CRITIC'S CORNER: May 3, 2012

Thursday, May 3, 2012

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January
January	1	In 1959, Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista.
January	2	In 1905, Japanese Gen. Nogi received from Russian Gen. Stoessel at 9 o’clock P.M. a letter formally offering to surrender, ending the Russo-Japanese War.
January	3	In 1959, President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49th state.
January	4	In 1965, President Johnson outlined the goals of his “Great Society” in his State of the Union address.
January	5	In 1914, Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per day.
January	6	In 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.
January	7	In 1979, Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.
January	8	In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson outlined his 14 points for peace after World War I.
January	9	In 1968, the Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
January	10	In 1946, the first General Assembly of the United Nations convened in London.
January	11	In 1935, aviator Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.
January	12	In 1915, the United States House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.
January	13	In 1990, Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation’s first elected black governor as he took the oath of office in Richmond.
January	14	In 1943, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opened a wartime conference in Casablanca.
January	15	In 1967, the first Super Bowl was played as the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, 35-10.
January	16	In 1991, the White House announced the start of Operation Desert Storm to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
January	17	In 1893, Hawaii’s monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.
January	18	In 1912, English explorer Robert F. Scott and his expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had gotten there first.
January	19	In 1937, millionaire Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
January	20	In 1981, Iran released 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.
January	21	In 1924, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died at age 54.
January	22	In 1973, in its Roe vs. Wade decision, the Supreme Court legalized abortions, using a trimester approach.
January	23	In 1973, President Nixon announced an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War.
January	24	In 1965, Winston Churchill died in London at age 90.
January	25	In 1915, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service.
January	26	In 1950, India officially proclaimed itself a republic as Rajendra Prasad took the oath of office as president.
January	27	In 1967, astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, Fla.
January	28	In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members: flight commander Francis R. “Dick” Scobee; pilot Michael J. Smith; Ronald E. McNair; Ellison S. Onizuka; Judith A. Resnik; Gregory B. Jarvis; and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.
January	29	In 1963, poet Robert Frost died in Boston.
January	30	In 1948, Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu extremist.
January	31	In 1865, the House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.

February
February	1	In 1960, four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they’d been refused service.
February	2	In 1943, the remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major victory for the Soviets in World War II.
February	3	In 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
February	4	In 1974, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
February	5	In 1937, President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices; critics charged Roosevelt was attempting to “pack” the court.
February	6	In 1952, Britain’s King George VI died; he was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.
February	7	In 1984, space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart went on the first untethered spacewalk.
February	8	In 1996, in a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would “bring the future to our doorstep.”
February	9	In 1943, the World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.
February	10	In 1962, the Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.
February	11	In 1945, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement during World War II.
February	12	In 1973, the first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict took place.
February	13	In 1935, a jury in Flemington, N.J., found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-death of the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. Hauptmann was later executed.
February	14	In 1929, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down.
February	15	In 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, killing 260 crew members and escalating tensions with Spain.
February	16	In 1923, the burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt.
February	17	In 1972, President Nixon departed on his historic trip to China.
February	18	In 1861, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Ala.
February	19	In 1945, during World War II, some 30,000 United States Marines landed on the Western Pacific island of Iwo Jima, where they encountered ferocious resistance from Japanese forces. The Americans took control of the strategically important island after a month-long battle.
February	20	In 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule.
February	21	In 1965, former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address a rally in New York City; he was 39.
February	22	In 1980, in a stunning upset, the United States Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets at Lake Placid, N.Y., 4-to-3. (The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.)
February	23	In 1954, the first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh.
February	24	In 1868, the United States House of Representatives impeached President Johnson following his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton; Johnson was later acquitted by the Senate.
February	25	In 1870, Hiram R. Revels, R-Miss., became the first black member of the United States Senate as he was sworn in to serve out the unexpired term of Jefferson Davis.
February	26	In 1993, a bomb exploded in the garage of New York’s World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.
February	27	In 1991, President Bush declared that “Kuwait is liberated, Iraq’s army is defeated,” and announced that the allies would suspend combat operations at midnight.
February	28	In 1993, a gun battle erupted near Waco, Texas, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve warrants on the Branch Davidians; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began.
February	29

March
March	1	In 1932, the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, N.J.
March	2	In 1877, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, even though Tilden had won the popular vote.
March	3	In 1991, in a case that sparked a national outcry, motorist Rodney King was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video.
March	4	In 1933, the start of President Roosevelt’s first administration brought with it the first woman to serve in the Cabinet: Labor Secretary Frances Perkins.
March	5	In 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.
March	6	In 1857, in its Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court held that Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court.
March	7	In 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse.
March	8	In 1917, Russia’s February Revolution (so called because of the Old Style calendar used by Russians at the time) began with rioting and strikes in St. Petersburg.
March	9	In 1862, during the Civil War, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia (formerly Merrimac) clashed for five hours to a draw at Hampton Roads, Va.
March	10	In 1985, Konstantin U. Chernenko, Soviet leader for just 13 months, died at age 73. His death was announced on March 11th. Politburo member Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed him.
March	11	In 1941, President Roosevelt signed into law the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.
March	12	In 1947, President Truman established what became known as the Truman Doctrine to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.
March	13	In 1868, the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson began in the United States Senate.
March	14	In 1900, Congress ratified the Gold Standard Act.
March	15	In 1965, addressing a joint session of Congress, President Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American’s right to vote.
March	16	In 1968, during the Vietnam War, the My Lai Massacre was carried out by United States troops under the command of Lt. William L. Calley Jr.
March	17	In 1942, Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.
March	18	In 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov left his Voskhod 2 capsule and remained outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by a tether.
March	19	In 1920, the United States Senate rejected for the second time the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 49-35, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for approval.
March	20	In 1995, in Tokyo, 12 people were killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the poisonous gas sarin leaked on five separate subway trains.
March	21	In 1965, more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.
March	22	In 1972, Congress sent the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification. It fell short of the three-fourths approval needed.
March	23	In 1965, America’s first two-person space flight began as Gemini 3 blasted off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young aboard.
March	24	In 1989, one of the nation’s worst oil spills occurred as the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and began leaking 11 million gallons of crude.
March	25	In 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala., to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.
March	26	In 1979, the Camp David peace treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at the White House.
March	27	In 1958, Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.
March	28	In 1979, America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurred inside the Unit Two reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pa.
March	29	In 1973, the last United States troops left South Vietnam, ending America’s direct military involvement in the Vietnam War.
March	30	In 1981, President Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley Jr. Also wounded were White House news secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia police officer.
March	31	In 1968, President Johnson stunned the country by announcing he would not run for another term of office.

