Today in History

U.S. Supreme Court upholds a law making statutory rape a crime for men but not women.

The United States calls a halt to the peace talks on Vietnam being held in Paris.

Mafia boss Carlo Gambino is arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. calls the Vietnam War the biggest obstacle to the civil rights movement.

Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, although it is still within the British Commonwealth.

U.S. paratroopers descend from flying boxcars in a surprise attack in Korea.

The Japanese occupy the Anadaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.

The Reichstag gives Adolf Hitler the power to rule by decree.

Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run the mile in less than four minutes.

Captain Hawthorne Gray sets a new balloon record soaring to 28,510 feet.

Arthur G. Hamilton sets a new parachute record, safely jumping 24,400 feet.

Great Britain denounces the United States because of its delay in joining the League of Nations.

Austrian Emperor Charles I makes a peace proposal to French President Poincare.

Werner von Braun, German-born rocket pioneer.

Akira Kurosawa, film director (Rashomon, The Seven Samurai).

Theodore Roosevelt begins an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

Joan Crawford, American actress.

Daniel Bovet, Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist and Nobel Prize Winner.

The Wright brothers obtain an airplane patent.

A group of U.S. Army soldiers, led by Brigadier General Frederick Funston, capture Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine Insurrection of 1899.

Erich Fromm, German psychologist (The Sane Society).

John Stevens of Neenah, Wis., patents the grain crushing mill. This mill allows flour production to increase by 70 percent.

Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson faces his only defeat at the Battle of Kernstown, Va

Eleazer A. Gardner of Philadelphia patents the cable street car, which runs on overhead cables.

Elisha Otis installs the first modern passenger elevator in a public building, at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City.

Hungary proclaims its independence of Austria.

Etta Palm, a Dutch champion of woman’s rights, sets up a group of women’s clubs called the Confederation of the Friends of Truth.

American revolutionary hero Patrick Henry, while addressing the House of Burgesses, declares “give me liberty, or give me death!”

Handel’s Messiah is performed for the first time in London.

France and England form an alliance against Spain.