The tremors began on March 16, 1980. Eleven days later, a first explosion resulted in a 250-foot wide crater on the top of the mountain. Mount St. Helen had awakened and shook the area in warning. Not everyone was listening. Despite the tremors and the initial blast, despite the warnings issued by the authorities, despite…
When a Teenager Held Her Head Up High Against Racism: Dorothy Counts – September 4, 1957.
Dorothy Counts, a 15-year-old from Charlotte, North Carolina, woke up early on the morning of September 4, 1957, and prepared for the most difficult day of her life. It was the first day of school. Her new school, Harding High, was an all-white school in a completely segregated Charlotte. Dorothy was black. Today, on the…
Today in the 20th Century: Alan B. Shepard Jr. Becomes the First American in Space – May 5, 1961
On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard spends an exciting 15 minutes in suborbital space to become the first American to travel into space, only three years after the establishment of NASA and less than a month after Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut became the first person in space and the first to orbit the…
The Tragic Death of the Man Who Fell From Space – Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov (1967)
Vladimir Komarov, like a meteor falling from the sky, crashed to the earth’s surface on April 24, 1967, becoming the first space fatality in history.
When Castro Won a Hemingway-Sponsored Fishing Tournament in May 1960
In 1939, Ernest Hemingway purchased a home in Cuba, ten miles from Havana, in the village San Francisco de Paula. The “Finca Vigía” (the “lookout house”) was a place of retreat. It was there where he wrote seven of his books, including “The Old Man and the Sea”. Despite living on and off in Cuba…
Fear as a Political Weapon and the Death of Joseph McCarthy
On this day, May 2, 1957, Joseph McCarthy, the controversial U.S. Senator, dies at the age of 48 due to alcohol-related illnesses (probably cirrhosis of the liver). Mccarthy was notorious for his anti-communist rhetoric and for making deceitful, biased and insubstantial accusations towards his political opponents, charging them with subversion and philo-communism. This practice would…
Los Angeles Erupts in Violence and Civil Disorder – L.A. Riots: April 29,1992
On April 29, 1992, a major outbreak of violence erupted in South-Central Los Angeles California when thousands of people protested a court verdict that acquitted four L.A.P.D. officers of any wrongdoing in the arrest of a motorist after a high-speed chase through the streets of L.A. County. The policemen were caught on amateur video brutally…
Nixon Releases Watergate Tapes to Investigators: April 29, 1974
During a nationally televised address from the White House, on this day in 1974, President Nixon announced that he was going to release the White House tapes to the House Judiciary Committee which subpoenaed the tapes of 42 White House conversations. One of those tapes later became known as the “smoking gun”, in which…
When The Leader of the Soviet Union Sent a Letter to an American fifth-grader :April 25, 1983
On April 25, 1983, Yuri Andropov, the Russian Leader of the Soviet Union, invited the fifth-grader Samantha Smith to visit the Soviet Union in response to a letter the young girl had sent to him in December 1982, asking if the Soviets were planning to start a nuclear war with the United States. Answering the…
Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy’s Assassin Receives the Death Penalty: April 23, 1968
Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant born in Jerusalem, shot and killed Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, California, during the campaign season for the 1968 presidential election. Almost a year later, on April 23, 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to the death penalty for the assassination of…
