TODAY IN HISTORY
1788: Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the
U.S. Constitution.
1811: Sen. Timothy Pickering, a Federalist from Massachusetts, became the first member of the U.S. Senate to be censured after he’d improperly revealed the contents of an executive document.
1921: Religious services were broadcast on radio for the first time as KDKA in Pittsburgh aired the regular Sunday service of the city’s Calvary Episcopal Church.
1959: The Soviet Union launched its space probe Luna 1, the first manmade object to fly past the moon, its apparent intended target.
1960: Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts
launched his successful bid for the presidency. 1967: Republican Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as the new governor of California in a ceremony that took place in Sacramento shortly just after midnight.
1971: 66 people were killed in a pileup of spectators leaving a soccer match at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow, Scotland.
1974: President Richard Nixon signed legislation requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 miles an hour as a way of conserving gasoline in the face of an OPEC oil embargo. (The 55 mph limit was effectively phased out in 1987; federal speed limits were abolished in 1995.)
1981: Police in Sheffield, England, arrested Peter Sutcliffe, who confessed to being the “Yorkshire Ripper,” the serial killer of 13 women.
2007: The state funeral for former President Gerald R. Ford began with an elaborate service at Washington National Cathedral, then moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
2010: The U.S. Navy said it would investigate raunchy videos broadcast to the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. (Capt. Owen P. Honors, who’d produced the videos as the ship’s executive officer, was removed as the Enterprise’s commander but was later allowed to remain in the Navy.) A magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook southern Chile, sending tens of thousands of people fearing a tsunami to higher ground. Maj.
2015: California began issuing driver’s licenses to immigrants who were in the country illegally. Little Jimmy Dickens, a diminutive singer-songwriter who was the oldest cast member of the Grand Ole Opry, died at age 94.