Today in History
In 1639 Harvard University was named for clergyman John Harvard.
In 1733 chemist Joseph Priestley, who would discover oxygen, was born near Leeds, Yorkshire, England.
In 1781 the planet now known as Uranus was discovered by English astronomer William Herschel. He named it Georgium Sidus.
In 1852 the first cartoon depicting Uncle Sam as the symbol of the United States appeared in a drawing by Frank Bellew in the New York Lantern.
In 1868 the Senate began its impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. (He would be acquitted on a vote of 35-19.)
In 1881 Russian Czar Alexander II was assassinated when a bomb was thrown at him near his Winter Palace.
Standard Time was adopted across the U.S.
In 1884
In 1901 former President Benjamin Harrison died in Indianapolis; he was 67.
In 1906 Susan B. Anthony, one of the pioneers of the American suffragist movement, died in Rochester, N.Y.; she was 86.
In 1925 a law went into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
In 1933 banks began to reopen in the U.S. after the bank holiday proclaimed eight days earlier by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1938 attorney Clarence Darrow died in Chicago; he was 80.
In 1947 “Brigadoon,” the Lerner and Loewe musical, made its Broadway debut.
in a case that sparked outrage over urban apathy, 38 residents of a Queens, N.Y., neighborhood failed
In 1964,
to respond to the cries of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, 28, as she was being stabbed to death. Winston Moseley later confessed to killing Genovese; he is serving a life sentence in prison.
In 1969 the Apollo 9 astronauts splashed down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the lunar module.
In 1980 Ford Motor Co. was acquitted of reckless-homicide charges that had resulted from three deaths in a fiery accident involving a Pinto.
In 1988, yielding to student protests, the board of trustees of Gallaudet University in Washington, a liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired, chose I. King Jordan to become the school’s first deaf president, replacing Elisabeth Ann Zinser, a hearing woman.
the Israeli Cabinet outlawed two Jewish extremist groups, Kach and Kahane Lives, branding them terrorist organizations. In 1996, in a crime that
In 1994
shocked Britain, a gunman burst into a kindergarten classroom in Dunblane, Scotland, and killed 16 children and their teacher before shooting himself to death.
In 1999 playwright Garson Kanin died in New York; he was 86.
In 2004 Iran froze inspections of its nuclear facilities after the U.N. atomic agency censured Tehran for hiding suspect activities. (Tehran relented two days later.)
In 2005 Black Sabbath and Blondie entered the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame. Also in 2005 actress Maureen Stapleton died in Lenox, Mass.; she was 80.
In 2006 publisher McClatchy Co. agreed to buy Knight-Ridder, but planned to immediately sell 12 of the newspaper chain’s papers.
In 2007 Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted mistakes in how the Justice Department handled the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors but said he wouldn’t resign.
In 2008 the body of Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was found in a shallow grave in northern Iraq, two weeks after he was kidnapped by gunmen in one of the most dramatic attacks against the country’s small Christian community.
In 2013 Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina emerged as the 266th pope and chose the papal name Francis. (He is the first Latin American and Jesuit pontiff.) Also in 2013 President Barack Obama nominated Deborah Jones as ambassdor to Libya, filling a post vacant since the Sept. 11, 2012, killings of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi.
In 2014 a drunken motorist fleeing police killed four people and injured nearly two dozen after crashing through barricades at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas.