Today in History

President Jimmy Carter reinstates draft registration for males 18 years of age.

North and South Vietnam are officially reunified.

The U.S. launches Operation Buffalo in Vietnam.

President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law.

Novelist Ernest Hemingway commits suicide at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart disappears in the Central Pacific during an attempt to fly around the world.

Medgar Evers, American civil rights activist.

Robert Sarnoff, president of NBC.

Barry Gray, radio talk show host.

Thurgood Marshall, first African-American Supreme Court Justice.

Tyrone Guthrie, English theater director.

Andre Kertesz, photographer.

Charles J. Guiteau fatally wounds President James A. Garfield in Washington, D.C.

Hermann Hesse, German novelist and poet.

The Union left flank holds at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Czar Alexander II frees the serfs working on imperial lands.

Denmark Vesey is executed in Charleston, South Carolina, for planning a massive slave revolt.

The Continental Congress resolves with the Declaration of Independence that the American colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”

Marshall Saxe leads the French forces to victory over an Anglo-Dutch force under the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Lauffeld.

Oliver Cromwell crushes the Royalists at the Battle of Marston Moor.

The Spanish army takes Breda, Spain, after nearly a year of siege.

Thomas Cranmer, first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury (1533-1556).

An army under Albert of Austria defeats forces led by Adolf of Nassau.