Today in History

U.S. warplanes attack Libya.

North Vietnamese troops ambush a company of Delta Raiders from the 101st Airborne Division near Fire Support Base Bastogne in Vietnam. The American troops are on a rescue mission.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizes at Shaw University.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro begins a U.S. goodwill tour.

Ray Kroc starts the McDonald’s chain of fast food restaurants.

President Harry Truman signs the official Japanese peace treaty.

Arab forces are defeated in battle with Israeli forces.

In 1947, at age 28, Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American in Major League Baseball, officially breaking the color barrier in the sport.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt is buried on the grounds of his Hyde Park home.

Jeffrey Archer, English novelist and politician (Kane and Abel, Honor Among Thieves).

Eva Figes, British novelist.

The first sound films shown to a paying audience are exhibited at the Rialto Theater in New York City.

Neville Mariner, conductor.

British forces defeat the Germans at the Battle of Arras.

With her band playing on the deck, the ocean liner Titanic sinks at 2:27 a.m. in the North Atlantic.

Arshile Gorky, abstract painter.

Bessie Smith, American blues singer.

Asa Phillip Randolph, American labor leader and Civil Rights advocate.

Max Wertheimer, Czech-born psychologist.

Johannes Stark, Novel Prize-winning German physicist.

‘Wild Bill’ Hickok becomes the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.

Abraham Lincoln dies from John Wilkes Booth‘s assassination bullet.

President Lincoln mobilizes Federal army.

At the Battle of Azimghur, the Mexicans defeat Spanish loyalists.

Henry James, writer and critic.

Wilhelm Busch, German painter and poet, created the precursor to the comic strip.

U.S. troops under James Wilkinson lay siege to the Spanish-held city of Mobile in future state of Alabama.

Sir James Clark Ross, Scottish explorer who located the Magnetic North Pole.

The first balloon is flown in Ireland.

English lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson publishes his Dictionary of the English Language.

Charles Wilson Peale, portrait painter and inventor

Catherine I, empress of Russia

Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, scientist and visionary