Today in History

Edelmiro Cavazos, mayor of Santiago, Nuevo Leon, is found handcuffed, blindfolded and dead following his abduction three days earlier. He had championed crackdowns on organized crime and police corruption.

Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resigns in the wake of protests centered around Bolivia’s natural gas resources.

UN weapons inspectors under Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.

Millions of Americans watch former football player O.J. Simpson–facing murder charges–drive his Ford Bronco through Los Angeles, followed by police.

Historic Kapelbrug (chapel bridge) in Luzern, Switzerland, burns, destroying 147 of its decorative paintings. It was built in 1365.

A group of hard-line communist leaders unhappy with the drift toward the collapse of the Soviet Union seize control of the government in Moscow and place President Mikhail S. Gorbachev under house arrest

Iraq starts firing Scud missiles at Israeli cities.

Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

A suicide bomber kills U.S. Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon.

Mexico devalues the peso by 30 percent to fight an economic slide.

After rumbling for two months, Mount Saint Helens, in Washington, erupts 3 times in 24 hours.

Zimbabwe’s (Rhodesia) formal independence from Britain is proclaimed.

President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign the Salt II pact to limit nuclear arms.

Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones leads his followers to a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, hours after cult member killed Congressman Leo J. Ryan of California.

The U.S. Senate approves the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) isolate the cause of Legionnaire’s disease.

Congo President Marien Ngouabi is killed by a suicide commando.

South Vietnam abandons most of the Central Highlands to North Vietnamese forces.

Luna 24, the USSR’s final major lunar exploration mission, soft-lands on moon.

India becomes the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.

Randolph Hearst is to give $2 million in free food for the poor in order to open talks for his daughter Patty.

Hank Aaron makes his 1,378 extra-base hit, surpassing Stan Musial’s record.

Five men are arrested for burglarizing Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

The California Supreme Court voids the death penalty.

New Zealand and Australia announce they will pull their troops out of Vietnam.

U.S. helicopters airlift 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.

Jose Padilla, American terrorist convicted of conspiring with overseas terrorists in death plots; held from May 8, 2002, as an enemy combatant, he was tried in a civilian court in 2006

North Vietnamese troops cut the last operating rail line in Cambodia.

The U.S. Postal Service is paralyzed by the first postal strike.

Two concert goers die at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, New York, one from an overdose of heroin, the other from a burst appendix.

Two battalions of the 101st Airborne Division assault Hill 937 but cannot reach the top because of muddy conditions.

President Richard M. Nixon authorizes Operation Menue, the ‘secret’ bombing of Cambodia.

US athletes Tommi Smith and John Carlos suspended by US Olympic Committee for giving “black power” salute while receiving their medals at the Olympic Games in Mexico City.

Three U.S. pilots that were held by the Vietnamese arrive in Washington.

The National Art Gallery in Washington agrees to buy a Da Vinci for a record $5 million.

Samuel Nabrit becomes the first African American to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission.

Operation Starlite marks the beginning of major U.S. ground combat operations in Vietnam.

27 B-52s hit Viet Cong outposts, but lose two planes in South Vietnam.

Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to spacewalk when he exits his Voskhod 2 space capsule while in orbit around the Earth.

The United States cuts military aid to five nations in reprisal for having trade relations with Cuba.

Plans are disclosed for the World Trade Center in New York.

James Meredith, the first African American to attend University of Mississippi, graduates.

The U.S. Supreme Court bans the required reading of the Lord’s prayer and Bible in public schools.

Robert F. Kennedy says that U.S. troops will stay in Vietnam until Communism is defeated.

The United States begins spraying foliage with herbicides in South Vietnam, in order to reveal the whereabouts of Vietcong guerrillas.

James Gandolfini, actor; won three Emmys, two Golden Globes and three Screen Actors Guild Awards (crime boss Tony Soprano in The Sopranos).

UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold is killed in a plane crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the Congo.

Robert Warren “Bob” Woodruff, journalist, TV news anchor; critically wounded by roadside bomb while reporting on the war in Iraq, January 2006.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, martial artist, actor, director (Bloodsport, The Expendables 2).

