In 1820, U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington, D.C.
In 1929, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel sank a Canadian-registered schooner, the I’m Alone, in the Gulf of Mexico. (The schooner was suspected of carrying bootleg liquor.)
In 1933, during Prohibition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal.
In 1941, the Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington state went into operation.
In 1945, the Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.
In 1958, movie producer Mike Todd (husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor) and three other people were killed in the crash of Todd’s private plane near Grants, N.M.
In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson named General William C. Westmoreland to be the Army’s new Chief of Staff.
In 1978, Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of "The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotel towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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Ten years ago: Journeying to the cradle of Christianity, Pope John Paul II knelt and prayed in Bethlehem at the traditional spot of Jesus’ birth.
Some 1,100 women denied jobs with the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency and its broadcast branch, the Voice of America, won $508 million from the government in the largest-ever settlement of a federal sex discrimination case.
Five years ago: Terri Schiavo’s parents begged a federal appeals court to order the severely brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube reinserted after their emergency request was turned down by a federal judge in Tampa, Fla. (The court refused to intervene.) A woman claimed to have found a fingertip while eating Wendy’s chili at a restaurant in San Jose, Calif., costing the fast-food chain millions in lost sales before she admitted it was a hoax. (The woman, Anna Ayala, and her husband, Jaime Plascencia, later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to file a false insurance claim and attempted grand theft and were sentenced to prison.)
One year ago: A single-engine turboprop plane headed to a Montana ski resort nose-dived into a cemetery short of a runway in Butte, killing all 14 aboard, including seven children. The Mount Redoubt volcano in Alaska began erupting (it took about six months to settle down). British reality TV star Jade Goody died in Essex at age 27 after battling cervical cancer. Friends and family gathered in a small Hudson Valley, N.Y. town to say a final farewell to Tony Award-winning actress Natasha Richardson, 45, who died in a skiing accident.
Today's birthdays:
USA Today founder Allen H. Neuharth is 86. Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim is 80. Actor William Shatner is 79. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is 76. Actor M. Emmet Walsh is 75. Actor-singer Jeremy Clyde is 69. Writer James Patterson is 63. CNN newscaster Wolf Blitzer is 62. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is 62. Actress Fanny Ardant is 61. Sportscaster Bob Costas is 58. Country singer James House is 55. Actress Lena Olin is 55. Singer-actress Stephanie Mills is 53. Actor Matthew Modine is 51. Country musician Tim Beeler (Flynnville Train) is 42. Actress Anne Dudek is 35. Actor Cole Hauser is 35. Actress Kellie Williams is 34. Rock musician John Otto (Limp Bizkit) is 33. Rapper Mims is 29.
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