TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS TUESDAY, JAN. 24, the 24th day of 2017. There are 341 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1942, the Roberts Commission placed much of the blame for America’s lack of preparedness for Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Rear Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, the Navy and Army commanders.
In 1742, Charles VII was elected Holy Roman Emperor during the War of the Austrian Succession.
In 1848, James W. Marshall discovered a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in northern California, a discovery that led to the gold rush of ’49.
In 1908, the Boy Scouts movement began in England under the aegis of Robert Baden-Powell.
In 1924, the Russian city of Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) was renamed Leningrad in honor of the late revolutionary leader. (It has since been renamed St. Petersburg.)
In 1939, at least 28,000 people were killed by an earthquake that devastated the city of Chillan in Chile.
In 1945, Associated Press war correspondent Joseph Morton was among a group of captives executed by the Germans at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria.
In 1961, a U.S. Air Force B-52 crashed near Goldsboro, N.C., dropping its payload of two nuclear bombs, neither of which went off; three crew members were killed.
In 1965, British statesman Winston Churchill died in London at age 90.
In 1975, the extremist group FALN bombed Fraunces Tavern in New York City, killing four people.
In 1989, confessed serial killer Theodore Bundy was executed in Florida’s electric chair.
In 1992, a judge in El Salvador sentenced an army colonel and a lieutenant to 30 years in prison for their part in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. (Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides and Lt. Yusshy Mendoza were freed in April 1993 under an amnesty law.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor Jerry Maren (Film: “The Wizard of Oz”) is 98. Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond and singer Aaron Neville are 76. Comedian Yakov Smirnoff is 66. Actress Nastassja Kinski is 58.