Today in History

The international war crimes tribunal indicts Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for war atrocities.

President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev sign an arms reduction agreement.

Construction begins on Walt Disney World in Florida.

A military coup overthrows the democratic government of Turkey.

American General Douglas MacArthur lands on Biak Island in New Guinea.

German General Erwin Rommel begins a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.

The German battleship Bismarck is sunk by British naval and air forces.

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opens.

The Supreme Court declares President Franklin Roosevelt‘s National Recovery Act unconstitutional.

Colonel Charles Lindbergh marries Anne Spencer Morrow.

Tony Hillerman, mystery novelist (The Blessing Way, Sacred Clowns).

Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon.

A U.S. Navy seaplane completes the first transatlantic flight.

Herman Wouk, author (The Winds of War, The Caine Mutiny).

John Cheever, writer (The Wapshot Chronicles).

Vincent Price, actor and horror film icon.

Rachel Carson, biologist and writer (Silent Spring, The Sea Around Us).

(Samuel) Dashiell Hammett, detective writer (The Maltese Falcon).

Isadora Duncan, dancer and choreographer.

Wild Bill [James Butler] Hickok, American frontiersman and lawman.

Julia Ward Howe, writer of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Americans capture Fort George, Canada.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, American industrialist and philanthropist.

Three colonists are expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.

Achsah Young becomes the first woman known to be executed as a witch in Massachusetts.

John Calvin, one of the dominant figures of the Protestant Reformation, dies in Geneva.