Today in History

Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa’s first black president.

The USS Nautilus completes the first circumnavigation of the globe underwater.

Judith Jamison, American ballerina.

England’s House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs.

Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister.

Arthur Kopit, American playwright.

Nazis begin burning books by “unGerman” writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.

WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming.

J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Richard Adams, English novelist (Watership Down).

Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic.

Carl Albert, U.S. politician.

David O. Selznick, film producer (Gone with the Wind, Rebecca).

Fred Astaire (Frederick Austerlitz), American dancer and actor.

Karl Barth, Swiss theologian.

Victoria Woodhull becomes first the woman nominated for U.S. president.

The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah.

Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia.

General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville.

French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.

The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British.

Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.

John Wilkes Booth, actor, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.

Montgomery Blair, lawyer.

Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.

Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded.

American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.

Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France.

To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.

George Ross, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Bacon’s Rebellion begins in the New World.

Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.

Philip III of Spain is succeeded by Philip IV (“the Fair”).