April
April	1	In 1945, American forces invaded Okinawa during World War II.
April	2	In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.”
April	3	In 1948, President Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which allocated more than $5 billion in aid for 16 European countries.
April	4	In 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot to death in Memphis, Tenn.
April	5	In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union.
April	6	In 1909, explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole. The claim, disputed by skeptics, was upheld in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation.
April	7	In 1862, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.
April	8	In 1973, artist Pablo Picasso died at his home near Mougins, France, at age 91.
April	9	In 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
April	10	In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals.
April	11	In 1951, President Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.
April	12	In 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga., at age 63. Vice President Harry S. Truman became president.
April	13	In 1970, Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst. (The astronauts managed to return safely.)
April	14	In 1865, President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth while attending the comedy “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. He died the next day.
April	15	In 1912, the British luxury liner Titanic sank in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland, less than three hours after striking an iceberg. About 1,500 people died.
April	16	In 1947, America’s worst harbor explosion occurred in Texas City, Texas, when the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up, devastating the town. Another ship, the Highflyer, exploded the following day. The explosions and resulting fires killed more than 500 people and left 200 others missing.
April	17	In 1961, about 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.
April	18	In 1906, a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires. About 700 people died.
April	19	In 1995, a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, and injuring 500. Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to death.
April	20	In 1971, the United States Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.
April	21	In 1910, author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, died in Redding, Conn.
April	22	In 1889, the Oklahoma Land Rush began at noon as thousands of homesteaders staked claims.
April	23	In 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.
April	24	In 1898, Spain declared war on the United States after rejecting America’s ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
April	25	In 1945, during World War II, United States and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, in central Europe, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany.
April	26	In 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire in the No. 4 reactor sent radioactivity into the atmosphere; at least 31 Soviets died immediately.
April	27	In 1947, “Babe Ruth Day” at Yankee Stadium was held to honor the ailing baseball star.
April	28	In 1947, a six-man expedition sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.
April	29	In 1992, deadly rioting that claimed 54 lives and caused $1 billion in damage erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King.
April	30	In 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces.

May
May	1	In 1960, the Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane near Sverdlovsk and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.
May	2	In 1945, the Soviet Union announced the fall of Berlin and the Allies announced the surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria.
May	3	In 1971, anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe began four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C., aimed at shutting down the nation’s capital.
May	4	In 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on anti-war protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others.
May	5	In 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became America’s first space traveler as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight in a capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
May	6	In 1937, the hydrogen-filled German dirigible Hindenburg burned and crashed in Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 of the 97 people on board.
May	7	In 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, to take effect the following day, ending the European conflict of World War II.
May	8	In 1973, militant American Indians who had held the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for 10 weeks surrendered.
May	9	In 1994, South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.
May	10	In 1869, a golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States.
May	11	In 1973, charges against Daniel Ellsberg for his role in the Pentagon Papers case were dismissed by Judge William M. Byrne, who cited government misconduct.
May	12	In 1943, during World War II, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.
May	13	In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter’s Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca.
May	14	In 1948, the independent state of Israel was proclaimed as British rule in Palestine came to an end.
May	15	In 1911, the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
May	16	In 1868, the United States Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of 11 articles of impeachment against him. (Johnson was acquitted of all charges.)
May	17	In 1954, the Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, which declared that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal.
May	18	In 1980, the Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.
May	19	In 1935, T.E. Lawrence, also known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” died in England from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.
May	20	In 1961, a white mob attacked a busload of “Freedom Riders” in Montgomery, Ala., prompting the federal government to send in United States marshals to restore order.
May	21	In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his “Spirit of St. Louis” near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
May	22	In 1947, the Truman Doctrine was enacted as Congress appropriated military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey.
May	23	In 1934, bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were shot to death in a police ambush as they were driving a stolen Ford Deluxe along a road in Bienville Parish, La.
May	24	In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, was opened to traffic.
May	25	In 1925, John T. Scopes was indicted in Tennessee for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.
May	26	In 1868, the Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ended with his acquittal as the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.
May	27	In 1964, independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died.
May	28	In 1984, President Reagan led a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War.
May	29	In 1953, Mount Everest was conquered as Edmund Hillary of New Zealand, left, and Tensing Norgay of Nepal became the first climbers to reach the summit.
May	30	In 1958, unidentified soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflict were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
May	31	In 1889, more than 2,000 people perished when a dam break sent water rushing through Johnstown, Pa.

June
June	1	In 1968, author-lecturer Helen Keller, who earned a college degree despite being blind and deaf most of her life, died in Westport, Conn.
June	2	In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain was crowned in Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the death of her father, King George VI.
June	3	In 1965, astronaut Edward White became the first American to “walk” in space, during the flight of Gemini 4.
June	4	In 1989, Chinese army troops stormed Tiananmen Square in Beijing to crush the pro-democracy movement; hundreds – possibly thousands – of people died.
June	5	In 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded just after claiming victory in California’s Democratic presidential primary. Gunman Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was immediately arrested.
June	6	In 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe took place during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.
June	7	In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
June	8	In 1969, authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
June	9	In 1954, Army counsel Joseph N. Welch confronted Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy during the Senate-Army Hearings over McCarthy’s attack on a member of Welch’s law firm, Frederick G. Fisher. Said Welch: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
June	10	In 1967, the Six-Day War ended as Israel and Syria agreed to observe a United Nations-mediated cease-fire.
June	11	In 1942, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a lend lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in World War II.
June	12	In 1987, President Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, publicly challenged Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
June	13	In 1966, the Supreme Court issued its landmark Miranda vs. Arizona decision, ruling that criminal suspects must be informed of their constitutional rights prior to questioning by police.
June	14	In 1982, Argentine forces surrendered to British troops on the disputed Falkland Islands.
June	15	In 1904, more than 1,000 people died when fire erupted aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York City’s East River.
June	16	In 1933, President Roosevelt opened his New Deal recovery program, signing bank, rail, and industry bills and initiating farm aid.
June	17	In 1928, Amelia Earhart embarked on the first trans-Atlantic flight by a woman. She flew from Newfoundland to Wales in about 21 hours.
June	18	In 1948, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights.
June	19	In 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate.
June	20	In 1967, boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
June	21	In 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later. Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan went to prison on federal conspiracy charges; none served more than six years.
June	22	In 1940, during World War II, Adolf Hitler gained a stunning victory as France was forced to sign an armistice eight days after German forces overran Paris.
June	23	In 1947, the Senate joined the House in overriding President Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.
June	24	In 1997, the Air Force released a report on the so-called “Roswell Incident,” suggesting the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were actually life-sized dummies.
June	25	In 1876, Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana.
June	26	In 1963, President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he made his famous declaration: “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner).
June	27	In 1950, President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean War following a call from the United Nations Security Council for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.
June	28	In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending World War I.
June	29	In 1995, the shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir docked, forming the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth.
June	30	In 1997, in Hong Kong, the Union Jack was lowered for the last time over Government House as Britain prepared to hand the colony back to China after ruling it for 156 years.

