Events Pre-1600 686 – Maya king Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' assumes the crown of Calakmul. 1043 – Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England. 1077 – The Patriarchate of Friûl, the first Friulian state, is created. 1559 – The second of two the treaties making up the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis is signed, ending the Italian Wars. 1601–1900 1721 – Robert Walpole becomes, in effect, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, though he himself denied that title. 1851 – Rama IV is crowned King of Thailand after the death of his half-brother, Rama III. 1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express run from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, begins. 1865 – American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America. 1882 – American Old West: Robert Ford kills Jesse James. 1885 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for a light, high-speed, four-stroke engine, which he uses seven months later to create the world's first motorcycle, the Daimler Reitwagen. 1888 – Jack the Ripper: The first of 11 unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs. 1895 – The trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality. 1901–present 1920 – Attempts are made to carry out the failed assassination attempt on General Mannerheim, led by Aleksander Weckman by order of Eino Rahja, during the White Guard parade in Tampere, Finland. 1922 – Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1933 – First flight over Mount Everest, the British Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition, led by the Marquis of Clydesdale and funded by Lucy, Lady Houston. 1936 – Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the infant son of pilot Charles Lindbergh. 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula. 1946 – Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March. 1948 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries. 1948 – In Jeju Province, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses begins known as the