| On this date in: |
| 1606 |
Guy Fawkes, convicted for his part in the Gunpowder Plot against the English Parliament and King James I, was executed. |
| 1797 |
Composer Franz Schubert was born in Vienna, Austria. |
| 1865 |
Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of the Confederate armies. |
| 1917 |
Germany announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. |
| 1919 |
Baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, who broke the sport’s color barrier in 1947, was born in Cairo, Ga. |
| 1944 |
U.S. forces invaded the Japanese-held Marshall Islands during World War II. |
| 1945 |
Private Eddie Slovik became the only U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion. |
| 1949 |
The first TV daytime soap opera, “These Are My Children,” was broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago. |
| 1950 |
President Harry S. Truman announced that he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb. |
| 1971 |
Astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell and Stuart A. Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on the third successful manned mission to the moon. |
| 1990 |
McDonald’s Corp. opened its first fast-food restaurant in Moscow. |
| 2000 |
An Alaska Airlines jet plunged into the ocean off Southern California on a flight from Mexico to San Francisco, killing all 88 people on board. |
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| AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes |
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| 2001 |
A Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan and acquitted a second in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. |
| 2006 |
Samuel Alito was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as a Supreme Court justice. |
| 2006 |
The Senate approved Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. |
| 2011 |
Egypt’s military promised not to fire on peaceful protests and recognized “the legitimacy of the people’s demands.” |
| 2011 |
Myanmar opened its first parliament in more than two decades. |
