TODAY IN HISTORY: Truscott aquitted
In 1904, the first jail sentence for speeding was handed down in Newport, R.I. (five days) for driving 32 km/h. In 1916, Italy declared war on Germany during the First World War. In 1922, radio station WEAF in New York City aired the first radio commercial — a 10-minute pitch for a new coop apartment house. In 1926, the Soviet ship Buryvestnik struck a pier at Kronstadt, USSR, killing 300 people. In 1947, legendary bullfighter Manolete died after being gored during a fight in Linares, Spain. He was 30. In 1957, three armed men stole $5,400 in American funds from a CNR passenger train on a run from Windsor, Ont., to Toronto. It was Canada’s first train robbery since 1928.
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech to almost 250,000 demonstrators in Washington in front of the Lincoln Memorial. “I have a dream that one day ... the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together,” the civil rights leader said. King was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his non-viol
In 1965, Bob Dylan, backed by Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson and other musicians who later became known as The Band, was booed off stage at Forest Hills Stadium in New York for playing electric guitar. Dylan had abandoned pure folk music earlier that year with the album “Bringing It All Back Home.”
In 1988, the worst crash during an air show took place at the U.S. airbase in Ramstein, then in West Germany. Three Italian air force jets collided above a crowd of 300,000, killing 70 people and injuring 500. Opposition to military air shows mushroomed after the tragedy and NATO allies suspended future air shows as they tried to figure out how to make them safer.
In 1994, the Commonwealth Games came to a close in Victoria, with Canada placing second after Australia with 128 medals.
In 2007, Steven Truscott, the youngest Canadian to ever face a death sentence nearly half a century ago, was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal of the 1959 rape and murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper.The court ruled Truscott was a victim of a “miscarriage of justice.”