July
July	1	In 1997, Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule after 156 years as a British colony.
July	2	In 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight at the equator.
July	3	In 1863, the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania ended after three days in a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated.
July	4	In 1976, the United States celebrated its Bicentential. In 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
July	5	In 1975, Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win a Wimbledon singles title as he defeated Jimmy Connors.
July	6	In 1957, Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title, defeating fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.
July	7	In 1981, President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice on the United States Supreme Court.
July	8	In 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief of United Nations forces in Korea.
July	9	In 1896, William Jennings Bryan caused a sensation at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with his “cross of gold” speech denouncing supporters of the gold standard. Bryan went on to win the party’s nomination.
July	10	In 1940, during World War II, the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking southern England by air. By late October, Britain managed to repel the Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses.
July	11	In 1979, the abandoned United States space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
July	12	In 1984, Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale announced he had chosen U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York to be his running mate; Ferraro was the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket.
July	13	In 1977, a 25-hour blackout hit the New York City area after lightning struck upstate power lines.
July	14	In 1965, the American space probe Mariner 4 flew by Mars, sending back photographs of the planet.
July	15	In 1918, the Second Battle of the Marne began during World War I.
July	16	In 1918, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II, his empress and their five children were executed by the Bolsheviks.
July	17	In 1975, an Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower linkup of its kind.
July	18	In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began as Gen. Francisco Franco led an uprising of army troops based in Spanish North Africa.
July	19	In 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his “V for Victory” campaign in Europe.
July	20	In 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon when he stepped out of the lunar module.
July	21	In 1925, the so-called “Monkey Trial” ended in Dayton, Tenn., with John T. Scopes convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. The conviction was later overturned.
July	22	In 1934, a man identified as bank robber John Dillinger was shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater.
July	23	In 1914, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; the dispute led to World War I.
July	24	In 1959, during a visit to the Soviet Union, Vice President Richard M. Nixon got into a “kitchen debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a United States exhibition.
July	25	In 1956, the Italian liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm off the New England coast, killing 51 people.
July	26	In 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
July	27	In 1953, the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting.
July	28	In 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. World War I began as declarations of war by other European nations quickly followed.
July	29	In 1981, Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
July	30	In 1945, the USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Only 316 out of 1,196 men survived the sinking and shark-infested waters.
July	31	In 1964, the American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted pictures of the moon’s surface.

August
August	1	In 1936, the Olympic games opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.
August	2	In 1923, the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco. Calvin Coolidge took the oath of office as President of the United States.
August	3	In 1958, the nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater.
August	4	In 1914, Britain declared war on Germany while the United States proclaimed its neutrality.
August	5	In 1963, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union signed a treaty in Moscow banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space and underwater.
August	6	In 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II, killing an estimated 140,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.
August	7	In 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson broad powers in dealing with reported North Vietnamese attacks on United States forces.
August	8	In 1974, President Nixon announced he would resign following damaging revelations in the Watergate scandal.
August	9	In 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, the United States exploded a nuclear device over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people.
August	10	In 1977, postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested in Yonkers, N.Y., accused of being the “Son of Sam” gunman responsible for six random slayings and seven woundings. Berkowitz is serving six consecutive terms of 25 years to life in state prison.
August	11	In 1965, rioting and looting broke out in the predominantly black Watts section of Los Angeles. In the week that followed, 34 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured.
August	12	In 1898, the peace protocol ending the Spanish-American War was signed.
August	13	In 1961, Berlin was divided as East Germany sealed off the border between the city’s eastern and western sectors in order to halt the flight of refugees. Two days later, work began on the Berlin Wall.
August	14	In 1945, President Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
August	15	In 1947, India and Pakistan became independent after some 200 years of British rule.
August	16	In 1977, Elvis Presley died at Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tenn., at age 42.
August	17	In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair concluded near Bethel, N.Y.
August	18	In 1963, James Meredith became the first black to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
August	19	In 1963, James Meredith became the first black to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
August	20	In 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek’s regime.
August	21	In 1959, President Eisenhower signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union.
August	22	In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first United States chief executive to ride in an automobile.
August	23	In 1927, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. They were vindicated in 1977 by Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.
August	24	In 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida, causing record damage; 55 deaths in Florida, Louisiana and the Bahamas were blamed on the storm.
August	25	In 1944, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.
August	26	In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing American women the right to vote, was declared in effect.
August	27	In 1962, the United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe, which flew past Venus the following December.
August	28	In 1963, 200,000 people participated in a peaceful civil rights rally in Washington, D.C., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
August	29	In 1991, the Supreme Soviet, the parliament of the U.S.S.R., suspended all activities of the Communist Party, bringing an end to the institution.
August	30	In 1963, the hot-line communications link between Washington, D.C., and Moscow went into operation.
August	31	In 1997, Diana, the Princess of Wales, was killed in an automobile accident in a tunnel by the Seine in Paris. The accident also killed Emad Mohammed al-Fayed, the Harrod’s heir.

September
September	1	In 1939, World War II began as Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
September	2	In 1945, Japan formally surrendered in ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II.
September	3	In 1976, the unmanned U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the planet’s surface.
September	4	In 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock.
September	5	In 1972, Arab terrorists attacked the Israeli delegation at the Munich Olympic games; 11 Israelis, five guerrillas and a police officer were killed in the siege.
September	6	In 1901, President McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y.
September	7	In 1940, Nazi Germany began its initial blitz on London during World War II.
September	8	In 1974, President Ford granted an unconditional pardon to former President Nixon.
September	9	In 1976, Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung died in Beijing at age 82.
September	10	In 1919, New York City welcomed home Gen. John J. Pershing and 25,000 soldiers who had served in the United States 1st Division during World War I.
September	11	In 2001, suicide hijackers crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, causing the 110-story twin towers to collapse. Another hijacked airliner hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
September	12	In 1977, South African black student leader Steven Biko died while in police custody, triggering an international outcry.
September	13	In 1993, at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy.
September	14	In 1959, the Soviet space probe Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the moon as it crashed onto the lunar surface.
September	15	In 1963, four children were killed when a bomb went off during Sunday services at a black Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama.
September	16	In 1974, President Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft evaders.
September	17	In 1862, Union forces hurled back a Confederate invasion of Maryland in the Civil War Battle of Antietam. During the battle, 23,100 were killed, wounded or captured, making it the bloodiest day in United States military history.
September	18	In 1947, the National Security Act, which unified the Army, Navy and newly formed Air Force, went into effect.
September	19	In 1881, the 20th president of the United States, James A. Garfield, died of wounds inflicted by an assassin.
September	20	In 1973, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in a $100,000 winner-take-all tennis match.
September	21	In 1938, a hurricane struck parts of New York and New England, causing widespread damage and claiming more than 600 lives.
September	22	In 1862, President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in rebel states should be free as of Jan. 1, 1863.
September	23	In 1952, Republican vice-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon went on television to deliver what came to be known as the “Checkers” speech as he denied allegations of improper campaign financing.
September	24	In 1996, the United States and the world’s other major nuclear powers signed a treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons.
September	25	In 1957, with 300 United States Army troops standing guard, nine black children were escorted to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, days after unruly white crowds had forced them to withdraw.
September	26	In 1960, the first televised debate between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy took place in Chicago.
September	27	In 1964, the Warren Commission issued a report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy.
September	28	In 1924, two United States Army planes landed in Seattle, Washington, having completed the first round-the-world flight in 175 days.
September	29	In 1957, the New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds, losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates 9-1. The Giants moved to San Francisco for the next season.
September	30	In 1938, British and French leaders agreed to allow Nazi Germany to occupy sections of the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia.

