TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1925

Schoolteacher John T. Scopes was charged in Tennessee with violating a state law that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution. (Scopes was found guilty, but his conviction was later set aside.)

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1494

During his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus landed in Jamaica.

1818

Political philosopher Karl Marx, co-author of “The Communist Manifesto” and author of “Das Kapital,” was born in Prussia.

1891

New York’s Carnegie Hall (then named “Music Hall”) had its official opening night, featuring Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky as a guest conductor.

1942

Wartime sugar rationing began in the United States.

1945

In the only fatal attack of its kind during World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon, killing the pregnant wife of a minister and five children. Denmark and the Netherlands were liberated as a German surrender went into effect.

1961

Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became America’s first space traveler as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Mercury capsule Freedom 7.

1973

Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.

1978

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream had its beginnings as Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened an ice cream parlor at a converted gas station in Burlington, Vermont.

2009

Texas health officials confirmed the first death of a U.S. resident with swine flu.