheaded.
1830 - Edwin Budding of England signs an agreement for the manufacture of his invention, the lawn mower.
1860 - Abraham Lincoln nominated for U.S. president.
1896 - The U.S. Supreme Court endorses the concept of "separate but equal" racial segregation with its Plessy vs. Ferguson decision, a ruling that is overturned 58 years later in Brown vs. Board of Education.
1899 - International peace conference is convened at The Hague in the Netherlands. It adopts conventions on warfare and creates the Permanent Court of Arbitration, now the U.N. International Court of Justice.
1951 - The United Nations, previously without a permanent home, begins to move into headquarters in New York City.
1974 - India explodes a nuclear bomb for the first time, in the deserts of Rajasthan.
1980 - The Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state explodes, leaving 57 people dead or missing.
1993 - Violent riots break out in Copenhagen, Denmark, after a majority of Danes in a referendum approve the Maastricht treaty calling for a closer European Union.
1994 - Military observers returning to the Rwandan countryside report ethnic killings of at least 200,000; Israel's three decades of occupation in the Gaza Strip ends as Israeli troops complete their withdrawal from Gaza City and other urban areas and Palestinian authorities take over.
2001 - Independent National Security Archive reveals that former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower kept secret from U.S. allies his orders to authorize military commanders to launch retaliatory nuclear attacks.
2003 - Philippine military begins bombing positions of Moro Islamic Liberation Front holdouts on the southern island of Mindanao. The government held the Muslim separatist group responsible for recent violence on the island.
2006 - Islamic militants battle Afghan, U.S. and Canadian forces and explode two suicide car bombs on the second day of deadly violence that has not been seen in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban five years earlier. More than 100 people are killed in the string of attacks.
2007 - The Vatican confirms that Pope Benedict XVI will loosen restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass, reviving a rite that was essentially swept away by the revolutionary reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council.
2009 - The top American military officer warns that the deaths of Afghan civilians caught up in U.S. combat operations could cripple President Barack Obama's revamped strategy for the seven-year-old war.
Today's Birthdays:
Omar Khayyam, Persian poet, astronomer and mathematician (1048-1131); Bertrand Russell, English philosopher (1872-1970); Walter Gropius, German architect/director of Bauhaus (1883-1969); Frank Capra, U.S. movie director (1897-1991); John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla), Polish-born pope (1918-2005); Dame Margot Fonteyn, English ballerina (1919-1991); George Strait, U.S. country singer (1952--); Tina Fey, U.S. comedian and actress (1970--); Jack Johnson, U.S. musician (1975--); Chow Yun-Fat, Hong Kong-born actor (1955--).
From the AP via Newser which has all the details!
