TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 1991

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her; Thomas re-appeared before the panel to denounce the proceedings as a “high-tech lynching.”

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1779

Polish nobleman Casimir Pulaski, fighting for American independence, died two days after being wounded during the Revolutionary War Battle of Savannah, Georgia.

1809

Just over three years after the famous Lewis and Clark expedition ended, Meriwether Lewis was found dead in a Tennessee inn, an apparent suicide; he was 35.

1905

The Juilliard School was founded as the Institute of Musical Art in New York.

1906

The San Francisco Board of Education ordered the city’s Asian students segregated in a purely “Oriental” school.

1910

Theodore Roosevelt became the first former U.S. president to fly in an airplane during a visit to St. Louis.

1968

Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, was launched with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard. The government of Panama was overthrown in a military coup.

1983

The last full-fledged handcranked telephone system in the United States went out of service as 440telephone customers in Bryant Pond, Maine, were switched over to direct-dial service.

1986

President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened two days of talks in Reykjavik, Iceland, concerning arms control and human rights.