TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1915

Jazz singer-songwriter Billie Holiday, also known as “Lady Day,” was born in Philadelphia.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1862

Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.

1922

The Teapot Dome scandal had its beginnings as Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall signed a secret deal to lease U.S. Navy petroleum reserves in Wyoming and California to his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, in exchange for cash gifts.

1927

The image and voice of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover were transmitted live from Washington to New York in the first successful longdistance demonstration of television.

1945

During World War II, American planes intercepted and effectively destroyed a Japanese fleet, which included the battleship Yamato, that was headed to Okinawa on a suicide mission.

1954

President Dwight D. Eisenhower held a news conference in which he spoke of the importance of containing the spread of communism in Indochina, saying, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.” (This became known as the “domino theory,” although Eisenhower did not use that term.)

1984

The Census Bureau reported Los Angeles had overtaken Chicago as the nation’s “second city” in terms of population.

1994

Civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi; in the months that followed, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu moderates were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.