Today in History.....August 11

On this day in …

1909, the SOS distress signal was first used by an American ship, the Arapahoe, off Cape Hatteras, N.C.

1934, the first federal prisoners arrived at the island prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay
1942, during World War II, Vichy government official Pierre Laval publicly declared that "the hour of liberation for France is the hour when Germany wins the war."

1954, a formal peace took hold in Indochina, ending more than seven years of fighting between the French and Communist Vietminh

1962, the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev on a 94-hour flight

1965, rioting and looting that claimed 34 lives broke out in the predominantly black Watts section of Los Angeles

1991, Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon, practitioners of that "religion of peace", released two Western captives: Edward Tracy, an American held nearly five years, and Jerome Leyraud, a Frenchman who'd been abducted by a rival group three days earlier

1992, the Mall of America, the biggest shopping mall in the U.S., opened in Bloomington, Minn.

1997, President Clinton made the first use of the historic line-item veto approved by Congress, rejecting three items in spending and tax bills. (However, the Supreme Court later struck down the line-item veto as unconstitutional.)

1998, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Mitchell Johnson pleads guilty to the Jonesboro schoolyard massacre on his 14th birthday, and Andrew Golden, age 12, is convicted. Both boys had been charged with five counts of murder and 10 counts of battery for the March 24 shooting that left four schoolmates and a teacher dead and 10 others wounded. Juvenile Court Judge Ralph Wilson Jr. sentenced them to the maximum penalty allowed by law--confinement to a juvenile center, perhaps until they turned 21. The judge, who declared during sentencing that "here the punishment will not fit the crime," had rejected a plea of temporary insanity made by Golden