ON THIS DATE

2018: English neurologist Roger Bannister, the first athlete to run a mile in less than four minutes, died at age 88.

2012: American conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie—who contributed to a number of classic movies, notably helping to create the appearance of Darth Vader in the Star

Wars series—died in Berkeley, California.

2005: On this day in 2005, American adventurer Steve Fossett became the first person to complete a solo nonstop circumnavigation of the globe without refueling when he landed in Kansas after more than 67 hours in flight.

1996: Marguerite Duras—one of the leading figures of the French postwar literary scene, who frequently wrote about obsession and impossible love—died in Paris.

1991: Following a high-speed car chase, Los Angeles police officers brutally beat Rodney King, an African American motorist; despite a videotape of the beating, the policemen were acquitted in 1992, causing large-scale rioting in the city.

1985: The first episode of the sitcom Moonlighting aired on American television; the series was a breakthrough for Bruce Willis, who played a wisecracking private investigator.

1931: The Star-Spangled Banner, written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812, was officially adopted as the national anthem of the United States by act of Congress.

1911: American actress Jean Harlow, who was considered the original “Blonde Bombshell,” was born.

1847: Scottish-born American inventor and scientist Alexander Graham Bell, whose foremost accomplishments were the invention of the telephone (1876) and the refinement of the phonograph (1886), was born in Edinburgh.