Today in History

North Vietnamese soldiers attack South Vietnam’s only producing coal mine at Nong Son.

Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Food rationing ends in Great Britain almost nine years after the end of World War II.

U.S. carrier-based planes attack airfields in the Pyongyang-Chinnampo area of North Korea in the first air-strike of the Korean War.

U.S. troops land at Balikpapan and take Sepinggan airfield on Borneo in the Pacific.

The U.S. First Army opens a general offensive to break out of the hedgerow area of Normandy, France.

Tom Stoppard, British playwright (Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead).

Francois-Arnold Reichenbach, documentary filmmaker.

Elizabeth Taylor, novelist and short story writer.

M.F.K. Fisher, food writer.

The first cable across the Pacific Ocean is spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila.

The Wild Bunch, led by Butch Cassidy, commits its last American robbery near Wagner, Montana, taking $65,000 from a Great Northern train.

Franz Kafka, Prague-born German novelist (The Metamorphosis, The Trail).

George M. Cohan, American entertainer and songwriter.

William Henry Davies, Welsh poet.

Confederate forces attack the center of the Union line at Gettysburg, but fail to break it.

Dankmar Adler, architect and engineer.

In Paris, the Marquis de Condorcet proposes granting civil rights to women.

George Washington takes command of the Continental Army.

Edward Young, English poet, dramatist and literary critic (Night Thoughts).