On this day in history ...
1356: English defeat French at Poitiers in a landmark battle of the Hundred Years' War.
1544: King Francis of France, and Charles V of Austria end a 20-year war by signing a peace treaty in Crespy, France.
1783: The first hot-air balloon is sent aloft in Versailles, France -- with animal passengers including a sheep, rooster and a duck.
1841: The first railway to span a frontier is completed between Stousbourg and Basle.
1849: First commercial laundry established, in Oakland, California.
1870 Two Prussian armies begin a 135-day siege of Paris as the second Empire collapses.
1881: U.S. President James Garfield dies of a gunshot wound inflicted in July.
1904: Gen. Nogi's assault on Port Arthur: 16,000 Japanese casualties.
1928: Mickey Mouse makes his screen debut in "Plane Crazy."
1940: Nazi decree forbids gentile women to work in Jewish homes.
1955: President Juan Peron of Argentina is deposed and exiled after a military coup.
1959: Nikita Krushchev is denied access to Disneyland.
1983: St. Kitts and Nevis declare independence from the UK and became a single nation.
1984: Britain and China complete a draft agreement on transferring Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule by 1997.
1985: Mexico City struck by the first of two devastating earthquakes,
1989: A Paris-bound flight is blown up over the Sahara desert of Niger; all 170 passengers die.
1997: A passenger train collides with a freight train in west London: 6 people are killed and 170 injured.
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