Today in History

South African political leader Nelson Mandela is released from prison in Paarl, South Africa, after serving more than 27 years of a life sentence.

Mrs. Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to lead the British Conservative Party.

Communist-led rebels shower artillery fire into a crowded area of Phnom Pehn, killing 139 and injuring 46 others.

Vice President Hubert Humphrey begins a tour of Vietnam.

President Lyndon Johnson orders air strikes against targets in North Vietnam, in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on the American military in South Vietnam.

Cambodian Prince Sihanouk blames the United States for a South Vietnamese air raid on a village in his country.

Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath commits suicide in London at age 30.

Iran turns down Soviet aid in favor of a U.S. proposal for aid.

Nationalist Chinese complete the evacuation of the Tachen Islands.

A 75,000-watt light bulb is lit at the Rockefeller Center in New York, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Thomas Edison’s first light bulb.

Walt Disney’s film Peter Pan premieres.

U.N. forces push north across the 38th parallel for the second time in the Korean War.

The meeting of President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph Stalin in Yalta, adjourns.

The German battleships Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen begin their famed channel dash from the French port of Brest. Their journey takes them through the English Channel on their way back to Germany.

The Negrin government returns to Madrid, Spain.

The Reich arrests 150 Catholic youth leaders in Berlin.

The Mexican government nationalizes all church property.

Roy Fuller, poet and novelist.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Eleanor Alexander announce their wedding date–June 20, 1910.

Phillipe Dunne, screenwriter and director (How Green Was My Valley).

William J. Levitt, U.S. businessman and community builder who led the postwar housing revolutions with his Levittowns.

President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims strict neutrality for the United States in the Russo-Japanese War.

Congress passes the Expedition Act, giving antitrust cases priority in the courts.

Leo Szilard, physicist, instrumental in the Manhattan Project.

14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, a French miller’s daughter, claims to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.

Josephine Marshall Jewell Dodge, American educator, pioneer in the concept of day nurseries for children.

Thomas Alva Edison, prolific American inventor who jointly or singly held over 1,300 patents.

Melville Weston Fuller, eighth U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice.

News of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, finally reaches the United States.

Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.

Sixteen-year-old Sacajawea, the Shoshoni guide for Lewis & Clark, gives birth to a son, with Meriwether Lewis serving as midwife.

William Henry Fox Talbot, photography pioneer, produced the first book with photographic illustrations (The Pencil of Nature).

Gregory XIV, Roman Catholic Pope.

Henry VIII is recognized as the supreme head of the Church of England.

Traditional founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu Tenno.