1865: The steamboat SS Sultana caught fire and sank in the Mississippi River, resulting in the worst loss of life on an American vessel--as many as 1,800 of the 2,427 people aboard, mostly paroled Union prisoners of war being repatriated.

Also today in history, in the U.S. and elsewhere:

1805: To the shores of Tripoli: Eight U.S. Marines under 1st Lt. Presley O'Bannon accompanied a polyglot 400-500-man mercenary army under U.S. Army Lieutenant William Eaton in a wild assault against 4,000 Barbary pirates that succeeds in taking the Derna, Cyrenaica, resulting in the deposed Hamet Karamanli being restored in place of his usurper brother Yusuf. This incredible out-of-the-desert operation might have helped in negotiating the release of crewmen of the lost frigate USS Philadelphia, had there not already have been a peace treaty just signed by Yusuf and American diplomat Tobias Lear (which Eaton denounced as a sellout).

1813: In the largest American combined operation at the time, U.S. forces took and partially burned the lake port of York (now Toronto), but an arsenal explosion mortally injured Brig. Gen. Zebulon Pike.

1861: Anti-Rebel rebels in Wheeling decided that if Virginia insists on seceding from the United States, then western Virginia would secede from Virginia.

1945: While the U.S. Fifth Army occupied Genoa, Italian partisans captured Benito Mussolini at Lake Como. For Il Duce, this will not end well.

1945: The official Nazi newspaper Völkishcer Beobachter ceased publication.

1948: The Arab Legion assaulted the Gesher Bridge on the Jordan River.

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