October
October	1	In 1961, Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hit his 61st home run of the season, breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 60 set in 1927.
October	2	In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; he was the first African-American appointed to the nation’s highest court.
October	3	In 1990, West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a new unified country.
October	4	In 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit.
October	5	In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was shot to death by extremists while reviewing a military parade.
October	6	In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was shot to death by extremists while reviewing a military parade.
October	7	In 1985, Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean with more than 400 people aboard.
October	8	In 1982, all labor organizations in Poland, including Solidarity, were banned.
October	9	In 1967, Latin American guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia while attempting to incite revolution.
October	10	In 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion and resigned his office.
October	11	In 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, was launched with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard.
October	12	In 1870, Gen. Robert E. Lee died in Lexington, Va., at age 63.
October	13	In 1943, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.
October	14	In 1964, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
October	15	In 1964, it was announced that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev had been removed from office. He was succeeded as premier by Alexei N. Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I. Brezhnev.
October	16	In 1964, China detonated its first atomic bomb.
October	17	In 1931, mobster Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 1939.
October	18	In 1968, the United States Olympic Committee suspended two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, for giving a “black power” salute as a protest during a victory ceremony in Mexico City.
October	19	In 1987, the stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22.6 percent in value – its biggest-ever percentage drop.
October	20	In 1973, in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, President Nixon abolished the office of special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, accepted the resignation of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and fired Deputy Attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus.
October	21	In 1879, Thomas Edison invented a workable electric light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.
October	22	In 1962, President Kennedy announced an air and naval blockade of Cuba, following the discovery of Soviet missile bases on the island.
October	23	In 1983, a suicide truck-bombing at Beirut International Airport in Lebanon killed 241 United States Marines and sailors; a near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers.
October	24	In 1945, the United Nations officially came into existence as its charter took effect.
October	25	In 1971, the United Nations General Assembly voted to admit mainland China and expel Taiwan.
October	26	In 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty in a ceremony attended by President Clinton.
October	27	In 1904, the first rapid transit subway, the IRT, opened in New York City.
October	28	In 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Cleveland.
October	29	In 1929, Black Tuesday descended upon the New York Stock Exchange. Prices collapsed amid panic selling and thousands of investors were wiped out as America’s Great Depression began.
October	30	In 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title.
October	31	In 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated near her residence by two Sikh security guards.

November
November	1	In 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, in a test at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands.
November	2	In 1976, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter defeated Republican incumbent Gerald R. Ford, becoming the first U.S. president from the Deep South since the Civil War.
November	3	In 1936, President Roosevelt was re-elected in a landslide over Republican challenger Alfred M. “Alf” Landon.
November	4	In 1979, the Iranian hostage crisis began as militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran.
November	5	In 1968, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency, defeating Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George C. Wallace.
November	6	In 1860, former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln defeated three other candidates for the United States presidency.
November	7	In 1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.
November	8	In 1960, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon for the presidency.
November	9	In 1965, the great Northeast blackout occurred as several states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours.
November	10	In 1982, the newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened to its first visitors in Washington, D.C.
November	11	In 1918, fighting in World War I came to an end with the signing of an armistice between the Allies and Germany.
November	12	In 1942, the World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. The Americans eventually won a major victory over the Japanese.
November	13	In 1956, the Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.
November	14	In 1972, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 1,000 for the first time, ending the day at 1,003.16.
November	15	In 1969, a quarter of a million protesters staged a peaceful demonstration in Washington, D.C., against the Vietnam War.
November	16	In 1933, the United States and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations. President Roosevelt sent a telegram to Soviet leader Maxim Litvinov, expressing hope that United States-Soviet relations would “forever remain normal and friendly.”
November	17	In 1973, President Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Fla., that “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”
November	18	In 1976, Spain’s parliament approved a bill to establish a democracy after 37 years of dictatorship.
November	19	In 1863, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.
November	20	In 1945, 24 Nazi leaders went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.
November	21	In 1964, New York’s Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened.
November	22	In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Texas Gov. John B. Connally was seriously wounded. A suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th president of the United States.
November	23	In 1943, during World War II, United States forces seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese.
November	24	In 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy.
November	25	In 1986, the Iran-Contra affair erupted as President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.
November	26	In 1942, President Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning December 1.
November	27	In 1973, the Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who’d resigned.
November	28	In 1943, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met in Tehran during World War II.
November	29	In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews.
November	30	In 1995, President Clinton became the first U.S. chief executive to visit Northern Ireland.

December
December	1	In 1959, representatives of 12 countries, including the United States, signed a treaty in Washington setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, free from military activity.
December	2	In 1954, the Senate voted to condemn Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R Wis., for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
December	3	In 1984, more than 4,000 people died after a cloud of gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.
December	4	In 1945, the Senate approved United States participation in the United Nations.
December	5	In 1933, national Prohibition came to an end as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment.
December	6	In 1923, a presidential address was broadcast on radio for the first time as President Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.
December	7	In 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the home base of the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, an act that led to America’s entry into World War II.
December	8	In 1941, the United States entered World War II as Congress declared war against Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
December	9	In 1992, Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation.
December	10	In 1948, the U.N. General Assembly adopted its Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
December	11	In 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
December	12	In 1963, Kenya gained its independence from Britain.
December	13	In 1981, authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. Martial law formally ended in 1983.
December	14	In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967.
December	15	In 1916, the French defeated the Germans in the World War I Battle of Verdun.
December	16	In 1950, President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “Communist imperialism.”
December	17	In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright took the first successful man-powered airplane flights, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
December	18	In 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first civilian nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went online.
December	19	In 1984, Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
December	20	In 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause, sending troops into Panama to topple the government of General Manuel Noriega.
December	21	In 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
December	22	In 1864, during the Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln from Georgia, saying, “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”
December	23	In 1986, the experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling as it landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
December	24	In 1992, President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.
December	25	In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on television to announce his resignation.
December	26	In 1941, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the United States Congress.
December	27	In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal.
December	28	In 1981, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American test-tube baby, was born in Norfolk, Va.
December	29	In 1940, during World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.
December	30	In 1972, the United States halted its heavy bombing of North Vietnam.
December	31	In 1946, President Truman officially proclaimed the end of hostilities in World War II.

