TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2008

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama introduced his choice of running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, before a crowd outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1305

Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace was executed by the English for treason.

1775

Britain’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”

1912

Actor, dancer, director and choreographer Gene Kelly was born Eugene Curran Kelly in Pittsburgh.

1914

Japan declared war against Germany in World War I. In 1926, silent film star Rudolph Valentino died in New York at age 31.

1939

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to a non-aggression treaty, the MolotovRibbentrop Pact, in Moscow.

1962

John Lennon married his first wife, Cynthia Powell, in Liverpool, England. (The marriage lasted until 1968.)

1973

A bank robbery-turned-hostage-taking began in Stockholm, Sweden; the four hostages ended up empathizing with their captors, a psychological condition now referred to as “Stockholm Syndrome.”

1979

Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defected while the Bolshoi Ballet was on tour in New York.

2003

Former priest John Geoghan, the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate attacked him in a Massachusetts prison.