TODAY IN HISTORY

1871: The Great Chicago Fire erupted; fires also broke out in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and in several communities in Michigan.

1890: American aviation hero Eddie Rickenbacker was born in Columbus, Ohio.

1934: Bruno Hauptmann was indicted by a grand jury in New Jersey for murder in the death of the kidnapped son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

1945: President Harry S. Truman told a press conference in Tiptonville, Tennessee, that the secret scientific knowledge behind the atomic bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada.

1981: At the White House, President Ronald Reagan greeted former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, who were preparing to travel to Egypt for the funeral of Anwar Sadat.

1985: The hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro killed American passenger Leon Klinghoffer, who was in a wheelchair, and threw his body overboard.

1997: Scientists reported the Mars Pathfinder had yielded what could be the strongest evidence yet that Mars might once have been hospitable to life.

1998: The House triggered an open-ended impeachment inquiry against President Bill Clinton in a momentous 258-176 vote; 31 Democrats joined majority Republicans in opening the way for nationally televised impeachment hearings.

2002: A federal judge approved President George W. Bush’s request to reopen West Coast ports, ending a 10-day labor lockout that was costing the U.S. economy an estimated $1 to $2 billion a day.

2005: A magnitude 7.6 earthquake flattened villages on the Pakistan-India border, killing an estimated 86,000 people.

2010: Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, prompting a furious response from China. British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who’d been taken captive in Afghanistan, was killed during a U.S. special forces rescue attempt, apparently by a U.S. grenade. Gen. James Jones announced he was quitting as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser. Albertina Walker, the Grammy-winning singer from Chicago known as the “Queen of Gospel,” died at age 81.