Today in HistoryToday is Friday, August 11, the 223rd day of 2006. There are 142 days left in the year.

ON THIS DATE<$>

In 1909, the SOS distress signal was first used by an American ship, the Arapahoe<$>, off Cape Hatteras, N.C.

In 1942, during the Second World War, Vichy government official Pierre Laval publicly declared that “the hour of liberation for France is the hour when Germany wins the war”.

In 1954, a formal peace took hold in Indochina, ending more than seven years of fighting between the French and Communist Vietminh.

In 1990, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s Free Democrats merged with their liberal East German allies to become the first revived pan-German political party.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“The best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds.” — Edgar A. Guest, American author, journalist and poet (1881-1959).