TODAY IN HISTORY
1793: During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, was beheaded.
1859: Radical abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry in what was then a part of western Virginia. (Ten of Brown’s men were killed and five escaped. Brown and six followers were captured; all were executed.)
1934: Chinese Communists, under siege by the Nationalists, began their “long march” lasting a year from southeastern to northwestern China.
1962: The Cuban missile crisis began as President John F. Kennedy was informed that reconnaissance photographs had revealed the presence of missile bases in Cuba. 1964: China set off its first atomic bomb, codenamed “596,” on the Lop
Nur Test Ground.
1968: American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos sparked controversy at the Mexico City Olympics by giving “Black power” salutes during a victory ceremony after they’d won gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race.
1978: The College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church chose Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to be the new pope; he took the name John Paul II. 1984: Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of nonviolent struggle for racial equality in South Africa.
1991: A deadly shooting rampage took place in Killeen, Texas, as a gunman opened fire at a Luby’s Cafeteria, killing 23 people before taking
his own life.
1995: A vast throng of Black men gathered in Washington, D.C., for the “Million Man March” led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
2002: President George W. Bush signed a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq. The White House announced that North Korea had disclosed it had a nuclear weapons program.
2009: Agricultural officials said pigs in Minnesota had tested positive for the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, the first such cases in the U.S.
2011: The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was formally dedicated in Washington, D.C. British race car driver Dan Wheldon, 33, died in a fiery 15-car wreck in the Las Vegas Indy 300. Danell Leyva became the first American male gymnast to win a gold medal at the World Championships since
2003, taking the parallel bars title in Tokyo. The St. Louis Cardinals captured their 18th National League pennant with a 12-6 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 6 of the NLCS.
2016: Joy, jubilation and dancing erupted when a group of Nigerian parents were reunited with 21 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram 2½ years earlier and freed in the first negotiated release organized by the government and the Islamic extremist group. Singer Randy Travis, fiddler Charlie Daniels and producer Fred Foster were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
2017: Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been captured and held by the Taliban for five years after walking away from his post in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty to desertion and endangering his comrades. (A military judge later decided not to send him to prison.)
2020: A French history teacher who had opened a discussion with his high school students about caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was beheaded on a street northwest of Paris; police shot and killed the suspect, an 18-year-old radical Islamist. After initially denying the request, the Trump administration approved California’s application for disaster relief funds to clean up damage from six deadly and destructive wildfires. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the company had been wrong to block web links to an unverified story focusing on the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. A federal judge refused to block New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s order limiting worship to as few as 10 congregants in communities seeing spikes in coronavirus infections.