Today in History

The U.S. Post Office issues a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.

Syria withdraws its peacekeeping force in Beirut.

Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, beginning one of the most bizarre cases in FBI history.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins televised hearings on the Vietnam War.

Dan Quayle, vice president under President George H.W. Bush.

The Big Three, American, British and Soviet leaders, meet in Yalta to discuss the war aims.

The Japanese attack the Indian Seventh Army in Burma.

The United Service Organization (U.S.O.) is formed to cater to armed forces and defense industries.

Robert Coover, novelist & short story writer.

Russell Hoban, artist and writer (Bedtime for Frances, The Mouse and His Child).

French troops take the territories of Offenburg, Appenweier and Buhl in the Ruhr as a part of the agreement ending World War I.

Betty Friedan, writer, feminist, founded the National Organization of Women in 1966.

Germany decrees British waters as part of the war zone; all ships to be sunk without warning.

Rosa Lee Parks, civil rights activist.

California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren.

Clyde Tombaugh, astronomer, discovered Pluto.

Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Jacques Prevert, French poet, screenwriter (The Visitors of the Evening, The Children of Paradise).

After an exchange of gunfire, fighting breaks out between American troops and Filipinos near Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War

Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, “the Sundance Kid.”

Fernand Leger, French painter.

France abolishes slavery in her territories and confers slaves to citizens.

Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising of debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers against the new U.S. government, fails.

The Proclamation of Trent is made.

Richard I, King of England, is freed from captivity in Germany.

Harun al-Rashid succeeds his older brother the Abbasid Caliph al-Hadi as Caliph of Baghdad.