Today in History

Associated Press newsman, Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut.

Mozambique and South Africa sign a pact banning support for one another’s internal foes.

U.S. troops in Vietnam destroy a village consisting mostly of women and children, the action is remembered as the My-Lai massacre.

President Lyndon B. Johnson submits a $1 billion war on poverty program to Congress.

CBS introduces The Morning Show hosted by Walter Cronkite to compete with NBC’s Today Show.

Iwo Jima is declared secure by U.S. forces although small pockets of Japanese resistance still exist.

Germany occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Adolf Hitler orders a German rearmament and violates the Versailles Treaty.

The United States plans to send 1,000 more Marines to Nicaragua.

Jerry Lewis, American comedian and film actor.

Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicates his throne.

The 15,000-ton battleship Pennsylvania is launched at Newport News, Va.

Thelma Catherine Patricia Ryan Nixon, first lady to President Richard Nixon.

The British cruiser Invincible, the world’s largest, is completed at Glasgow shipyards.

Union troops push past Confederate blockers at the Battle of Averasborough, N.C.

Maxim Gorky, Russian dramatist

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is published.

Susan Hayhurst becomes the first woman to graduate from a pharmacy college.

John Pope, Union general in the American Civil War.

George S. Ohm, German physicist.

James Madison, fourth President of the United States (1809-17).

The first Indian appears to colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The Emperor Babur defeats the Rajputs at the Battle of Khanwa, removing the main Hindu rivals in Northern India.

The Crusades begin the massacre of Jews in York, England.

On a trip to the Italian mainland from his home on Capreae, the emperor Tiberius dies on the Bay of Naples.