TODAY IN HISTORY
1521: Martin Luther went before the Diet of Worms (vohrms) to face charges stemming from his religious writings. (Luther was later declared an outlaw by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.)
1961: Some 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in an attempt to topple Fidel Castro, whose forces crushed the incursion by the third day.
1961: “The Apartment” won the Academy Award for best picture of 1960; Burt Lancaster was named best actor for “Elmer Gantry,” while the best actress award went to Elizabeth Taylor for “Butterfield 8.”
1964: Ford Motor Co. unveiled the Mustang at the
New York World’s Fair.
1969: A jury in Los Angeles convicted Sirhan Sirhan of
assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
1970: Apollo 13 astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert splashed down safely in the Pacific, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft while en route to the moon.
1972: The Boston Marathon allowed women to compete for the first time; Nina Kuscsik was the first officially recognized women’s champion, with a time of 3:10:26.
1973: Federal Express (later FedEx) began operations as 14 planes carrying 186 packages took off from Memphis International Airport, bound for 25 U.S. cities.
1975: Cambodia’s five-year war ended as the capital Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, which instituted brutal, radical policies that claimed an estimated 1.7 million lives until the regime was overthrown in 1979.
1986: At London’s Heathrow Airport, a bomb was discovered in the bag of Anne-Marie Murphy, a pregnant Irishwoman about to board an El Al jetliner to Israel; she’d been tricked into carrying the bomb by her Jordanian fiance, Nezar Hindawi.
1991: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 3,000 for the first time, ending the day at 3,004.46, up 17.58.
1993: A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King; two other officers were acquitted.
2012: Riding on the back of a 747 jet, retired space shuttle Discovery traveled from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to Chantilly, Va., to be installed in its new home: the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum annex in Virginia.