TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1967

Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title after he refused to be inducted into the armed forces.

1788

Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the Constitution of the United States.

1918

Gavrilo Princip, 23, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the archduke’s wife, Sophie, died in prison of tuberculosis.

1945

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country.

1958

The United States conducted the first of 35 nuclear test explosions in the Pacific Proving Ground as part of Operation Hardtack I. Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, began a goodwill tour of Latin America that was marred by hostile mobs in Lima, Peru, and Caracas, Venezuela.

1967

U.S. Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland told Congress that “backed at home by resolve, confidence, patience, determination and continued support, we will prevail in Vietnam over communist aggression.”

1980

President Jimmy Carter accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, who had opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran.

1986

The Soviet Union informed the world of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

1994

Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had passed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pleaded guilty to espionage and tax evasion, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.