Today In History...

In 1530 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, onetime adviser to England's King Henry

VIII, dies.

In 1864 The Colorado militia kills 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in what

becomes known as the "Sand Creek Massacre."

In 1877 Edison makes the first sound recording: "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

In 1887 The U.S. receives rights to Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii.

In 1890 The first Army-Navy football game is played, at West Point, New

York. Navy defeats Army, 24-0.

In 1897 The first oval-track motorcycle races are run in Surrey, England.

In 1929 Navy Lt. Commander Richard E. Byrd radios to say that he had made

the first airplane flight over the South Pole.

In 1934 Chicago beats Detroit in the first nationally broadcast NFL game.

In 1945 The monarchy is abolished in Yugoslavia and a republic proclaimed.

In 1947 The U.N. General Assembly passes a resolution calling for the

partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews.

In 1951 First underground atomic explosion at Frenchman Flat, Nevada.

In 1952 President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower keeps a campaign promise and

visits Korea to assess the war.

In 1953 America's first non-stop transcontinental passenger service is

launched by American Airlines.

In 1961 "Enos" the chimp is launched aboard Mercury V which orbits the earth

twice and lands off Puerto Rico.

In 1963 President Lyndon Johnson names a commission headed by Chief Justice

Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

In 1964 The Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. institutes sweeping changes in

the liturgy, including the use of English instead of Latin.

In 1967 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announces he would leave the

Johnson administration to become president of the World Bank.

In 1971 The first Professional Golf Championship is held at Walt Disney

World in Orlando.

In 1975 The Kilauea Volcano erupts in Hawaii.

In 1975 Red River, New Mexico, sets a 24-hour snowfall record at 34 inches.

In 1981 Actress Natalie Wood drowns in a boating accident off Santa

Catalina, CA, at age 43.

In 1982 The U.N. General Assembly renews its demand that the Soviet Union

withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

In 1985 Two spacewalking astronauts from the shuttle Atlantis assemble a

45-foot beam and a pyramid-shaped structure in a test of techniques

that might be used in future space construction.

In 1986 Actor Cary Grant dies in Davenport, Iowa, where he had scheduled a

public appearance, at age 82.

In 1987 A Korean Air jetliner disappears off Burma with the loss off all 115

people aboard.

In 1988 Senate Democrats elect George Mitchell of Maine to be majority

leader, the post vacated by Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

In 1988 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the rights of criminal defendants

are not violated when police unintentionally fail to preserve

potentially vital evidence.

In 1989 Czechoslovakia ends 41 years of one-party Communist rule.

In 1990 The U.N. Security Council, led by the U.S., votes, 12-2, to

authorize military action if Iraq did not withdraw its troops from

Kuwait and release all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991.

In 1991 Seventeen people are killed in a 164-vehicle pileup during a dust

storm on Interstate 5 near Coalinga, California.

In 1991 Actor Ralph Bellamy dies in Santa Monica, CA, at age 87.

In 1994 Fighter jets attack the capital of Chechnya hours after Russian

President Boris Yeltsin ordered the breakaway republic to end its

civil war within two days or face direct Russian intervention.

In 1995 President Clinton opens a 5-day European trip in London, where he

met with Prime Minister John Major and addressed the British

Parliament.

In 1996 A UN court sentences a Bosnian Serb army soldier, Drazen Erdemovic,

to 10 years in prison for his role in the massacre of 1,200 Muslims.

In 1996 John C. Salvi III, serving a life sentence for fatally shooting two

abortion clinic receptionists hangs himself in prison.

In 1997 Former Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young, the city's first black mayor

who held office for an unprecedented five terms, dies at age 79.

In 1998 Swiss voters overwhelmingly reject the legalization of heroin and

other narcotics.

In 1999 Protestant and Catholic adversaries form an extraordinary Northern

Ireland government designed to bring together every branch of

opinion within the bitterly divided society.

In 2000 The European Union proposes new measures to try and eradicate mad

cow disease and stem public health scare over beef.

In 2000 Lou Groza, the Cleveland Browns' Hall of Fame kicker and lineman

known as "The Toe," dies at age 76.

In 2003 Thirty-three are killed in the crash of a military plane in Congo.

In 2004 The U.S Supreme Court rejects a challenge to a gay-marriage law in

Massachusetts.