TODAY IN HISTORY

1877: Federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South.

1915: In what is considered the start of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Empire began rounding up Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople.

1960: Rioting erupted in Biloxi, Miss., after Black protesters staging a “wade-in” at a whites-only beach were attacked by a crowd of hostile white people.

1961: In the wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the White House issued a statement saying that President John F. Kennedy “bears sole responsibility for the events of the past few days.”

1967: Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when his Soyuz 1 spacecraft smashed into the Earth after his parachutes failed to deploy properly during reentry; he was the first human spaceflight fatality.

1980: The United States launched an unsuccessful attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, a mission that resulted in the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen.

1990: The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.

2005: Pope Benedict XVI formally began his stewardship of the Roman Catholic Church; the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in his installation homily that as pontiff he would listen to the will of God in governing the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics.

2018: Former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was arrested at his home near Sacramento after DNA linked him to crimes attributed to the so-called Golden State Killer; authorities believed he committed 13 murders and more than 50 rapes in the 1970s and 1980s. (DeAngelo would plead guilty in 2020 to 13 counts of murder and be sentenced to life in prison without parole.)

2021: The United States formally declared that the systematic killing and deportation of more than a million Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century was “genocide,” a term that the White House had avoided using for decades for fear of alienating ally Turkey.