Today in History

Voyager 1 reaches Jupiter.

A thousand U.S. planes bomb Cambodia and Laos.

The Battle of Saigon, begun on the day of the Tet Offensive, ends.

U.N. forces in Korea under General Matthew Ridgeway launch Operation Ripper, an offensive to straighten out the U.N. front lines against the Chinese.

Japanese troops land on New Guinea.

Hitler sends German troops into the Rhineland, violating the Locarno Pact.

Malcolm Campbell sets an auto speed record of 276.8 mph in Florida.

The film King Kong premieres in New York City.

A Texas law that bans Negroes from voting is ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The Soviet Red Army occupies Outer Mongolia.

Finland signs an alliance treaty with Germany.

French aviator, Heri Seimet flies non-stop from London to Paris in three hours.

Anna Magnani, Italian actress.

Rolf Jacobsen, Norwegian poet.

Finland becomes the third country to give women the right to vote, decreeing universal suffrage for all citizens over 24, however, barring those persons who are supported by the state.

Reinhard Heydrich, German SS leader and architect of the “Final Solution.”

Helen Parkhurst, educator, developed a technique later known as the Dalton Plan.

Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for the telephone.

Maurice Ravel, composer (“Bolero”).

Piet Mondrian, Dutch abstract painter, leader of the movement known as “de Stijl.”

Confederate forces surprise the Union army at the Battle of Pea Ridge, in Arkansas, but the Union is victorious.

The Austrian Reichstag is dissolved.

U.S. General Winfield Scott occupies Vera Cruz, Mexico.

Soprano Jenny Lind (“the Swedish Nightingale”) makes her debut in Weber’s opera Der Freischultz.

Aeronaut Jean Pierre Blanchard — the first person to make an aerial voyage in the New World — dies at the age of 56.

In Palestine, Napoleon captures Jaffa and his men massacre more than 2,000 Albanian prisoners.

The British close the port of Boston to all commerce.

Stephen Hopkins, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle dies.

On the death of Antoninus at Lorium, Marcus Aurelius becomes emperor.