TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1775

Patrick Henry delivered an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention in which he is said to have declared, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1792

Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 in G Major had its first public performance in London.

1806

Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east.

1919

Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy.

1942

The first Japanese-Americans evacuated by the U.S. Army during World War II arrived at the internment camp in Manzanar, California.

1965

America’s first two-person space mission took place as Gemini 3blasted off with astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young aboard for a nearly 5-hour flight.

1973

Before sentencing a group of Watergate break-in defendants, Chief U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica read aloud a letter he’d received from James W. McCord Jr. which said there was “political pressure” to “plead guilty and remain silent.”

1993

Scientists announced they’d found the renegade gene that causes Huntington’s disease.

2001

Russia’s orbiting Mir space station ended its 15-year odyssey with a planned fiery plunge into the South Pacific.

2003

During the Iraq War, a U.S. Army maintenance convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah; 11 soldiers were killed, including Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa; six were captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued on April 1, 2003.