Erin Moran, actress; best known for her role as Joanie Cunningham on Happy Days TV series and its spinoff Joanie Loves Chachi.

Two thousand cheer Fidel Castro’s arrival in New York for the United Nations session.

Warren Moon, quarterback in Canadian and US pro football teams; his numerous passing records include most passing yardage in pro football (surpassed by Damon Allen, Sept. 4, 2006).

Martina Navratilova, Czechoslovakian-born tennis player; won a record 9 Wimbledon singles competitions.

Craig Bartlett, animator, writer; known for his work on Rugrats , Hey Arnold! and Dinosaur Train animated TV series.

East and West Berlin drop thousands of propaganda leaflets on each other after the end of a month long truce.

Soviet tanks fight thousands of Berlin workers rioting against the East German government.

The Braves baseball team announces that they are moving from Boston to Milwaukee.

Chuck Lorre (Charles Levine), TV writer, director, producer and composer. Created several successful sitcoms including Dharma & Greg and The Big Bang Theory.

Patrick Swayze, actor/dancer (Dirty Dancing, Ghost).

Terry McMillan, novelist (Waiting to Exhale).

Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson, Sr., African-American neurosurgeon.

General Vo Nguyen Giap ends his Red River Campaign against the French in Indochina.

The United Nations moves its headquarters to New York city.

Graham Parker, lead singer of the British rock band Graham Parker and the Rumour.

The Bureau of Mines discloses its first production of oil from coal in practical amounts.

Wendy Wasserstein, playwright (The Heidi Chronicles).

The First Turkish Brigade arrives in Korea to assist the U.N. forces fighting there.

Surgeon Richard Lawler performs the first kidney transplant operation in Chicago.

The first transatlantic jet passenger trip is completed.

Nationalist troops land on the mainland of China and capture Communist-held Sungmen.

Chris Van Allsburg, children’s author and illustrator (Jumanji, The Polar Express).

The Republic of Ireland withdraws from British Commonwealth.

Gandhi breaks a 121-hour fast after halting Muslim-Hindu riots.

The League of Nations dissolves.

U.S. Marines storm ashore at Iwo Jima.

The German Army launches its second attempt to relieve the besieged city of Budapest from the advancing Red Army.

Lt. General Joseph Stilwell is recalled from China by president Franklin Roosevelt.

The U.S. First Army breaks through the German lines on the Cotentin Peninsula and cuts off the German-held port of Cherbourg.

French troops land on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean.

The Allies finally capture Monte Cassino in Italy.

The Russians reach the Romanian border.

The U.S. Army and Marines invade Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.

The Royal Air Force Bomber Command completes the first major strike against the German missile development facility at Peenemunde.

Traveling in a bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is shot down by American P-38 fighters.

American forces take Gafsa in Tunisia.

Adolf Hitler calls off the offensive in the Caucasus.

German General Erwin Rommel takes three towns in Tunisia, North Africa.

Japan sends a crack army to Guadalcanal to repulse the U.S. Marines fighting there.

The German Me-262, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly in combat, makes its first flight.

Paul McCartney, songwriter and singer, member of the Beatles.

Rod Padgett, poet.

The U.S. Navy commissions its first black officer, Harvard University medical student Bernard Whitfield Robinson.

Yank a weekly magazine for the U.S. armed services, begins publication.

New York ends night baseball games for the rest of World War II.

James H. Doolittle bombs Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

The third military draft begins in the United States.

General MacArthur repels the Japanese in Bataan. The United States takes the lead in the Far East war criminal trials.

Defended by 610 fighting men, the American-held island of Guam falls to more than 5,000 Japanese invaders in a three-hour battle.

Frankie Avalon, singer (“Venus,” 5 weeks at No. 1), actor (Beach Blanket Bingo); teen heartthrob of late 1950s–early 1960s.

The Soviet Union occupies Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Ed Garvey, labor leader.

The Irish Republican Army explodes three bombs in Piccadilly Circus.

Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt bans war submarines from U.S. ports and waters.

Frankie Avalon, singer (“Venus”) , actor (The Alamo), playwright; teen idol of 1950s-60s.

