On This Day April 14

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On This Day September 1

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1807 – Former U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr is acquitted of plotting to annex parts of Louisiana and Spanish territory in Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic.

1964 – Pitcher Masanori Murakami becomes the first Japanese man to play in U.S. Major League Baseball. He pitches a scoreless 8th inning for the San Francisco Giants in a 4-1 loss to the New York Mets at Shea Stadium.

1972 – In what is billed as the “Match of the Century,” American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer defeats Russian Boris Spassky during the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland.  Fischer, from Brooklyn, NY, became the first American to win the competition since its inception in 1866. The victory also marked the first win for a non-Russian in 24 years.

1983 – A Soviet fighter jet shoots down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 after the New York to Seoul flight enters Soviet airspace. All 269 aboard the 747 jumbo jet are killed, including U.S. Congressman Lawrence McDonald. President Ronald Reagan condemns the incident as a “massacre.”

1985 – An expedition led by oceanographer Dr. Robert Ballard locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic 73 years after the luxury liner sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

1989 – The first Lexus is sold, marking the beginning of Toyota’s new luxury line of automobiles.

1998 – A federal law takes effect requiring that all cars and light trucks sold in the United States have air bags installed in the front seats as standard equipment. Seat belts had been required since the 1960s, and some auto manufacturers had begun voluntarily providing air bags before 1998.

On this Day May 31

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1790 – The first U.S. copyright law is enacted to protect books, maps and other original materials.

1889 – Heavy rains cause the South Fork Dam to collapse, sending 20 million tons of water into Johnstown, Pennsylvania and claiming the lives of more than 2,200 people.

1911 – An estimated 100,000 people gather in Belfast, Ireland for the launch of the RMS Titanic into the River Lagan. The ill-fated passenger liner, still missing its distinctive smokestacks, is towed to a berth where its engines, stacks and superstructure are installed and the interior is fitted out. Less than a year later, in one of the world’s greatest disasters, the ship sinks on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic. More than 1,500 passengers are crew are killed.

1921 – In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a White mob begins a horrific two-day attack on Black residents of the city’s thriving Greenwood district, burning homes and businesses to the ground and killing at least 300 Black Americans. Long misrepresented as a race riot rather than mass murder, the Tulsa Race Massacre becomes one of the bloodiest incidents of racial violence in American history.

1962 – The architect of the Holocaust is executed in Israel. Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” hangs for his crimes against humanity.

1977 – The Trans-Alaska Pipeline is completed. Built after the 1973 oil crisis caused a sharp rise in oil prices in the United States, it is one of the largest pipeline systems in the world.

1996 – Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is narrowly defeated in national elections by Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu.