TODAY IN HISTORY

OCTOBER 19
1781: British troops under Lord Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown, Va., as the American Revolution nears its end.

1944: The Navy allows black women into the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES). By the end of WWII, only 70 of 78,000 enlisted women and two of 8,000 female officers are black.

1969: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew calls antiwar protesters “an effete corps of impudent snobs.”