TODAY IN HISTORY

THURSDAY OCT 14, 2021 1947

U.S. Air Force Capt. Charles E. Yeager became the first test pilot to break the sound barrier as he flew the experimental Bell XS-1 rocket plane over Muroc Dry Lake in California.

1066

Normans under William the Conqueror defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings.

1586

Mary, Queen of Scots, went on trial in England, accused of committing treason against Queen Elizabeth I.

1933

Nazi Germany announced it was withdrawing from the League of Nations.

1939

A German U-boat torpedoed and sank the HMS Royal Oak, a British battleship anchored at Scapa Flow in Scotland’s Orkney Islands; 833 of the more than 1,200 men aboard were killed.

1944

German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel took his own life rather than face trial and certain execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.

1964

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev was toppled from power; he was succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and by Alexei Kosygin as Premier.

1968

The first successful live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7.

1981

The new president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, was sworn in to succeed the assassinated Anwar Sadat. Mubarak pledged loyalty to Sadat’s policies.

2001

As U.S. jets opened a second week of raids in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush sternly rejected a Taliban offer to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a third country.

2008

A grand jury in Orlando, Fla. returned charges of firstdegree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter against Casey Anthony in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.