A German U-boat sinks the British aircraft carrier Courageous, killing 500 people.

The film The Wizard of Oz opens in New York City.

Hunter S. Thompson, journalist.

Georgia finally ratifies the Bill of Rights, 150 years after the birth of the federal government. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the only other states to hold out, also ratify the Bill of Rights in this year.

The Golden Gate Exposition opens in San Francisco.

Gail Godwin, writer (The Perfectionists, The Southern Family).

Leon Trotsky calls for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Robert Redford, actor (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Great Gatsby).

General Francisco Franco of Spain revolts against the Republican government, starting the Spanish Civil War.

Mobster Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano is found guilty on 62 counts of compulsory prostitution.

Frederik W. deKlerk, President of the Republic of South Africa.

Rome reports sending troops to Italian Somalia.

Roberto Clemente, outfielder for Pittsburgh Pirates, first Latin American enshrined in National Baseball Hall of Fame; died in plane crash while delivering aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, Dec. 31, 1972.

Audre Lord, poet.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet.

President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act.

The U.S. Senate defeats the Bonus Bill as 10,000 veterans mass around the Capitol.

John Updike, American poet and novelist.

Manchurian independence is formally declared.

Japanese pilot Seiji Yoshihara crashes his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the first to cross the ocean nonstop. He is picked up seven hours later by a passing ship.

Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author (The Bluest Eye, Beloved).

The first cross-country women’s air derby begins. Louise McPhetridge Thaden wins first prize in the heavier-plane division, while Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie finishes first in the lighter-plane category.

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, American blues singer.

Len Deighton, English spy writer (The Ipcress File).

Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane.

Chuck Berry, rock ‘n’ roll performer.

Joe Kubert, comic book artist (Sgt. Rock, Hawkman), inducted into Harvey Awards’ Jack Kirby Hall of Fame (1907) and Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame (1998); founder of The Kubert School.

Spain threatens to quit the League of Nations if Germany is allowed to join.

Queen Anne of Romania.

Jimmy Witherspoon, blues singer.

Yankee Stadium opens with Babe Ruth hitting a three-run homer as the Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1.

Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India.

Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.

Russian Soviets grant Crimean independence.

John Glenn, Jr., American pilot, astronaut and politician.

Vuillemin and Chalus complete their first flight over the Sahara Desert.

Margot Fonteyn, English ballet dancer.

Elsa Morante, Italian writer (History: A Novel).

Nelson Mandela, civil rights activist, first black president of South Africa.

Allied forces on the Western Front begin their largest counterattack yet against the German army.

John Paul II [Karol Jozef Wojtyla], Roman Catholic pope.

Clifton Keith Hillegass, founder of the study guides known as Cliff’s Notes.

The U.S. Congress passes the Selective Service act, calling up soldiers to fight World War I.

The Germans sink the U.S. ships, City of Memphis, Vigilante and the Illinois, without any type of warning.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians counter the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake Naroch. The Russians lose 100,000 men and the Germans lose 20,000.

The Russians force the Turkish 3rd Army back to Erzurum.

Germany declares war on Russia while President Woodrow Wilson issues his Proclamation of Neutrality.

John Hersey, novelist and journalist (Men on Bataan, Hiroshima).

“”Red” Skelton, American comedian and actor.

U.S. Marines set sail from San Diego to protect American interests in Mexico.

Greek King George I is killed by an assassin. Constantine I is to succeed.

The First Balkan War breaks out between the members of the Balkan League–Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro–and the Ottoman Empire.

Maria de la Cruz, journalist, woman’s suffrage advocate; the first woman ever elected to Chile’s Senate (1953).

The German Zeppelin SZ 111 burns in its hangar in Friedrichshafen.

Joseph Vernon “Big Joe” Turner, blues singer.

Theodore Roosevelt opens the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the United States to date.

Aviator Eugene Ely performs his first successful take off and landing from a ship in San Francisco.

Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (Angle of Repose).

Clifford Odets, playwright (Waiting for Lefty).

A massive earthquake hits San Francisco, measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale.

Greta Garbo, actress nominated for Oscars for her roles in Anna Christie and Ninotcha.

