Today in History

The United States plans to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.

Czech pilot Vladimir Remek becomes the first non-Russian, non-American in space.

A grand jury in Washington, D.C. concludes that President Nixon was indeed involved in the Watergate cover-up.

Federal forces surround Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which is occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who are holding at least 10 hostages.

The siege of Khe Sanh ends in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there are still in control of the mountain top.

More than 150 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes bomb two bases in North Vietnam in the first of the “Rolling Thunder” raids.

France grants independence to Morocco.

Claudette Colvin refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks‘ famous arrest for the same offense.

The U.S. Navy launches the K-1, the first modern submarine designed to hunt enemy submarines.

Ho Chi Minh is elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

MacArthur raises the U.S. flag on Corregidor in the Philippines.

The center of Berlin is bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs are dropped in a half hour.

John Irving, novelist (The World According to Garp).

Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary General of the Soviet Union. Responsible for restructuring the Soviet economy (perestroika) and openness and information (glasnost).

Novelist D.H. Lawrence dies of tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Vence, France, at the age of 45.