Today in History

CBS television temporarily suspends Andy Rooney for his anti-gay and anti-black remarks in a magazine interview.

South Vietnamese ground forces, backed by American air power, begin Operation Lam Son 719, a 17,000 man incursion into Laos that ends three weeks later in a disaster.

South Vietnamese bomb the North Vietnamese communications center at Vinh Linh.

The U.S. Defense Department reports the creation of the Military Assistance Command in South Vietnam.

Elizabeth becomes Queen of England after her father, King George VI, dies.

British General Orde Wingate leads a guerrilla force of “Chindits” against the Japanese in Burma.

The Japanese land on Singapore.

Ted Koppel, television journalist.

James Dean, film actor and 1950s teenage icon (Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, Giant).

Neal Cassaday, writer, counterculture proponent.

The gas chamber is used for the first time to execute a murderer.

Elizabeth Bishop, poet.

The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated.

Henry Roth, writer (Call it Sleep).

In a surprise attack at Port Arthur, Korea, the Japanese disable seven Russian warships.

British General Buller is beaten at Ladysmith, South Africa as the British flee over the Tugela River.

Congress passes the Dawes Act, which gives citizenship to Indians living apart from their tribe.

Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attack a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.

Union troops under Gen. Ambrose Burnside defeat a Confederate defense force at the Battle of Roanoke Island, N.C.

Delegates from seceded states adopt a provisional Confederate Constitution.

Kate (O’Flaherty ) Chopin, novelist, short story writer (The Awakening).

Dmitri Ivanovich Medeleyev, Russian chemist, developed the periodic table of elements.

Jules Verne, French novelist, one of the first writers of science fiction (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea).

William T. Sherman, Union general in the American Civil War.

At Eylau, Napoleon‘s Marshal Pierre Agureau attacks Russian forces in a heavy snowstorm.

Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded in Fotheringhay Castle for her alleged part in the conspiracy to usurp Elizabeth I.

St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople