Today in History: May 26, the World War II Dunkirk evacuation begins
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In 1775, 250 years ago, the Second Continental Congress resolved to begin preparations for military defense but also sent a petition of reconciliation, the 'Olive Branch Petition,' to King George III. That action took place one day after British generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne arrived in Boston with reinforcements for military commander and governor Thomas Gage.
In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the Montana Territory.
In 1869, Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred immigration from Asia and restricted the total number of immigrants from other parts of the world to 165,000 annually.
In 1927, the Ford Model T officially ended production as Henry Ford and his son Edsel drove the 15 millionth Model T off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Mich.
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In 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee was established by Congress.
In 1940, Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during World War II.
In 1954, an explosion occurred aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington off Rhode Island, killing 103 sailors.
In 1967, the Beatles album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' was released.
In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in Moscow, following the SALT I negotiations between the US and the Soviet Union. (The US withdrew from the treaty under President George W. Bush in 2002.)
In 1981, 14 people were killed when a Marine jet crashed onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off Florida.
In 2009, California's Supreme Court upheld the state's Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban, but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that had taken place before the prohibition passed were still valid. (Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in June 2015.)
2009, President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court.
In 2011, Ratko Mladić, the brutal Bosnian Serb general suspected of leading the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, was arrested after a 16-year manhunt. (Extradited to face trial in The Hague, Netherlands, Mladić was convicted in 2017 on genocide and war crimes charges and is serving a life sentence.)
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