TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 1898

The U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1564

Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.

1879

President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

1933

President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman Giuseppe Zangara was executed more than four weeks later.

1952

A funeral was held at Windsor Castle for Britain’s King George VI, who had died nine days earlier.

1961

73people, including an 18-member U.S. figure skating team en route to the World Championships in Czechoslovakia, were killed in the crash of a Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 in Belgium.

1992

A Milwaukee jury found that Jeffrey Dahmer was sane when he killed and mutilated 15 men and boys.

2004

Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Daytona 500on the same track where his father was killed three years earlier.

2005

Defrocked priest Paul Shanley was sentenced in Boston to 12to 15years in prison on child rape charges.

2006

Vice President Dick Cheney accepted blame for accidentally shooting a hunting companion, calling it “one of the worst days of my life,” but was defiantly unapologetic in a Fox News Channel interview about not publicly disclosing the incident until the next day.