This Day in History

1783 – England proclaimed the formal end to the hostilities with the United States. 1787 – Shays’s Rebellion, an uprising of Massachusetts farmers, was defeated. 1789 – George Washington and John Adams are elected the president and vice president of the United States. 1861 – Delegates from six southern states met at Montgomery, Ala., to form the Confederate States of America. 1945 – Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at the Yalta Conference. 1948 – Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) gained independence from the United Kingdom. 1969 – The Palestine National Congress appointed Yasir Arafat head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. 1974 – Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. 2003 – The country of Yugoslavia disappeared, to be replaced by the loose federation of Serbia and Montenegro. 2004 – The Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that gays had the right to marry.]]]]> ]]>