TODAY IN HISTORY

1521: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan

was killed by natives in the Philippines.

1791: The inventor of the telegraph, Samuel Morse, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

1810: Ludwig van Beethoven wrote one of his most famous piano compositions, the Bagatelle in A-minor.

1865: The steamer Sultana, carrying freed Union prisoners of war, exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee; death toll estimates vary from 1,500 to 2,000.

1950: Britain formally recognized the state of

Israel.

1965: Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow died in Pawling, New York, two days after turning 57.

1978: 51 construction workers plunged to their deaths when a scaffold inside a cooling tower at the Pleasants Power Station site in West Virginia fell 168 feet to the ground.

1982: The trial of John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot four people, including President Ronald Reagan, began in Washington. (The trial ended with Hinckley’s acquittal by reason of insanity.) 1992: The new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed in Belgrade by the republic of Serbia and its lone ally, Montenegro. Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics won entry into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Betty Boothroyd became the first female Speaker of Britain’s House of Commons.

1994: Former President Richard M. Nixon was remembered at an outdoor funeral service attended by all five of his successors at the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda.

2002: South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth arrived at the international space station for an eight-day, seven-night cruise that had cost him $20 million.

2009: A 23-month-old Mexico City toddler died at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, becoming the first swine-flu death on U.S. soil.

2011: Powerful tornadoes raked the South and Midwest; according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than 120 twisters resulted in 316 deaths.