TODAY IN HISTORY

1939

Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program.

1610

During his fourth voyage to the Western Hemisphere, English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into what is now known as Hudson Bay.

1776

Members of the Second Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.

1862

The Ambulance Corps for the Army of the Potomac was created at the order of Maj. Gen. George Mcclellan during the Civil War.

1873

Inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.

1921

A jury in Chicago acquitted several former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious “Black Sox” scandal. Opera singer Enrico Caruso, 48, died in Naples, Italy.

1922

Alexander Graham Bell, generally regarded as the inventor of the telephone, died in Nova Scotia, Canada, at age 75.

1923

The 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president.

1934

German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler’s complete takeover.

1945

President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Britain’s new prime minister, Clement Attlee, concluded the Potsdam conference.

1980

85 people were killed when a bomb exploded at the train station in Bologna, Italy.