On this day in 1923, Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as the 30th president of the United States, hours after the death of President Warren G. Harding. Born July 4, 1872, in Plymouth, Vermont, Coolidge was the son of a village storekeeper. He graduated from Amherst College in ...read more

On this day in 1975, a chartered Boeing 707 jetliner crashes in the Atlas Mountains near Agadir, a coastal city in southern Morocco. All 188 people aboard the plane were killed, in the fourth worst air disaster to that date.Owned by the Jordanian airline Alia and chartered to ...read more

If pop songs, like hurricanes, were rated on an objective scale according to their ability to devastate the pop-cultural landscape, then the song that reached the top of the American pop charts on this day in 1996 was a Category 5 monster. It first made landfall in Florida as a ...read more

Sir Roger David Casement, an Irish-born diplomat who in 1911 was knighted by King George V, is executed for his role in Ireland’s Easter Rising.Casement was an Irish Protestant who served as a British diplomat during the early part of the 20th century. He won international ...read more

On August 3, 1988, Soviet authorities free Mathias Rust, the daring young West German pilot who landed a rented Cessna on Moscow’s Red Square in 1987. Rust was serving a four-year sentence at a labor camp when the Soviets approved his extradition as a goodwill gesture to the ...read more

From the Spanish port of Palos, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sets sail in command of three ships—the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina—on a journey to find a western sea route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.On October 12, the expedition ...read more

On August 3, 1958, the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus accomplishes the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole. The world’s first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus dived at Point Barrow, Alaska, and traveled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top ...read more

CBS-TV news shows pictures of men from the First Battalion, Ninth Marines setting fire to huts in the village of Cam Na, six miles west of Da Nang, despite reports that the Viet Cong had already fled the area. The film report sparked indignation and condemnation of the U.S. ...read more

U.S. Marine units commence Operation Prairie, a sequel to an earlier operation in the area (Operation Hastings), which involves a sweep just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) against three battalions of the North Vietnamese 324B Division. An additional 1,500 Marines from ...read more

On this day in 1949, after a damaging three-year battle to win both players and fans, the rival Basketball Association of America (BAA) and National Basketball League (NBL) merge to form the National Basketball Association (NBA).The BAA incorporated in 1946, challenging the ...read more

An ominous sign of the troubles to come, the Donner party finds a note warning the emigrants that their expected route through the mountains ahead is nearly impassable.The Donner party had left Springfield, Illinois, three months earlier. Led by two wealthy brothers, Jacob and ...read more

The last entry of the serialized novel Great Expectations is published on this day in 1861. The book had been serialized in Dickens’ literary circular, All the Year Round. The novel tells the story of young Pip, a poor orphan who comes to believe he will inherit a ...read more

On this day in 2008, the first published photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s newborn twins, Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon, go up on People magazine’s Web site, People.com. A 19-page photo spread followed in the magazine’s August 18, 2008, issue.People won the rights to ...read more

In hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Whittaker Chambers accuses former State Department official Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. The accusation set into motion a series of events that eventually resulted in the ...read more

Thomas Francis Meagher, an Irish revolutionary who later served as a general in the Union army during the U.S. Civil War, is born in Waterford, Ireland.A Catholic, Meagher was educated by Jesuits, and studied law in Dublin. As a young man, he became deeply involved in Young ...read more

On this day in 1977, “The Spy Who Loved Me,” starring Roger Moore as the suave superspy James Bond, known for his love of fast cars and dangerous women, is released in theaters across America. The film features one of the most memorable Bond cars of all time–a sleek, powerful ...read more

On this day in 1797, Jeffrey Amherst, who twice refused the position of commander of British forces against the rebelling American patriots, dies at his estate, called Montreal, in England.Amherst is remembered foremost for victory against the French in the Seven Years’ War, ...read more

On the afternoon of this day in 1914, two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany declares war on France, moving ahead with a long-held strategy, conceived by the former chief of staff of the German army, Alfred von Schlieffen, for a two-front war against France and Russia. ...read more