This day in history - July 28

[seamusTX]

1794 - Maximillien Robespierre followed thousands of his victims to death on the guillotine.

He was the prototype of fanatical, paranoid, bloodthirsty dictators who came after.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien ... _of_Terror" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1866 - Congress established the metric system as a standard for commerce in the U.S.

Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution gives Congress the power to fix the standard of weights and measures, but Congress failed to exercise this power for more than 70 years. Thus the U.S. has been stuck with a confusing system of traditional units, and the metric system has not caught on aside from liters of beverages.

1868 - The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was declared in effect.

1932 - The Bonus Army was expelled from its encampment on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., by U.S. Army troops commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Maj. George Patton. Only a few were killed for exercising their rights of freedom of speech and assembly.

The bonus marchers were unemployed WW I veterans and their families who wanted early payment of voucher that they had been given at the end of the war, that were due in 1945.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1945 - A U.S. Army bomber crashed into the Empire State Building.

Same year - The U.S. Senate ratified the U.N. charter.

1977 - The first oil transported through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline reached the port of Valdez.

- Jim