TODAY IN HISTORY
1865
The US House of Representatives joins the Senate in passing the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery, sending it to states for ratification. (The amendment was adopted in December 1865).
1917 1929
Revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his family are expelled from the Soviet Union.
1945
Pvt Eddie Slovik (24) becomes the first US soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion as he is shot by an American firing squad in France.
1958
The US enters the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Explorer I.
1961
NASA launches Ham the Chimp aboard a MercuryRedstone rocket from Cape Canaveral. Ham is recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean following his 16 1/2minute suborbital flight.
1971
Astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blast off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the Moon.
1980
Queen Juliana of the Netherlands announces that she will abdicate on her birthday the following April, to be succeeded by her daughter, Princess Beatrix.
Germany serves notice that it is beginning a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare during World War I.
McDonald’s Corp opens its first restaurant in Moscow.
1990 2000
An Alaska Airlines MD-83 jet crashes into the Pacific Ocean off Port Hueneme, California, killing all 88 people aboard.
2007
President George W Bush, visiting Wall Street, delivers his ‘State of the Economy’ speech in which he takes aim at lavish salaries and bonuses for corporate executives, saying their pay should be tied to how much they helped their companies’ shareholders.
2016
At least 45 people are killed in a triple bombing in a predominantly Shiite Muslim suburb south of the Syrian capital Damascus.