TODAY IN HISTORY
1520: Montezuma II, the ninth and last emperor of the Aztecs, died in Tenochtitlan under unclear circumstances (some say he was killed by his own subjects; others, by the Spanish).
1613: London’s original Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare’s plays were performed, was destroyed by a fire sparked by a cannon shot during a performance of “Henry VIII.”
1767: Britain approved the Townshend Revenue Act, which imposed import duties on glass, paint, oil, lead, paper and tea shipped to the American colonies. (Colonists bitterly protested, prompting Parliament to repeal the duties — except for tea.)
1776: The Virginia state constitution was adopted,
and Patrick Henry was made governor.
1927: The first trans-Pacific airplane flight was completed as U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. Lester J. Maitland and Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger arrived at Wheeler Field in Hawaii aboard the Bird of Paradise, an Atlantic-Fokker C-2, after flying 2,400 miles from Oakland in 25 hours, 50 minutes. 1946: Authorities in British-ruled Palestine arrested more than 2,700 Jews in an attempt to stamp out extremists.
1967: Jerusalem was reunified as Israel removed barricades separating the Old City from the Israeli sector.
1970: The United States ended a two-month military offensive into Cambodia.
1972: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a trio of death sentences, saying the way they had been imposed constituted cruel and unusual punishment. (The ruling prompted states to effectively impose a moratorium on executions until their capital punishment laws could be revised.)
1978: Actor Bob Crane of “Hogan’s Heroes” fame was found bludgeoned to death in an apartment in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he was appearing in a play; he was 49.
2009: Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff received a 150-year sentence for his multibillion-dollar fraud. (Madoff died in prison in April 2021.)
2018: The Annapolis Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland kept its promise to put out the day’s paper, despite the shooting deaths of five people in its newsroom a day earlier.