Brigand Raisuli kidnaps American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco.

Cary Grant, U.S. film actor (Gunga Din, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, North by Northwest).

Meredith Willson, composer and lyricist (The Music Man).

The Isthmus Canal Commission in Washington shifts its support from Nicaragua to Panama as a favored canal site.

The second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty is signed. The United States is given extensive rights by Britain for building and operating a canal through Central America.

Blanche Sweet, film actress.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Plessy v. Ferguson upholds the “separate but equal” policy in the United States.

The First Sino-Japanese War ends.

Oliver Hardy, film comedian, one half of Laurel and Hardy.

A.A. [Alan Alexander] Milne, novelist, humorist and journalist (Winnie the Pooh).

James Montgomery Flagg, American artist and author.

The Nebraska Relief and Aid Society is formed to help farmers whose crops were destroyed by grasshoppers swarming throughout the American West.

Hawaii signs a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.

George M. Hoover begins selling whiskey in Dodge City, Kansas–a town which had previously been “dry.”

Bertrand Russell, English mathematician, philosopher and social reformer.

Prussian forces defeat the French at the Battle of Gravelotte during the Franco-Prussian War.

The Alaska territory is formally transferred to the U.S. from Russian control.

Mark Twain’s first story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is published in the New York Saturday Press.

The Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns for the last time.

Union troops force the Confederates to abandon Fort Anderson, N.C.

At Petersburg, Union General Ulysses S. Grant realizes the town can no longer be taken by assault and settles into a siege.

The fighting at Spotsylvania in Virginia, reaches its peak at the Bloody Angle.

Richard Harding Davis, journalist.

After repeated acts of insubordination, General Ulysses S. Grant relieves General John McClernand during the Siege of Vicksburg.

On the way to Gettysburg, Union and Confederate forces skirmish at Point of Rocks, Maryland.

Confederate women riot in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt in the South.

Nathan Bedford Forrest engages and defeats a Federal cavalry force near Lexington in his continued effort to disrupt supply lines.

After waiting all day for a Union attack which never came at Antietam, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins a retreat out of Maryland and back to Virginia.

Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart‘s headquarters is raided by Union troops of the 5th New York and 1st Michigan cavalries.

Charles M. Schwab, “Boy Wonder” of the steel industry. President of both U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel.

John Tyler, former president of the U.S., is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.

Union and Confederate troops skirmish at Blackburn’s Ford, Virginia, in a prelude to the Battle of Bull Run.

President Abraham Lincoln witnesses Dr. Thaddeus Lowe demonstrate the use of a hot-air balloon.

Colonel Robert E. Lee turns down an offer to command the Union armies.

Jefferson F. Davis is inaugurated as the Confederacy‘s provisional president at a ceremony held in Montgomery, Ala.

Victor Emmanuel II becomes the first King of Italy.

Daniel Hale Williams, physician who performed the first open heart surgery, founder of Chicago’s Provident Hospital.

Clarence S. Darrow, lawyer.

Louis Comfort Tiffany, glassware artist and designer.

Wilhelm Steinitz, chess champion.

Jim Bowie arrives at the Alamo to assist its Texas defenders.

Uruguay adopts a liberal constitution.

Czar Alexander enters Warsaw at the head of his Army.

Joseph Glidden, inventor.

Great Britain signs the Treaty of Orebro, making peace with Russia and Sweden.

Ivan Goncharov, Russian novelist (Oblomov).

The War of 1812 begins when the United States declares war against Great Britain.

Russian troops invade Poland.

Robespierre, a deputy from Arras, France, decides to back the French Revolution.

John C. Calhoun, U.S. statesman.

Daniel Webster, congressman from New Hampshire, Massachusetts senator, and secretary of state before the Civil War.

Captain James Cook discovers the Hawaiian Islands, naming them the ‘Sandwich Islands’ after the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich.

American revolutionaries Paul Revere and William Dawes ride though the towns of Massachusetts warning that “the British are coming.”

The French fleet is destroyed by the British under “Old Dreadnought” Boscawen at the Battle of Lagos Bay.