Also on this date
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a poem by Julia Ward Howe, was published in the Atlantic Monthly.
In 1862,
In 1865,
John S. Rock became the first Black lawyer admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1893,
inventor Thomas Edison completed work on the world’s first motion picture studio, his “Black Maria,” in West Orange, New Jersey.
In 1942,
during World War II, the Voice of America broadcast its first program to Europe, relaying it through the facilities of the British Broadcasting Corp. in London.
In 1943,
during World War II, one of America’s most highly decorated military units, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up almost exclusively of Japanese-Americans, was authorized.
In 1960,
four Black college students began a sit-in protest at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they’d been refused service.
In 1979,
Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini received a tumultuous welcome in Tehran as he ended nearly 15 years of exile.
In 2018,
a judge ordered a Wisconsin girl, Morgan Geyser, to be committed to a mental hospital for 40 years for stabbing a classmate when she was 12 years old to curry favor with the fictional horror character Slender Man.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced he would not run for a new term in September elections but rejected protesters’ demands he step down immediately and leave the country, after a day in which a quarter-million Egyptians staged their biggest protest to date calling on him to go.
The World Health Organization declared a global emergency over the explosive spread of the Zika virus, calling it an “extraordinary event” that posed a public health threat to other parts of the world.
As China’s death toll from the new coronavirus rose to 259, Beijing criticized Washington’s order barring entry to most foreigners who had visited China in the past two weeks.
Associated Press