On this day in 2006, Warren Jeffs, the leader of a polygamist sect of Mormons, is arrested by a highway patrol officer during a traffic stop in Nevada. At the time of his arrest, Jeffs was facing charges in Arizona and Utah of arranging marriages between men and underage girls. ...read more

On this day in 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falls apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. Over the course of 24 hours, the ...read more

While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants—the white woman’s husband and her brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound ...read more

King Cetshwayo, the last great ruler of Zululand, is captured by the British following his defeat in the British-Zulu War. He was subsequently sent into exile. Cetshwayo’s defiance of British rule in southern Africa led to Britain’s invasion of Zululand in 1879. In 1843, Britain ...read more

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the African American civil rights movement reaches its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks to about 250,000 people attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The demonstrators–black and white, ...read more

On this day in 1941, more than 23,000 Hungarian Jews are murdered by the Gestapo in occupied Ukraine. The German invasion of the Soviet Union had advanced to the point of mass air raids on Moscow and the occupation of parts of Ukraine. On August 26, Hitler displayed the joys of ...read more

The U.S. Air Force gets its first ace (a designation traditionally awarded for five enemy aircraft confirmed shot down) since the Korean War. Captain Richard S. Ritchie, flying with his “backseater” (radar intercept officer), Captain Charles B. DeBellevue, in an F-4 out of Udorn ...read more

It is reported in three Soviet newspapers that North Vietnamese pilots are undergoing training in a secret Soviet air base to fly supersonic interceptors against U.S. aircraft. This only confirms earlier reports that the Soviets had initiated close relations with North Vietnam ...read more

Reverend Thomas Lee Hayes, speaking for the National Mobilization Committee, announces that there will be a massive protest march on October 21 in Washington. In the Senate, Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) made a proposal endorsed by 10 other senators to bring a peace plan before the ...read more

The Democratic National Convention in Chicago endorses the Johnson administration’s platform on the war in Vietnam and chooses Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s nominee for president. The decision on the party platform resulted in a contentious three-hour debate ...read more

On this day in 1977, Brazilian soccer superstar Pelé leads the New York Cosmos to victory in the Soccer Bowl, the championship of the North American Soccer League (NASL). With the help of international talent on its rosters, the NASL enjoyed surprising success in the mid-to-late ...read more

On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson is picketed by woman suffragists in front of the White House, who demand that he support an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee women the right to vote. Wilson had a history of lukewarm support for women’s suffrage, ...read more

Convinced they will have a better chance surviving the desert than the raging rapids that lay ahead, three men leave John Wesley Powell’s expedition through the Grand Canyon and scale the cliffs to the plateau above. Though it turned out the men had made a serious mistake, they ...read more

Canadian author Robertson Davies is born on this day in the town of Thamesville in Ontario, Canada. Davies was the son of a publisher and politician who owned the Canadian newspaper the Peterborough Examiner. He attended college in Ontario and later in Oxford, England. He stayed ...read more

If the legendary gospel vocalist Mahalia Jackson had been somewhere other than the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on this day in 1963, her place in history would still have been assured purely on the basis of her musical legacy. But it is almost impossible to imagine Mahalia ...read more

Director John Huston dies of pneumonia at age 81 on this day in 1987, after a lifelong career in entertainment. Huston was the son of actor Walter Huston, a vaudeville performer who began appearing in films in 1929. John Huston performed on the vaudeville circuit from age three. ...read more

An air show involving military jets at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany turns tragic on this day in 1988 when three jets collide in mid-air and fall into the crowd. Sixty-nine of the 100,000 spectators died and hundreds more were injured. Toward the end of the NATO-sponsored show ...read more

The bodies of Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada are discovered at the Gatorwood Apartments, near the campus of the University of Florida. Their murders came two days after the discovery that three young female students had been killed and mutilated in two separate locations near ...read more