Today in history

In 1844, Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.

In 1846, New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires.

In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World was founded in Chicago.

In 1922, the first Newberry Medal, recognizing excellence in children’s literature, was awarded to “The Story of Mankind” by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

In 1957, Hurricane Audrey slammed into coastal Louisiana and Texas as a Category 4 storm; the official death toll from the storm was placed at 390, although a variety of state, federal and local sources have estimated the number of fatalities at between 400 and 600. In 1966, the Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows” premiered on ABC-TV.

In 1985, the legendary Route 66, which originally stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., passed into history as officials decertified the road.

In 1990, NASA announced that a flaw in the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope was keeping the instrument from achieving optimum focus. (The problem was traced to a mirror that had not been ground to exact specifications; corrective optics were later installed to fix the problem.)

In 1991, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black jurist to sit on the nation’s highest court, announced his retirement.