On this day in history
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1306: King Wenceslas of Poland is murdered.
1876: Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph.
1899: The first household refrigerating machine is patented.
1940: The German Luftwaffe attacks Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.
1945: The Soviet Union declares war on Japan.
1950: U.S. troops repel the first North Korean attempt to overrun them at the Battle of Naktong Bulge, which continued for 10 days.
1963: England’s “Great Train Robbery,” 2.6 million pounds ($7.3 million) is stolen
1974: President Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency as a result of the Watergate scandal.
1989: NASA Space Shuttle Columbia begins its eighth flight, NASA’s 30th shuttle mission.
1990: Iraq annexes the state of Kuwait as its 19th province, six days after Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait.
2000: The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to surface, 136 years after it sank following its successful attack on USS Housatonic in the outer harbour of Charleston, South Carolina.
2007: An EF2 tornado hits Brooklyn, New York, the first in that borough since 1889.
2008: Georgia invades South Ossetia, touching off a five-day war between Georgia and Russia.