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January
January 1 In 1959, Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista.
January 2 In 1905, Japanese Gen. Nogi received from Russian Gen. Stoessel at 9 o’clock P.M. a letter formally offering to surrender, ending the Russo-Japanese War.
January 3 In 1959, President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49th state.
January 4 In 1965, President Johnson outlined the goals of his “Great Society” in his State of the Union address.
January 5 In 1914, Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per day.
January 6 In 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.
January 7 In 1979, Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.
January 8 In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson outlined his 14 points for peace after World War I.
January 9 In 1968, the Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
January 10 In 1946, the first General Assembly of the United Nations convened in London.
January 11 In 1935, aviator Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.
January 12 In 1915, the United States House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.
January 13 In 1990, Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation’s first elected black governor as he took the oath of office in Richmond.
January 14 In 1943, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opened a wartime conference in Casablanca.
January 15 In 1967, the first Super Bowl was played as the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, 35-10.
January 16 In 1991, the White House announced the start of Operation Desert Storm to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
January 17 In 1893, Hawaii’s monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.
January 18 In 1912, English explorer Robert F. Scott and his expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had gotten there first.
January 19 In 1937, millionaire Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
January 20 In 1981, Iran released 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.
January 21 In 1924, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died at age 54.
January 22 In 1973, in its Roe vs. Wade decision, the Supreme Court legalized abortions, using a trimester approach.
January 23 In 1973, President Nixon announced an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War.
January 24 In 1965, Winston Churchill died in London at age 90.
January 25 In 1915, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service.
January 26 In 1950, India officially proclaimed itself a republic as Rajendra Prasad took the oath of office as president.
January 27 In 1967, astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, Fla.
January 28 In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members: flight commander Francis R. “Dick” Scobee; pilot Michael J. Smith; Ronald E. McNair; Ellison S. Onizuka; Judith A. Resnik; Gregory B. Jarvis; and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.
January 29 In 1963, poet Robert Frost died in Boston.
January 30 In 1948, Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu extremist.
January 31 In 1865, the House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.
February
February 1 In 1960, four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they’d been refused service.
February 2 In 1943, the remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major victory for the Soviets in World War II.
February 3 In 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
February 4 In 1974, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
February 5 In 1937, President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices; critics charged Roosevelt was attempting to “pack” the court.
February 6 In 1952, Britain’s King George VI died; he was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.
February 7 In 1984, space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart went on the first untethered spacewalk.
February 8 In 1996, in a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would “bring the future to our doorstep.”
February 9 In 1943, the World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.
February 10 In 1962, the Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.
February 11 In 1945, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement during World War II.
February 12 In 1973, the first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict took place.
February 13 In 1935, a jury in Flemington, N.J., found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-death of the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. Hauptmann was later executed.
February 14 In 1929, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down.
February 15 In 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, killing 260 crew members and escalating tensions with Spain.
February 16 In 1923, the burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt.
February 17 In 1972, President Nixon departed on his historic trip to China.
February 18 In 1861, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Ala.
February 19 In 1945, during World War II, some 30,000 United States Marines landed on the Western Pacific island of Iwo Jima, where they encountered ferocious resistance from Japanese forces. The Americans took control of the strategically important island after a month-long battle.
February 20 In 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule.
February 21 In 1965, former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address a rally in New York City; he was 39.
February 22 In 1980, in a stunning upset, the United States Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets at Lake Placid, N.Y., 4-to-3. (The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.)
February 23 In 1954, the first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh.
February 24 In 1868, the United States House of Representatives impeached President Johnson following his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton; Johnson was later acquitted by the Senate.
February 25 In 1870, Hiram R. Revels, R-Miss., became the first black member of the United States Senate as he was sworn in to serve out the unexpired term of Jefferson Davis.
February 26 In 1993, a bomb exploded in the garage of New York’s World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.
February 27 In 1991, President Bush declared that “Kuwait is liberated, Iraq’s army is defeated,” and announced that the allies would suspend combat operations at midnight.
February 28 In 1993, a gun battle erupted near Waco, Texas, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve warrants on the Branch Davidians; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began.
February 29
March
March 1 In 1932, the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, N.J.
March 2 In 1877, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, even though Tilden had won the popular vote.
March 3 In 1991, in a case that sparked a national outcry, motorist Rodney King was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video.
March 4 In 1933, the start of President Roosevelt’s first administration brought with it the first woman to serve in the Cabinet: Labor Secretary Frances Perkins.
March 5 In 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.
March 6 In 1857, in its Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court held that Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court.
March 7 In 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse.
March 8 In 1917, Russia’s February Revolution (so called because of the Old Style calendar used by Russians at the time) began with rioting and strikes in St. Petersburg.
March 9 In 1862, during the Civil War, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia (formerly Merrimac) clashed for five hours to a draw at Hampton Roads, Va.
March 10 In 1985, Konstantin U. Chernenko, Soviet leader for just 13 months, died at age 73. His death was announced on March 11th. Politburo member Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed him.
March 11 In 1941, President Roosevelt signed into law the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.
March 12 In 1947, President Truman established what became known as the Truman Doctrine to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.
March 13 In 1868, the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson began in the United States Senate.
March 14 In 1900, Congress ratified the Gold Standard Act.
March 15 In 1965, addressing a joint session of Congress, President Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American’s right to vote.
March 16 In 1968, during the Vietnam War, the My Lai Massacre was carried out by United States troops under the command of Lt. William L. Calley Jr.
March 17 In 1942, Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.
March 18 In 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov left his Voskhod 2 capsule and remained outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by a tether.
March 19 In 1920, the United States Senate rejected for the second time the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 49-35, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for approval.
