This Day in History

In 1866, Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army, the first officer to hold the rank.

In 1868, Congress passed an act creating the Wyoming Territory.

In 1943, Benito Mussolini was dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III, and placed under arrest. (However, Mussolini was later rescued by the Nazis, and re-asserted his authority.)

In 1946, the United States detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device.

In 1952, Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.

In 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain initialed a treaty in Moscow prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in space or underwater.

In 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the first "test tube baby," was born in Oldham, England; she'd been conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization.

In 1984, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space as she carried out more than three hours of experiments outside the orbiting space station Salyut 7.

In 1985, a spokeswoman for Rock Hudson confirmed that the actor, hospitalized in Paris, was suffering from AIDS. (Hudson died the following October.)

In 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein signed a declaration at the White House ending their countries' 46-year-old formal state of war.

Ten years ago: A bomb exploded on a Paris subway, killing seven people and injuring at least 60. A U.N. war crimes tribunal indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, army commander General Ratko Mladic, and 22 other Serbs for war crimes.

Five years ago: A New York-bound Air France Concorde crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground; it was the first-ever crash of the supersonic jet. The Middle East summit at Camp David collapsed. Texas Gov. George W. Bush selected Dick Cheney to be his running mate.

One year ago: Israelis formed a human chain stretching 55 miles from Gaza to Jerusalem to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza Strip withdrawal plan. Lance Armstrong won a record sixth Tour de France.

Today's Birthdays

Actress Estelle Getty is 82. Actress Barbara Harris is 70. Rock musician Verdine White (Earth, Wind & Fire) is 54. Model-actor Iman is 50. Cartoonist Ray Billingsley ("Curtis") is 48. Rock musician Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) is 47. Actress Illeana Douglas is 40. Country singer Marty Brown is 40. Actor Matt LeBlanc is 38. Actor Brad Renfro is 23.