On this day in history
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Source: HistoryNet.com
0079: Mount Vesuvius erupts destroying Pompeii, Stabiae, Herculaneum and other smaller settlements.
0410: German barbarians sack Rome.
1542: In South America, Gonzalo Pizarro returns to the mouth of the Amazon River after having sailed the length of the great river as far as the Andes Mountains.
1780: King Louis XVI abolishes torture as a means to get suspects to confess.
1814: British troops under General Robert Ross capture Washington, D.C., which they set on fire in retaliation for the American burning of the parliament building in York (Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada.
1847: Charlotte Bronte, using the pseudonym Currer Bell, sends a manuscript of Jane Eyre to her publisher in London.
1891: Thomas Edison files a patent for the motion picture camera.
1954: Congress outlaws the Communist Party in the United States.
1981: Mark David Chapman sentenced to 20 years to life for murdering former Beatles band member John Lennon.
1989: Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti bans Pete Rose from baseball for gambling.
1989: Colombian drug lords declare "total and absolute war" on Colombia's government, booming the offices of two political parties and burning two politicians' homes.
1991: Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Ukraine declares its independence from USSR.
2004: Chechnyan suicide bombers blow up two airliners near Moscow, killing 89 passengers.
2006: Pluto is downgraded to a dwarf planet when the International Astronomical Union redefines "planet."
