1184 BC – The Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date).

1061 – Halley’s Comet sparks English monk to predict country’ll be destroyed. He’s right. It just takes a thousand years for them to give up.

1800 – The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 USD to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress”. Today they let lobbyists read them and tell them what bills to pass.

1877 – Last federal occupying troops withdraw from south (New Orleans), ending Reconstruction.

1895 – Joshua Slocum completes around-the-world voyage in his 11-m boat, Spray, providing dreams for would-be sailors ever after.

1918 – First tank-to-tank combat, at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark IVs met three German A7Vs.

1967 – Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had “gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily.” And it has been thus ever since…

1980 – Eight U.S. servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis under the watchful eye and sterling leadership of that failure, Jimmy Carter.

2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a German, is inaugurated as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church taking the name Pope Benedict XVI.