Today inHistory

On this date: In 1783, the first manned balloon flight took place in Paris as Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier ascended in a basket attached to a tethered Montgolfier hotair balloon, rising to about 75feet. In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte, the deposed Emperor of the French, arrived on the British-ruled South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he spent the last 5½ years of his life in exile. In 1914, the Clayton Antitrust Act, which expanded on the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. In 1917, Dutch dancer Mata Hari, convicted of spying for the Germans, was executed by a French firing squad outside Paris. In 1940, Charles Chaplin’s first alltalking comedy, “The Great Dictator,” a lampoon of Adolf Hitler, opened in New York. In 1946, Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering fatally poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed. In 1969, peace demonstrators staged activities across the country as part of a “moratorium” against the Vietnam War. In 1990, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was named the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. South Africa’s Separate Amenities Act, which had barred blacks from public facilities for decades, was formally scrapped. Today’s Birthdays: Former auto executive Lee Iacocca is 91. Singer Barry McGuire is 80. Actress Linda Lavin is 78. Actress-director Penny Marshall is 72. Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Palmer is 70. Singer-musician Richard Carpenter is 69. Chef Emeril Lagasse is 56.