Today in History....October 19

* 1453, the French recapture of Bordeaux brings the Hundred Years'
War to a close, with the English retaining only Calais on French soil

* 1466, the Thirteen Years' War ends with the Second Treaty of Torun'. Gdansk Pomerania and Prussia as a whole are incorporated into Poland; the Teutonic Knights are allowed to rule its eastern part as Polish vassals

* 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, drew up a declaration of rights and liberties

* 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, British commander Lord Cornwallis surrendered to a Franco-American force led by George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, paving the way for the end of the American Revolutionary War

* 1789, Chief Justice John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

* 1812, Napoleon I of France retreats from Moscow

* 1813, the Battle of Leipzig concludes, giving Napoleon Bonaparte one of his worst defeats

* 1873, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers universities draft the first code of American football rules

* 1933, Germany withdraws from the League of Nations

* 1943, Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University

* 1960, the United States government decides to place an embargo on Communist Cuba

* 1973, President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court demand to turn over the Watergate tapes

* 1977, the supersonic Concorde made its first landing in New York City

* 1987, in retaliation for Iranian attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy disables three of Iran's offshore oil platforms.
ALSO: Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 22% (Black Monday)

* 2005, Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity. ALSO: Hurricane Wilma becomes the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record with a minimum pressure of 882 mb

* 2006, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 12,000 mark for the first time