This Day In History

From the NY Times. On this date in:
1429	Joan of Arc entered the besieged city of Orleans to lead a victory over the English.
1861	Maryland's House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union.
1862	New Orleans fell to Union forces during the Civil War.
1899	Jazz musician Duke Ellington was born in Washington D.C.
1916	The Easter uprising in Dublin collapsed as Irish nationalists surrendered to British authorities.
1945	Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler married his longtime mistress Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker. The couple killed themselves the next day.
1945	American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
1946	Twenty-eight former Japanese leaders were indicted as war criminals.
1974	President Richard Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of secretly made White House tape recordings related to the Watergate scandal.
1981	Truck driver Peter Sutcliffe admitted in a London court to being the "Yorkshire Ripper," the killer of 13 women in northern England over five years.
1983	Harold Washington was sworn in as the first black mayor of Chicago.
1992	Rioting erupted in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. Fifty-four people were killed.
1996	Former CIA Director William Colby was missing and presumed drowned after an apparent boating accident in Maryland.
1996	The musical "Rent" opened on Broadway.
1997	A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons went into effect.
1997	Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.
2002	A year after the loss of a seat it had held for over 50 years, the United States won election to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
2003	The Palestinian parliament approved Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister.
2004	President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney met behind closed doors with the Sept. 11 commission.
2004	A national monument to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served during World War II opened to the public in Washington D.C.
2006	Economist John Kenneth Galbraith died at age 97.