TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 1958

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1890

Artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, died of an apparently selfinflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

1914

Transcontinental telephone service in the U.S. became operational with the first test conversation between New York and San Francisco.

1965

The Beatles’ second feature film, “Help!,” had its world premiere in London.

1967

An accidental rocket launch on the deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in a fire and explosions that killed 134 servicemen. (Among the survivors was future Arizona senator John McCain, a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who narrowly escaped with his life.)

1974

Singer Cass Elliot (The Mamas and the Papas) died in a London hotel room at age 32.

1975

President Gerald R. Ford became the first U.S. president to visit the site of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland.

1981

Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a glittering ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. (The couple divorced in 1996.)

1986

A federal jury in New York found that the National Football League had committed an antitrust violation against the rival United States Football League. But in a hollow victory for the U-S-F-L, the jury ordered the N-F-L to pay token damages of only three dollars.