This Day in History

In 1914, “Stay Down Here Where You Belong,” an antiwar song by Irving Berlin, was published by Waterson, Berlin & Snyder Co. in New York.

In 1936, Helen Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy, died in Forest Hills, New York, at age 70.

In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged Communist influence and infiltration in the U.S. motion picture industry.

In 1964, the 31st president of the United States, Herbert C. Hoover, died in New York at age 90.

In 1967, seven men were convicted in Meridian, Mississippi, of violating the civil rights of three slain civil rights workers.

In 1968, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

In 1973, in the so-called “Saturday Night Massacre,” special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox was dismissed and Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus resigned.

In 1981, a bungled armored truck robbery carried out by members of radical groups in Nanuet, New York, left a guard and two police officers dead.

In 1994, actor Burt Lancaster died in Los Angeles at age 80.

In 2011, Moammar Gadhafi, 69, Libya’s dictator for 42 years, was killed as revolutionary fighters overwhelmed his hometown of Sirte and captured the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.

Ten years ago: A U.S. Army staff sergeant, Ivan “Chip” Frederick, pleaded guilty to abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. (Frederick was sentenced to eight years in prison; he was paroled in 2007.) After being just three outs from getting swept in the AL championship series three nights earlier, the Boston Red Sox finally beat the New York Yankees, winning Game 7 in a 10-3 shocker to become the first major league team to overcome a 3-0 postseason series deficit.

Five years ago: Ignoring appeals by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and even rock star Sting, Iran sentenced an Iranian-American academic, Kian Tajbakhsh, to 12 years in prison for his alleged role in anti-government protests. Afghanistan’s election commission ordered a runoff in the disputed presidential poll. (The runoff was later canceled, and President Hamid Karzai proclaimed the winner.)

One year ago: A suicide bomber slammed his explosives-laden car into a busy cafe in Baghdad, killing some three dozen people. In Egypt, masked gunmen fired on a Coptic church holding a wedding in the Cairo district of Warraq, killing five people.