Today In History

1412: According to tradition, Joan of Arc was born in Domremy.

1540: England’s King Henry VIII took his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The marriage lasted about six months.

1759: George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis were married.

1838: Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J.

1912: New Mexico became the 47th state.

1919: Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. president, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.

1942: The Pan American Airways “Pacific Clipper” arrived in New York after completing the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.

1945: George Herbert Walker Bush married Barbara Pierce in Rye, N.Y.

1950: Britain recognized the Communist government of China.

1967: U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops launched Operation “Deckhouse V,” an offensive in the Mekong River delta.

1993: Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev died in Paris at age 54; jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie died in Englewood, N.J., at age 75.