TODAY IN HISTORY

On Jan. 24, 1848, James W. Marshall discovered a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in northern California, leading 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.

In 1939, at least 28,000 people were killed by an earthquake that devastated the city of Chillan (cheeYAHN’) in Chile.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill concluded a wartime conference in Casablanca, Morocco.

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 1965, Winston Churchill died in London at age 90.

In 1978, a nuclear-powered Soviet satellite, Cosmos 954, plunged through Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated, scattering radioactive debris over parts of northern Canada.

In 1984, Apple Computer began selling its first Macintosh model, which boasted a built-in 9-inch monochrome display and 128k of RAM.

In 1987, gunmen in Lebanon kidnapped educators Alann Steen, Jesse Turner, Robert Polhill and Mitheleshwar Singh. (All were eventually released.)

retired Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall died in Bethesda, Maryland, at age 84.

In 1993,

In 2003, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was sworn as the first secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security.