TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT ALSO ON THIS DATE

1493

Italian explorer Christopher Columbus arrived back in the Spanish harbor of Palos de la Frontera, two months after concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

1820

Maine became the 23rd state.

1913

President Woodrow Wilson met with about 100 reporters for the first formal presidential press conference.

1916

A U.S. expeditionary force led by Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing entered Mexico on an ultimately futile mission to capture Pancho Villa, whose raiders had attacked Columbus, New Mexico, killing 18 U.S. citizens.

1919

Members of the American Expeditionary Force from World War I convened in Paris for a three-day meeting to found the American Legion.

1937

America’s first hospital blood bank was opened at Cook County Hospital in Illinois.

1944

During World War II, Allied bombers again raided German-held Monte Cassino.

1956

The Lerner and Loewe musical play “My Fair Lady,” based on Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” opened on Broadway.

1977

The U.S. House of Representatives began a 90day closed-circuit test to determine the feasibility of showing its sessions on television. The situation comedy “Three’s Company,” starring John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Somers, premiered on ABC-TV.

1985

The first internet domain name, symbolics.com, was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corp. of Massachusetts.

2005

Former WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers was convicted in New York of engineering the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history.