Today’s highlights in history: 1918: Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks. 1821: Spain ceded Florida to the United States. 1862: During the Civil War, Congress approved the Second Confiscation Act, which declared that all slaves taking refuge behind Union lines were to be set free. 1938: Aviator Douglas Corrigan took off from New York, saying he was headed for California; he ended up in Ireland, supposedly by accident, earning the nickname “Wrong Way Corrigan.” 1955: Disneyland had its opening day in Anaheim, Calif. 1962: The United States conducted its last atmospheric nuclear test to date, detonating a 20-kiloton device, code-named Little Feller I, at the Nevada Test Site. 1975: An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind. 1981: 114 people were killed when a pair of suspended walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed during a tea dance. 1996: TWA Flight 800, a Europe-bound Boeing 747, exploded and crashed off Long Island, N.Y., shortly after leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people aboard. 1998: Nicholas II, last of the Romanov czars, was formally buried in Russia 80 years after he and his family were slain by the Bolsheviks.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 14:10:43 +0000
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