Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1850

In a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.

1876

Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his telephone.

1911

The United States sent 20,000 troops to the Mexican border in the wake of the Mexican Revolution.

1926

The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation took place, between New York City and London.

1936

Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.

1945

During World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.

1965

A march by civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff's posse.

1975

The Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.

1981

Anti-government guerrillas in Colombia executed kidnapped American Bible translator Chester Allen Bitterman, whom they accused of being a CIA agent.

1994

The Supreme Court ruled that parodies that poke fun at an original work can be considered "fair use" that doesn't require permission from the copyright holder.

1996

Three U.S. servicemen were convicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl and sentenced by a Japanese court to up to seven years in prison.

2006

The terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba coordinates a series of bombings in Varanasi, India.

2007

Reform of the House of Lords: The British House of Commons votes to make the upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected.

2007

Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 crashes at Adisutjipto International Airport in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, killing 21 people.

2009

The Real Irish Republican Army kills two British soldiers and injures two other soldiers and two civilians at Massereene Barracks, the first British military deaths in Northern Ireland since the end of The Troubles.

2021

At least 105 die and 600 are injured in the 2021 Bata explosions in Bata, Equatorial Guinea.

1849

Horticulturist Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Mass.

1875

Composer Maurice Ravel was born in Cibourne, France.

1999

Movie director Stanley Kubrick, whose films included "Dr. Strangelove," "A Clockwork Orange" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," died in Hertfordshire, England, at age 70.