On Feb. 28, 1993, a gunbattle erupted at a religious compound near Waco, Texas, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to arrest Branch Davidian leader David Koresh for stockpiling illegal weapons; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began. (On April 19 of that year, FBI agents stormed the compound with tear gas and armored vehicles, with dozens dead before the standoff was over).
On Feb. 27, 1933, Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag, was gutted by fire; Chancellor Adolf Hitler, blaming communists, used the fire to justify suspending civil liberties.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, stepsister of Anne Frank, has died at 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, where she was honorary president, announced her death on Saturday in London. King Charles III praised Schloss for her lifelong dedication to overcoming hatred and prejudice. Born in Vienna in 1929, Schloss fled to Amsterdam and became friends with Anne Frank. Both families hid from the Nazis but were eventually captured. Schloss survived Auschwitz and later moved to Britain. She became a prominent Holocaust educator, speaking worldwide and writing books. Her family remembers her as a remarkable woman devoted to remembrance and peace.
On Nov. 28, 1925, the Grand Ole Opry (known then as the WSM Barn Dance) debuted on radio station WSM in Nashville, Tennessee; it continues today as the longest-running radio broadcast in U.S. history.
On Oct. 23, 1983, 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines, were killed in a suicide truck-bombing at the U.S. Marine Corps barracks at Beirut International Airport in Lebanon, while a near-simultaneous attack on French barracks in Beirut killed 58 paratroopers.
The 80th anniversary of the official end of World War II is coming on Sept. 2. That’s the date in 1945 when the Empire of Japan formally surre…
On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, ensuring income for elderly Americans and creating a federal unemployment insurance program.
Coming into the second Donald J. Trump administration, the president called the U.S. a weak, failed nation, and proclaimed in his inaugural sp…
