On this day in history
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Source: HistoryNet.com
1775: Benedict Arnold arrives at Point-Lévis across from Québec; after leading an American invasion army through the wilderness of Maine; awaits Richard Montgomery coming downriver from Montréal.
1799: Napoleon Bonaparte participates in a coup and declares himself dictator of France.
1877: Alexander Graham Bell's Bell Telephone Company leases first phones to Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie; but backdates lease to Sept. 21, 1877.
1900: Russia completes its occupation of Manchuria.
1935: Japanese troops invade Shanghai, China.
1938: Nazis kill 35 Jews, arrest thousands and destroy Jewish synagogues, homes and stores throughout Germany. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of the shattered glass.
1965: Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old former seminarian and a member of the Catholic worker movement, immolates himself at the United Nations in New York City in protest of the Vietnam War.
1965: Nine Northeastern states and parts of Canada go dark in the worst power failure in history, when a switch at a station near Niagara Falls fails.
1967: NASA launches Apollo 4 into orbit with the first successful test of a Saturn V rocket.
1983: Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, is kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million.
1989: The Berlin Wall is opened after dividing the city for 28 years.
2007: German Bundestag passes controversial bill mandating storage of citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause.
