Today in History

Today in History

1647 – Alse Young (Achsah Young or Alice Young), a resident of Windsor, CT, was executed for being a 'witch.' It was the first recorded American execution of a 'witch.'

1668 – Three colonists were expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.

1813 – Americans captured Fort George, Canada.

1896 – 255 people were killed in St. Louis, MO, when a tornado struck.

1901 – The Edison Storage Battery Company was organized.

1907 – The Bubonic Plague broke out in San Francisco.

1919 – A U.S. Navy seaplane completed the first transatlantic flight.

1926 – Bronze figures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were erected in Hannibal, MO.

1929 – Colonel Charles Lindbergh and Anne Spencer Murrow were married.

1931 – Piccard and Knipfer made the first flight into the stratosphere, by balloon.

1933 – In the U.S., the Federal Securities Act was signed. The act required the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.

1935 – The U.S. Supreme Court declared that President Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional.

1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to pedestrian traffic. The bridge connected San Francisco and Marin County.

1941 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed an 'unlimited national emergency' amid rising world tensions.

1941 – The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by British naval and air forces. 2,300 people were killed.

1942 – German General Erwin Rommel began a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.

1944 – U.S. General MacArthur landed on Biak Island in New Guinea.

1960 – A military coup overthrew the democratic government of Turkey.

1964 – Indian Prime Minister Jawaharla Nehru died.

1968 – After 48 years as coach of the Chicago Bears, George Halas retired.

1969 – Construction of Walt Disney World began in Florida.

1977 – George H. Willig was fined for scaling the World Trade Center in New York on May 26. He was fined $1.10.

1982 – Japan announced the elimination of tariffs on

96 industrial goods.

1985 – In Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchanged instruments of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.

1986 – Mel Fisher recovered a jar that contained 2,300 emeralds from the Spanish ship Atocha. The ship sank in the 17th century.

1988 – The U.S. Senate ratified the INF treaty. The INF pact was the first arms-control agreement since the

1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) to receive Senate approval.

1994 – Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. He had been in exile for two decades.

1995 – In Charlottesville, VA, Christopher Reeve was paralyzed after being thrown from his horse during a jumping event.

1996 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiated a cease-fire to the war in Chechnya in his first meeting with the leader of the rebels.

1997 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones could continue while President Clinton was in office.

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