TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 1989

A jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, convicted former P-T-L evangelist Jim Bakker of using his television show to defraud followers. (Although initially sentenced to 45 years in prison, Bakker was freed in December 1994 after serving 4 1⁄2 years.)

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1931

Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon completed the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in Washington state some 41 hours after leaving Japan.

1947

President Harry S. Truman delivered the first televised White House address as he spoke on the world food crisis.

1953

Earl Warren was sworn in as the 14th chief justice of the United States, succeeding Fred M. Vinson.

1955

A stage adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett opened at the Cort Theatre in New York.

1958

Racially-desegregated Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, was mostly leveled by an early morning bombing.

1969

The British TV comedy program “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” made its debut on BBC 1.

1983

Solidarity founder Lech Walesa was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

2001

Tabloid photo editor Robert Stevens died from inhaled anthrax, the first of a series of anthrax cases in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Washington.

2005

Defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would prohibit the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in U.S. government custody. (A reluctant President George W. Bush later signed off on the amendment.)

2015

The United States, Japan and 10 other nations in Asia and the Americas reached agreement on the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

2017

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation extending protections for immigrants living in the United States illegally; police in California would be barred from asking people about their immigration status or taking part in federal immigration enforcement activities.

2011

Steve Jobs, 56, the Apple founder and former chief executive who’d invented and master-marketed ever sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died in Palo Alto, California. Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, 89, a civil rights activist who endured arrests, beatings and injuries from fire hoses while fighting for racial equality in the segregated South of the 1960s, died in Birmingham, Alabama.