TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1970

Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst. (The astronauts managed to return safely.)

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1613

Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, was captured by English Capt. Samuel Argall in the Virginia Colony. (During a yearlong captivity, Pocahontas converted to Christianity and ultimately opted to stay with the English.)

1742

“Messiah,” the oratorio by George Frideric Handel featuring the “Hallelujah” chorus, had its first public performance in Dublin, Ireland.

1743

The third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was born in Shadwell in the Virginia Colony.

1861

At the start of the Civil War, Fort Sumter in South Carolina fell to Confederate forces.

1870

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was incorporated in New York.

1943

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth.

1964

Sidney Poitier became the first Black performer in a leading role to win an Academy Award for his performance in “Lilies of the Field.”

1992

The Great Chicago Flood took place as the city’s centuryold tunnel system and adjacent basements filled with water from the Chicago River.

1999

Right-to-die advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian was sentenced in Pontiac, Michigan, to 10 to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder in the lethal injection of a Lou Gehrig’s disease patient.