1894 The Rise and Fall of Errett Cord
Errett Lobban Cord was born in Warrensburg, Missouri, on this day in 1894. Cord moved to Los Angeles while he was in high school and remained there after his graduation, starting a number of car dealerships.
1864 Battle of Peachtree Creek
On this day, General John Bell Hood's Confederate force attack William T. Sherman's troops outside of Atlanta, Georgia, but are repulsed with heavy losses.
1869 Mark Twain's book The Innocents Abroad is published
1890 Theda Bara is born
Silent-film star Theda Bara, one of cinema's first sex symbols, is born in Cincinnati.
1894 The Pullman War
During the summer of 1894, the Pullman Palace Car Company was embroiled in what proved to be one of the most bitter strikes in American history. The strike was a direct response to company chief George Pullman and his hardball tactics, most notably his decision in the midst of the Depression of 1893 to preserve profits by slashing wages and hiking up workers' rents.
1937 Guglielmo Marconi dies
Marconi played a major role in the development of early radio. Born in Italy, he studied engineering. Marconi began experimenting with crude radio devices at the age of 20, and he later moved to England, where he won government support for his work.
1944 Assassination plot against Hitler fails
On this day in 1944, Hitler cheats death as a bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him.
High German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and assassination was the only way to stop him.
1948 Truman issues first peacetime draft
President Harry S. Truman institutes a military draft with a proclamation calling for nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the next two months. Truman's action came during increasing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union.
1969 Duck Hook plan completed
A top-secret study, commissioned by presidential assistant Henry Kissinger, is completed by the office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Code-named Duck Hook, the study proposed measures for military escalation against North Vietnam.
1984 A serial-killing couple is apprehended
Alton Coleman and Debra Brown are apprehended in Evanston, Illinois, after a particularly vicious two-month crime spree that left eight people dead and many more injured. Coleman had been added to the special eleventh slot on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for actively dangerous fugitives.
courtesy of
The history channel
