Today in History

Nelson Mandela becomes the first black president of South Africa.

Canada expels 11 Soviets in spying case.

The U.S. embassy in Moscow is stoned by Chinese and Vietnamese students.

The French destroy six Viet Minh war factories hidden in the jungles of Vietnam.

Actress Greta Garbo gets U.S. citizenship.

Stalin announces the new five-year plan for the Soviet Union, calling for production boosts of 50 percent.

Alice Walker, Pulitzer prize winning author (The Color Purple).

The Red Army takes back Kursk 15 months after it fell to the Germans.

Chiang Kai-shek meets with Sir Stafford Cripps, the British viceroy in India.

Brendan Behan, Irish playwright and poet (The Hostage, The Quare Fellow).

The U.S. Congress establishes the World War Foreign Debt Commission.

Conscription begins in Great Britain as the Military Service Act becomes effective.

Dean Rusk, Secretary of State under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Japanese troops land near Seoul, Korea, after disabling two Russian cruisers.

James Stephens, Irish writer (The Charwoman’s Daughter, The Crock of Gold).

Amy Lowell, poet.

Howard T. Ricketts, pathologist.

Union General George Armstrong Custer marries Elizabeth Bacon in their hometown of Monroe, Mich.

Jefferson F. Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.

William Maybach, German engineer, designed the first Mercedes automobile.

The House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams, sixth U.S. President.

Lydia E. Pinkham, patent-medicine maker and entrepeneur.

Samuel Tilden, philanthropist.

The USS Constellation captures the French frigate Insurgente off the West Indies.

William Henry Harrison, ninth U.S. President and the first to die in office.

Lord Darnley, the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is murdered in his sick-bed in a house in Edinburgh when the house blows up.