TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1981

President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C. hotel by John W. Hinckley, Jr.; also wounded were White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and a District of Columbia police officer, Thomas Delahanty.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1867

U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward reached agreement with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, a deal ridiculed by critics as “Seward’s Folly.”

1909

The Queensboro Bridge, linking the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, opened.

1923

The Cunard liner RMS Laconia became the first passenger ship to circle the globe as it arrived in New York.

1964

John Glenn withdrew from the Ohio race for the U.S. Senate because of injuries suffered in a fall. The original version of the TV game show “Jeopardy!,” hosted by Art Fleming, premiered on NBC.

1975

As the Vietnam War neared its end, Communist forces occupied the city of Da Nang.

1986

Actor James Cagney died at his farm in Stanfordville, New York, at age 86.

1991

Patricia Bowman of Jupiter, Florida, told authorities she’d been raped hours earlier by William Kennedy Smith, the nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, at the family’s Palm Beach estate.

1999

Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic insisted that NATO attacks stop before he moved toward peace, declaring his forces ready to fight “to the very end.” NATO answered with new resolve to wreck his military with a relentless air assault.