Today in History

A Soviet submarine crashes into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.

President Jimmy Carter announces to the U.S. Olympic Team that they will not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

As North Vietnamese forces advance, Hue and other northern towns in South Vietnam are evacuated.

Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.

The United States launches Ranger 9, last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.

Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.

Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.

The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, falls to the British.

Singer Kate Smith records “God Bless America” for Victor Records.

President Calvin Coolidge presents the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh, a captain in the US Army Air Corps Reserve, for making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. On June 11, 1927, Lindbergh had received the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded.

The Germans launch the ‘Michael’ offensive, better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.

The U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt an annual pension of $10,000.

Frenchman Henri Farman carries a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.

Ohio passes a law that prohibits hazing by fraternities.

Raoul Lufbery, French-born American fighter pilot of World War I.

Florenz Ziegfeld, producer, creator of Ziegfeld Follies.

The Battle of Bentonville, N.C. ends, marking the last Confederate attempt to stop Union General William Sherman.

British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.

Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.

Benito Juarez, President of Mexico.

Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is destroyed by fire.

Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer.

Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.

Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.

Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.