Today in History

The largest Mafia trial in history, with 474 defendants, opens in Palermo, Italy.

The Metropolitan Museum announces the first major theft in its 110-year history, $150,000 Greek marble head.

Protester David Miller is convicted of burning his draft card.

Adolph Coors, the beer brewer, is kidnapped in Golden, Colo.

Bell Aircraft displays a fixed-wing vertical takeoff plane.

B-29s hit the Tokyo area.

The war halts civilian car production at Ford.

Iceland is attacked by German planes.

Japanese occupy island of Hainan in French Indochina.

(Mary Violet) Leontyne Price, opera singer.

Alex Comfort, English physician and author (Joy of Sex).

President Wilson blasts the British for using the U.S. flag on merchant ships to deceive the Germans.

Larry Adler, harmonica virtuoso.

Dominique Georges Pire, Belgian cleric and educator.

Russia and Japan declare war on each other.

Walter Brattain, physicist, one of the inventors of the transistor.

Stella Adler, actress and teacher.

Bertolt Brecht, German poet and dramatist (The Threepenny Opera).

John F. Enders, virologist.

Harold MacMillan, British prime minister (1957-1963).

Jimmy Durante, American comedian and film actor.

Boris Pasternak, Russian novelist and poet (Dr. Zhivago).

P.T. Barnum’s star midgets, Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, are married.

Led by religious leader Brigham Young, the first Mormons begin a long westward exodus from Nauvoo, Il., to Utah.

Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert.

Napoleon personally directs lightning strikes against enemy columns advancing toward Paris, beginning with a victory over the Russians at Champaubert.

Napoleon Bonaparte leaves Cairo, Egypt, for Syria, at the head of 13,000 men.

The Treaty of Paris ends the French-Indian War. France gives up all her territories in the New World except New Orleans and a few scattered islands.

Supporters of Marie de Medici, the queen mother, who has been exiled to Blois, are defeated by the king’s troops at Ponts de Ce, France.

Hulagu, a Mongol leader, seizes Baghdad, bringing an end to the Abbasid caliphate.