TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 2003

Massachusetts’ attorney general issued a report saying clergy members and others in the Boston Archdiocese probably had sexually abused more than 1,000 people over a period of six decades.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1829

William Austin Burt received a patent for his “typographer,” a forerunner of the typewriter.

1958

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II named the first four women to peerage in the House of Lords.

1967

Five days of deadly rioting erupted in Detroit as an early morning police raid on an unlicensed bar resulted in a confrontation with local residents that escalated into violence that spread into other parts of the city; 43 people, mostly Blacks, were killed.

1982

Actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le and 6-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were killed when a helicopter crashed on top of them during filming of a Vietnam War scene for “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” (Director John Landis and four associates were later acquitted of manslaughter charges.)

1983

An Air Canada Boeing 767ran out of fuel while flying from Montreal to Edmonton; the pilots were able to glide the jetliner to a safe emergency landing in Gimli, Manitoba. (The near-disaster occurred because the fuel had been erroneously measured in pounds instead of kilograms at a time when Canada was converting to the metric system.)

1990

President George H.W. Bush announced his choice of Judge David Souter of New Hampshire to succeed the retiring Justice William J. Brennan on the U.S. Supreme Court.