TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1865

The U.S. House of Representatives joined the Senate in passing the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery, sending it to states for ratification.

1863

During the Civil War, the First South Carolina Volunteers, an all-black Union regiment composed of many escaped slaves, was mustered into federal service at Beaufort, South Carolina.

1919

Baseball Hall-of-famer Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, Ga.

1929

Tevolutionary Leon Trotsky and his family were expelled from the Soviet Union.

1945

Pvt. Eddie Slovik, 24, became the first U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion as he was shot by an American firing squad in France.

1950

President Harry S. Truman announced he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb.

1956

The creator of “Winnie-thepooh,” British author A.A. Milne, died at age 74.

1958

The United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite, Explorer 1, from Cape Canaveral.

1961

NASA launched Ham the Chimp aboard a Mercuryredstone rocket from Cape Canaveral; Ham was recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean following his 16 1⁄2-minute suborbital flight.

1971

Astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.

2000

An Alaska Airlines MD-83 jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Port Hueneme, California, killing all 88 people aboard.

2001

A Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan, acquitted a second, in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. was given a life sentence, but was released after eight years on compassionate grounds by Scotland’s government. He died in 2012.)