Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1862

Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.

1927

An audience in New York saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television.

1939

Italy invaded Albania.

1945

During World War II, American planes intercepted a Japanese fleet that was headed for Okinawa on a suicide mission.

1948

The World Health Organization was founded.

1949

The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ''South Pacific'' opened on Broadway.

1953

The U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden to be secretary-general.

1957

New York City's last electric trolley completed its final run from Queens to Manhattan.

1969

The Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.

1976

China's leadership deposed Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and appointed Hua Kuo-feng prime minister and first deputy chairman of the Communist Party.

1990

Former national security adviser John M. Poindexter was convicted of five counts at his Iran-Contra trial. (A federal appeals court later reversed the convictions.)

1990

A display of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs opened at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center, the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges. (Both were acquitted).

1994

Civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. In the months that followed, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu intellectuals were slaughtered.

1998

Mary Bono, the widow of entertainer-turned-politician Sonny Bono, won a special election to serve out the remainder of her husband's congressional term.

1999

Yugoslav authorities sealed off Kosovo's main border crossings, preventing ethnic Albanians from leaving as the wave of refugees approached the half-million mark.

1947

Auto pioneer Henry Ford died in Dearborn, Mich., at age 83.