Today in History

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky appears on national television to explain her affair with President Bill Clinton.

Japan discloses its first defense plan since World War II.

Sirhan Sirhan testifies in a court in Los Angeles that he killed Robert Kennedy.

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds New York’s Feinberg Law banning Communist teachers in the United States.

Finland declares war on the Axis.

The RAF raids the industrial suburbs of Paris.

Moscow denounces the Axis rule in Bulgaria.

A Nazi air raid kills 108 on a British liner in the English Channel.

In Bombay, Gandhi begins a fast to protest the state’s autocratic rule.

President Herbert Hoover signs a bill that makes Francis Scott Key’s “Star Spangled Banner,” the national anthem.

Nicolas Freeling, crime writer.

James Merrill, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (Divine Comedies).

The first issue of Time magazine is published. It’s editor, Henry R. Luce, is just out of Yale.

Robert Searle, cartoonist.

Boeing flies the first U.S. international airmail from Vancouver, British Columbia to Seattle, Washington.