TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS MONDAY, FEB. 1, the 32nd day of 2021. There are 333 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry, killing all seven of its crew members: commander Rick Husband; pilot William McCool; payload commander Michael Anderson; mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark; and payload specialist Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space. In 1790, the U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time in New York. (However, because only three of the six justices were present, the court recessed until the next day.) In 1862, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a poem by Julia Ward Howe, was published in the Atlantic Monthly. In 1865, abolitionist John S. Rock became the first Black lawyer admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1893, inventor Thomas Edison completed work on the world’s first motion picture studio, his “Black Maria,” in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1942, during World War II, the Voice of America broadcast its first program to Europe, relaying it through the facilities of the British Broadcasting Corp. in London. In 1943, during World War II, one of America’s most highly decorated military units, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up almost exclusively of Japanese Americans, was authorized. In 1960, four Black college students began a sit-in protest at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they’d been refused service. In 1962, the Ken Kesey novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was first published by Viking Press. In 1968, during the Vietnam War, South Vietnam’s police chief (Nguyen Ngoc Loan) executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head in a scene captured by news photographers. Richard M. Nixon announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. In 1979, Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini received a tumultuous welcome in Tehran as he ended nearly 15 years of exile. In 1991, 34 people were killed when an arriving USAir jetliner crashed atop a commuter plane on a runway at Los Angeles International Airport. In 2018, a judge ordered a Wisconsin girl, Morgan Geyser, to be committed to a mental hospital for 40 years for stabbing a classmate when she was 12 years old to curry favor with the fictional horror character Slender Man. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Singer Don Everly and actor Garrett Morris are 84. Bluegrass singer Del McCoury is 82. TV personality-singer Joy Philbin is 80. Political commentator Fred Barnes is 78. Rock musician Mike Campbell (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) is 71. Blues singer-musician Sonny Landreth is 70. Actor-writer-producer Bill Mumy is 67. Rock singer Exene Cervenka is 65. Actor Linus Roache is 57. Princess Stephanie of Monaco and actor Sherilyn Fenn are 56. Lisa Marie Presley and comedian-actor Pauly Shore are 53. Actor Brian Krause, jazz musician Joshua Redman and rock musician Patrick Wilson (Weezer) are 52. Actor Michael C. Hall and rock musician Ron Welty are 50. Roots rocker Jason Isbell and country singer Julie Roberts are 42. Actor Jarrett Lennon is 39. Rock singer-musician Andrew VanWyngarden is 38. TV personality Lauren Conrad is 35. Actor-singer Heather Morris, and actor and mixed martial artist Ronda Rousey are 34. Rock singer Harry Styles (One Direction) is 27.