March 20 In 1995, in Tokyo, 12 people were killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the poisonous gas sarin leaked on five separate subway trains.
March 21 In 1965, more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.
March 22 In 1972, Congress sent the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification. It fell short of the three-fourths approval needed.
March 23 In 1965, America’s first two-person space flight began as Gemini 3 blasted off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young aboard.
March 24 In 1989, one of the nation’s worst oil spills occurred as the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and began leaking 11 million gallons of crude.
March 25 In 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala., to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.
March 26 In 1979, the Camp David peace treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at the White House.
March 27 In 1958, Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.
March 28 In 1979, America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurred inside the Unit Two reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pa.
March 29 In 1973, the last United States troops left South Vietnam, ending America’s direct military involvement in the Vietnam War.
March 30 In 1981, President Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley Jr. Also wounded were White House news secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia police officer.
March 31 In 1968, President Johnson stunned the country by announcing he would not run for another term of office.
April
April 1 In 1945, American forces invaded Okinawa during World War II.
April 2 In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.”
April 3 In 1948, President Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which allocated more than $5 billion in aid for 16 European countries.
April 4 In 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot to death in Memphis, Tenn.
April 5 In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union.
April 6 In 1909, explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole. The claim, disputed by skeptics, was upheld in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation.
April 7 In 1862, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.
April 8 In 1973, artist Pablo Picasso died at his home near Mougins, France, at age 91.
April 9 In 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
April 10 In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals.
April 11 In 1951, President Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.
April 12 In 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga., at age 63. Vice President Harry S. Truman became president.
April 13 In 1970, Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst. (The astronauts managed to return safely.)
April 14 In 1865, President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth while attending the comedy “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. He died the next day.
April 15 In 1912, the British luxury liner Titanic sank in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland, less than three hours after striking an iceberg. About 1,500 people died.
April 16 In 1947, America’s worst harbor explosion occurred in Texas City, Texas, when the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up, devastating the town. Another ship, the Highflyer, exploded the following day. The explosions and resulting fires killed more than 500 people and left 200 others missing.
April 17 In 1961, about 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.
April 18 In 1906, a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires. About 700 people died.
April 19 In 1995, a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, and injuring 500. Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to death.
April 20 In 1971, the United States Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.
April 21 In 1910, author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, died in Redding, Conn.
April 22 In 1889, the Oklahoma Land Rush began at noon as thousands of homesteaders staked claims.
April 23 In 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.
April 24 In 1898, Spain declared war on the United States after rejecting America’s ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
April 25 In 1945, during World War II, United States and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, in central Europe, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany.
April 26 In 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire in the No. 4 reactor sent radioactivity into the atmosphere; at least 31 Soviets died immediately.
April 27 In 1947, “Babe Ruth Day” at Yankee Stadium was held to honor the ailing baseball star.
April 28 In 1947, a six-man expedition sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.
April 29 In 1992, deadly rioting that claimed 54 lives and caused $1 billion in damage erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King.
April 30 In 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces.
May
May 1 In 1960, the Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane near Sverdlovsk and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.
May 2 In 1945, the Soviet Union announced the fall of Berlin and the Allies announced the surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria.
May 3 In 1971, anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe began four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C., aimed at shutting down the nation’s capital.
May 4 In 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on anti-war protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others.
May 5 In 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became America’s first space traveler as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight in a capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
May 6 In 1937, the hydrogen-filled German dirigible Hindenburg burned and crashed in Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 of the 97 people on board.
May 7 In 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, to take effect the following day, ending the European conflict of World War II.
May 8 In 1973, militant American Indians who had held the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for 10 weeks surrendered.
May 9 In 1994, South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.
May 10 In 1869, a golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States.
May 11 In 1973, charges against Daniel Ellsberg for his role in the Pentagon Papers case were dismissed by Judge William M. Byrne, who cited government misconduct.
May 12 In 1943, during World War II, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.
May 13 In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter’s Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca.
May 14 In 1948, the independent state of Israel was proclaimed as British rule in Palestine came to an end.
May 15 In 1911, the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
May 16 In 1868, the United States Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of 11 articles of impeachment against him. (Johnson was acquitted of all charges.)
May 17 In 1954, the Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, which declared that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal.
May 18 In 1980, the Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.
May 19 In 1935, T.E. Lawrence, also known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” died in England from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.
May 20 In 1961, a white mob attacked a busload of “Freedom Riders” in Montgomery, Ala., prompting the federal government to send in United States marshals to restore order.
May 21 In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his “Spirit of St. Louis” near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
May 22 In 1947, the Truman Doctrine was enacted as Congress appropriated military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey.
May 23 In 1934, bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were shot to death in a police ambush as they were driving a stolen Ford Deluxe along a road in Bienville Parish, La.
May 24 In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, was opened to traffic.
May 25 In 1925, John T. Scopes was indicted in Tennessee for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.
May 26 In 1868, the Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ended with his acquittal as the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.
May 27 In 1964, independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died.
May 28 In 1984, President Reagan led a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War.
May 29 In 1953, Mount Everest was conquered as Edmund Hillary of New Zealand, left, and Tensing Norgay of Nepal became the first climbers to reach the summit.
May 30 In 1958, unidentified soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflict were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
May 31 In 1889, more than 2,000 people perished when a dam break sent water rushing through Johnstown, Pa.

