There are 245 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 30, 1945, as Soviet troops approached his Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler took his own life along with that of his wife of one day, Eva Braun.
On this date:
In 1789, George Washington took the oath of office in New York as the first president of the United States.
In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for 60 million francs, the equivalent of about $15 million.
In 1812, Louisiana became the 18th state of the Union.
In 1900, engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a train wreck near Vaughan, Mississippi, after staying at the controls in a successful effort to save the passengers.
In 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed a resolution officially confirming the name of Hoover Dam, which had also come to be known as “Boulder Dam.”
In 1958, Britain’s Life Peerages Act 1958 allowed women to become members of the House of Lords.
In 1970, President Richard Nixon announced the U.S. was sending troops into Cambodia, an action that sparked widespread protest.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon announced the resignations of top aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean, who was actually fired.
In 1975, the Vietnam War ended as the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces.
In 1983, blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters died in Westmont, Illinois, at age 68.
In 1993, top-ranked women’s tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a match in Hamburg, Germany, by a man who described himself as a fan of second-ranked German player Steffi Graf. (The man, convicted of causing grievous bodily harm, was given a suspended sentence.)
In 2004, Arabs expressed outrage at graphic photographs of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by U.S. military police; President George W. Bush condemned the mistreatment of prisoners, saying “that’s not the way we do things in America.”
