On This Day February 6

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1917 – Three days after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson severs diplomatic relations with Germany and warns that war would follow if American interests at sea were again assaulted, a German submarine torpedoes and sinks the passenger steamer California off the Irish coast.

1933 – The 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, establishing the beginning and ending of the terms of elected federal offices, takes effect. 

1937 – John Steinbeck’s novella, “Of Mice and Men,” the story of the bond between two migrant workers during the Great Depression, is published. Eight months later, the stage adaptation opens in New York and earns Steinbeck the New York Drama Critics’ Circle’s Best Play Award in 1938.

1952 – Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen of England when her father, King George VI, dies following a long illness. But it takes the 25-year-old Elizabeth more than a day to learn of her new royal status. She was on safari at the time, inside a Kenyan tree hut watching a herd of elephants gather at a watering hole.

1978 – One of the worst Nor’easters in New England history pounds the region for more than 30 hours, with wind gusts exceeding 100 mph and snowfall of four inches an hour. High tides cause damaging coastal flooding, while inland, thousands of cars are stranded in snow drifts. Remembered as “The Blizzard of ’78,” the monster storm leaves about 100 people dead and 4,500 others injured.

1993 – Tennis champion Arthur Ashe, the only African-American man to win Wimbledon and the U.S. and Australian Opens, dies of complications from AIDS, at age 49 in New York City.

On This Day January 23

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman physician in U.S. history when she earns a medical degree from the all-male Geneva Medical College in upstate New York, graduating at the top of her class at the age of 28. Blackwell devotes her life to advocating for women in the healthcare professions and, in 1868, opens a women’s medical college in New York City.

1957 – The Wham-O toy company introduces the first aerodynamic plastic disc known as the Frisbee, and forever changes outdoor recreation. The disc was the creation of Walter Frederick Morrison, who originally named it the Pluto Platter.

1968 – North Korea seizes the U.S. intelligence-gathering ship USS Pueblo and interrogates its 83 crew members claiming the vessel violated North Korean territorial waters while spying.

1973 – President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord had been reached in Paris to end the Vietnam War.

1975 – The ABC sitcom “Barney Miller” debuts. It’s about an NYPD precinct captain played by Hal Linden, and the shenanigans he endures with his detectives.

1976 – Singer, actor, athlete and civil rights activist Paul Robeson dies at the age of 77. 

1977 – The miniseries “Roots,” based on the book by Alex Haley, debuts. It runs for eight consecutive nights on ABC Television and becomes the single most-watched program in American history, drawing about 100 million viewers.

1997 – One day after her unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Madeline Albright is sworn in as America’s first female Secretary of State by Vice President Al Gore.

On this Day July 22

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1916 – A massive parade in San Francisco marking Preparedness Day, in anticipation of the United States entering World War I, is interrupted when a suitcase bomb explodes, killing 10 bystanders and wounding 40 others.

1933 – Some 50,000 cheering New Yorkers greet aviator Wiley Post at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field as he completes the first solo flight around the world. Post logged 15,596 miles in seven days, 18 hours and 49 minutes — the fastest circumnavigation of the globe.

1934 – FBI agents gun down Public Enemy No. 1 — notorious bank robber and murderer John Dillinger, outside Chicago’s Biograph movie theater. Dillinger and his mob gang terrorized the Midwest, killing 10 men, wounding seven others, robbing banks and police arsenals, and staging three jail breaks — killing a sheriff during one and wounding two guards in another.

1937 – The U.S. Senate rejects President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s efforts to add more justices to the Supreme Court — his so-called “court-packing” plan. 

1942 –  Agricultural chemist George Washington Carver arrives in Dearborn, Michigan at the invitation of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford to begin collaborating on crop experiments.

1987 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indicates that he will accept a worldwide ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

1991 – Milwaukee police arrest serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer after discovering dismembered victims and other evidence in his apartment. Dahmer is tried and convicted for the murders of 17 males between 1978 and 1991. While serving time in prison, he is attacked and killed by a fellow inmate in 1994.

2003 – U.S. Army Private Jessica Lynch, a prisoner-of-war who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital, receives a hero’s welcome when the 20-year-old returns to her hometown of Palestine, West Virginia. Following her return, new details of her capture and rescue emerge suggesting the original accounts were exaggerated to create positive feelings about the war.