June
June 1 In 1968, author-lecturer Helen Keller, who earned a college degree despite being blind and deaf most of her life, died in Westport, Conn.
June 2 In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain was crowned in Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the death of her father, King George VI.
June 3 In 1965, astronaut Edward White became the first American to “walk” in space, during the flight of Gemini 4.
June 4 In 1989, Chinese army troops stormed Tiananmen Square in Beijing to crush the pro-democracy movement; hundreds – possibly thousands – of people died.
June 5 In 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded just after claiming victory in California’s Democratic presidential primary. Gunman Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was immediately arrested.
June 6 In 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe took place during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.
June 7 In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
June 8 In 1969, authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
June 9 In 1954, Army counsel Joseph N. Welch confronted Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy during the Senate-Army Hearings over McCarthy’s attack on a member of Welch’s law firm, Frederick G. Fisher. Said Welch: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
June 10 In 1967, the Six-Day War ended as Israel and Syria agreed to observe a United Nations-mediated cease-fire.
June 11 In 1942, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a lend lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in World War II.
June 12 In 1987, President Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, publicly challenged Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
June 13 In 1966, the Supreme Court issued its landmark Miranda vs. Arizona decision, ruling that criminal suspects must be informed of their constitutional rights prior to questioning by police.
June 14 In 1982, Argentine forces surrendered to British troops on the disputed Falkland Islands.
June 15 In 1904, more than 1,000 people died when fire erupted aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York City’s East River.
June 16 In 1933, President Roosevelt opened his New Deal recovery program, signing bank, rail, and industry bills and initiating farm aid.
June 17 In 1928, Amelia Earhart embarked on the first trans-Atlantic flight by a woman. She flew from Newfoundland to Wales in about 21 hours.
June 18 In 1948, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights.
June 19 In 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate.
June 20 In 1967, boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
June 21 In 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later. Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan went to prison on federal conspiracy charges; none served more than six years.
June 22 In 1940, during World War II, Adolf Hitler gained a stunning victory as France was forced to sign an armistice eight days after German forces overran Paris.
June 23 In 1947, the Senate joined the House in overriding President Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.
June 24 In 1997, the Air Force released a report on the so-called “Roswell Incident,” suggesting the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were actually life-sized dummies.
June 25 In 1876, Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana.
June 26 In 1963, President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he made his famous declaration: “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner).
June 27 In 1950, President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean War following a call from the United Nations Security Council for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.
June 28 In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending World War I.
June 29 In 1995, the shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir docked, forming the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth.
June 30 In 1997, in Hong Kong, the Union Jack was lowered for the last time over Government House as Britain prepared to hand the colony back to China after ruling it for 156 years.
July
July 1 In 1997, Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule after 156 years as a British colony.
July 2 In 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight at the equator.
July 3 In 1863, the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania ended after three days in a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated.
July 4 In 1976, the United States celebrated its Bicentential. In 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
July 5 In 1975, Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win a Wimbledon singles title as he defeated Jimmy Connors.
July 6 In 1957, Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title, defeating fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.
July 7 In 1981, President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice on the United States Supreme Court.
July 8 In 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief of United Nations forces in Korea.
July 9 In 1896, William Jennings Bryan caused a sensation at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with his “cross of gold” speech denouncing supporters of the gold standard. Bryan went on to win the party’s nomination.
July 10 In 1940, during World War II, the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking southern England by air. By late October, Britain managed to repel the Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses.
July 11 In 1979, the abandoned United States space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
July 12 In 1984, Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale announced he had chosen U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York to be his running mate; Ferraro was the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket.
July 13 In 1977, a 25-hour blackout hit the New York City area after lightning struck upstate power lines.
July 14 In 1965, the American space probe Mariner 4 flew by Mars, sending back photographs of the planet.
July 15 In 1918, the Second Battle of the Marne began during World War I.
July 16 In 1918, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II, his empress and their five children were executed by the Bolsheviks.
July 17 In 1975, an Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower linkup of its kind.
July 18 In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began as Gen. Francisco Franco led an uprising of army troops based in Spanish North Africa.
July 19 In 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his “V for Victory” campaign in Europe.
July 20 In 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon when he stepped out of the lunar module.
July 21 In 1925, the so-called “Monkey Trial” ended in Dayton, Tenn., with John T. Scopes convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. The conviction was later overturned.
July 22 In 1934, a man identified as bank robber John Dillinger was shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater.
July 23 In 1914, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; the dispute led to World War I.
July 24 In 1959, during a visit to the Soviet Union, Vice President Richard M. Nixon got into a “kitchen debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a United States exhibition.
July 25 In 1956, the Italian liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm off the New England coast, killing 51 people.
July 26 In 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
July 27 In 1953, the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting.
July 28 In 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. World War I began as declarations of war by other European nations quickly followed.
July 29 In 1981, Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
July 30 In 1945, the USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Only 316 out of 1,196 men survived the sinking and shark-infested waters.
July 31 In 1964, the American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted pictures of the moon’s surface.
August
August 1 In 1936, the Olympic games opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.
August 2 In 1923, the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco. Calvin Coolidge took the oath of office as President of the United States.
August 3 In 1958, the nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater.
August 4 In 1914, Britain declared war on Germany while the United States proclaimed its neutrality.
August 5 In 1963, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union signed a treaty in Moscow banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space and underwater.
August 6 In 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II, killing an estimated 140,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.
August 7 In 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson broad powers in dealing with reported North Vietnamese attacks on United States forces.
August 8 In 1974, President Nixon announced he would resign following damaging revelations in the Watergate scandal.
August 9 In 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, the United States exploded a nuclear device over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people.
August 10 In 1977, postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested in Yonkers, N.Y., accused of being the “Son of Sam” gunman responsible for six random slayings and seven woundings. Berkowitz is serving six consecutive terms of 25 years to life in state prison.
August 11 In 1965, rioting and looting broke out in the predominantly black Watts section of Los Angeles. In the week that followed, 34 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured.
August 12 In 1898, the peace protocol ending the Spanish-American War was signed.
August 13 In 1961, Berlin was divided as East Germany sealed off the border between the city’s eastern and western sectors in order to halt the flight of refugees. Two days later, work began on the Berlin Wall.
August 14 In 1945, President Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
August 15 In 1947, India and Pakistan became independent after some 200 years of British rule.
August 16 In 1977, Elvis Presley died at Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tenn., at age 42.
August 17 In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair concluded near Bethel, N.Y.
August 18 In 1963, James Meredith became the first black to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
August 19 In 1963, James Meredith became the first black to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
August 20 In 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek’s regime.
August 21 In 1959, President Eisenhower signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union.
August 22 In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first United States chief executive to ride in an automobile.
August 23 In 1927, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. They were vindicated in 1977 by Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.
August 24 In 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida, causing record damage; 55 deaths in Florida, Louisiana and the Bahamas were blamed on the storm.
August 25 In 1944, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.
August 26 In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing American women the right to vote, was declared in effect.
August 27 In 1962, the United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe, which flew past Venus the following December.
August 28 In 1963, 200,000 people participated in a peaceful civil rights rally in Washington, D.C., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
August 29 In 1991, the Supreme Soviet, the parliament of the U.S.S.R., suspended all activities of the Communist Party, bringing an end to the institution.
August 30 In 1963, the hot-line communications link between Washington, D.C., and Moscow went into operation.
August 31 In 1997, Diana, the Princess of Wales, was killed in an automobile accident in a tunnel by the Seine in Paris. The accident also killed Emad Mohammed al-Fayed, the Harrod’s heir.
September
September 1 In 1939, World War II began as Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
September 2 In 1945, Japan formally surrendered in ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II.
September 3 In 1976, the unmanned U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the planet’s surface.
September 4 In 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock.
September 5 In 1972, Arab terrorists attacked the Israeli delegation at the Munich Olympic games; 11 Israelis, five guerrillas and a police officer were killed in the siege.
September 6 In 1901, President McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y.
September 7 In 1940, Nazi Germany began its initial blitz on London during World War II.
September 8 In 1974, President Ford granted an unconditional pardon to former President Nixon.
September 9 In 1976, Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung died in Beijing at age 82.
September 10 In 1919, New York City welcomed home Gen. John J. Pershing and 25,000 soldiers who had served in the United States 1st Division during World War I.
September 11 In 2001, suicide hijackers crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, causing the 110-story twin towers to collapse. Another hijacked airliner hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
September 12 In 1977, South African black student leader Steven Biko died while in police custody, triggering an international outcry.
September 13 In 1993, at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy.
September 14 In 1959, the Soviet space probe Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the moon as it crashed onto the lunar surface.
September 15 In 1963, four children were killed when a bomb went off during Sunday services at a black Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama.
September 16 In 1974, President Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft evaders.
September 17 In 1862, Union forces hurled back a Confederate invasion of Maryland in the Civil War Battle of Antietam. During the battle, 23,100 were killed, wounded or captured, making it the bloodiest day in United States military history.
September 18 In 1947, the National Security Act, which unified the Army, Navy and newly formed Air Force, went into effect.
September 19 In 1881, the 20th president of the United States, James A. Garfield, died of wounds inflicted by an assassin.
September 20 In 1973, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in a $100,000 winner-take-all tennis match.
September 21 In 1938, a hurricane struck parts of New York and New England, causing widespread damage and claiming more than 600 lives.
September 22 In 1862, President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in rebel states should be free as of Jan. 1, 1863.
September 23 In 1952, Republican vice-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon went on television to deliver what came to be known as the “Checkers” speech as he denied allegations of improper campaign financing.
September 24 In 1996, the United States and the world’s other major nuclear powers signed a treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons.
September 25 In 1957, with 300 United States Army troops standing guard, nine black children were escorted to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, days after unruly white crowds had forced them to withdraw.
September 26 In 1960, the first televised debate between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy took place in Chicago.
September 27 In 1964, the Warren Commission issued a report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy.
September 28 In 1924, two United States Army planes landed in Seattle, Washington, having completed the first round-the-world flight in 175 days.
September 29 In 1957, the New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds, losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates 9-1. The Giants moved to San Francisco for the next season.
September 30 In 1938, British and French leaders agreed to allow Nazi Germany to occupy sections of the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia.
October
October 1 In 1961, Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hit his 61st home run of the season, breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 60 set in 1927.
October 2 In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; he was the first African-American appointed to the nation’s highest court.
October 3 In 1990, West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a new unified country.
October 4 In 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit.
October 5 In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was shot to death by extremists while reviewing a military parade.
October 6 In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was shot to death by extremists while reviewing a military parade.
October 7 In 1985, Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean with more than 400 people aboard.
October 8 In 1982, all labor organizations in Poland, including Solidarity, were banned.
October 9 In 1967, Latin American guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia while attempting to incite revolution.
October 10 In 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion and resigned his office.
October 11 In 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, was launched with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard.
October 12 In 1870, Gen. Robert E. Lee died in Lexington, Va., at age 63.
October 13 In 1943, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.
October 14 In 1964, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
October 15 In 1964, it was announced that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev had been removed from office. He was succeeded as premier by Alexei N. Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I. Brezhnev.
October 16 In 1964, China detonated its first atomic bomb.
October 17 In 1931, mobster Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 1939.
October 18 In 1968, the United States Olympic Committee suspended two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, for giving a “black power” salute as a protest during a victory ceremony in Mexico City.
October 19 In 1987, the stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22.6 percent in value – its biggest-ever percentage drop.
October 20 In 1973, in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, President Nixon abolished the office of special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, accepted the resignation of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and fired Deputy Attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus.
October 21 In 1879, Thomas Edison invented a workable electric light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.
October 22 In 1962, President Kennedy announced an air and naval blockade of Cuba, following the discovery of Soviet missile bases on the island.
October 23 In 1983, a suicide truck-bombing at Beirut International Airport in Lebanon killed 241 United States Marines and sailors; a near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers.
October 24 In 1945, the United Nations officially came into existence as its charter took effect.
October 25 In 1971, the United Nations General Assembly voted to admit mainland China and expel Taiwan.
October 26 In 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty in a ceremony attended by President Clinton.
October 27 In 1904, the first rapid transit subway, the IRT, opened in New York City.
October 28 In 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Cleveland.
October 29 In 1929, Black Tuesday descended upon the New York Stock Exchange. Prices collapsed amid panic selling and thousands of investors were wiped out as America’s Great Depression began.
October 30 In 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title.
October 31 In 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated near her residence by two Sikh security guards.
November
November 1 In 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, in a test at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands.
November 2 In 1976, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter defeated Republican incumbent Gerald R. Ford, becoming the first U.S. president from the Deep South since the Civil War.
November 3 In 1936, President Roosevelt was re-elected in a landslide over Republican challenger Alfred M. “Alf” Landon.
November 4 In 1979, the Iranian hostage crisis began as militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran.
November 5 In 1968, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency, defeating Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George C. Wallace.
November 6 In 1860, former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln defeated three other candidates for the United States presidency.
November 7 In 1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.
November 8 In 1960, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon for the presidency.
November 9 In 1965, the great Northeast blackout occurred as several states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours.
November 10 In 1982, the newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened to its first visitors in Washington, D.C.
November 11 In 1918, fighting in World War I came to an end with the signing of an armistice between the Allies and Germany.
November 12 In 1942, the World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. The Americans eventually won a major victory over the Japanese.
November 13 In 1956, the Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.
November 14 In 1972, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 1,000 for the first time, ending the day at 1,003.16.
November 15 In 1969, a quarter of a million protesters staged a peaceful demonstration in Washington, D.C., against the Vietnam War.
November 16 In 1933, the United States and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations. President Roosevelt sent a telegram to Soviet leader Maxim Litvinov, expressing hope that United States-Soviet relations would “forever remain normal and friendly.”
November 17 In 1973, President Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Fla., that “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”
November 18 In 1976, Spain’s parliament approved a bill to establish a democracy after 37 years of dictatorship.
November 19 In 1863, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.
November 20 In 1945, 24 Nazi leaders went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.
November 21 In 1964, New York’s Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened.
November 22 In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Texas Gov. John B. Connally was seriously wounded. A suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th president of the United States.
November 23 In 1943, during World War II, United States forces seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese.
November 24 In 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy.
November 25 In 1986, the Iran-Contra affair erupted as President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.
November 26 In 1942, President Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning December 1.
November 27 In 1973, the Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who’d resigned.
November 28 In 1943, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met in Tehran during World War II.
November 29 In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews.
November 30 In 1995, President Clinton became the first U.S. chief executive to visit Northern Ireland.
December
December 1 In 1959, representatives of 12 countries, including the United States, signed a treaty in Washington setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, free from military activity.
December 2 In 1954, the Senate voted to condemn Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R Wis., for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
December 3 In 1984, more than 4,000 people died after a cloud of gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.
December 4 In 1945, the Senate approved United States participation in the United Nations.
December 5 In 1933, national Prohibition came to an end as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment.
December 6 In 1923, a presidential address was broadcast on radio for the first time as President Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.
December 7 In 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the home base of the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, an act that led to America’s entry into World War II.
December 8 In 1941, the United States entered World War II as Congress declared war against Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
December 9 In 1992, Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation.
December 10 In 1948, the U.N. General Assembly adopted its Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
December 11 In 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
December 12 In 1963, Kenya gained its independence from Britain.
December 13 In 1981, authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. Martial law formally ended in 1983.
December 14 In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967.
December 15 In 1916, the French defeated the Germans in the World War I Battle of Verdun.
December 16 In 1950, President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “Communist imperialism.”
December 17 In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright took the first successful man-powered airplane flights, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
December 18 In 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first civilian nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went online.
December 19 In 1984, Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
December 20 In 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause, sending troops into Panama to topple the government of General Manuel Noriega.
December 21 In 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
December 22 In 1864, during the Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln from Georgia, saying, “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”
December 23 In 1986, the experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling as it landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
December 24 In 1992, President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.
December 25 In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on television to announce his resignation.
December 26 In 1941, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the United States Congress.
December 27 In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal.
December 28 In 1981, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American test-tube baby, was born in Norfolk, Va.
December 29 In 1940, during World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.
December 30 In 1972, the United States halted its heavy bombing of North Vietnam.
December 31 In 1946, President Truman officially proclaimed the end of hostilities in World War II.

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