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Highlight in History
On Feb. 16, 1968, the nation’s first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated in Haleyville, Ala., as the speaker of the Alabama House, Rankin Fite, placed a call from the mayor’s office in City Hall to a red telephone at the police station that was answered by U.S. Rep. Tom Bevill.
On this date
In 1804, Lt. Stephen Decatur led a successful raid into Tripoli Harbor to burn the U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia, which had fallen into the hands of pirates.
In 1923, the burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt by English archaeologist Howard Carter.
In 1959, Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba a month and a half after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.
In 1961, the United States launched the Explorer 9 satellite.
In 1977, Janani Luwum, the Anglican archbishop of Uganda, and two other men were killed in what Ugandan authorities said was an automobile accident.
In 1987, John Demjanjuk went on trial in Jerusalem, accused of being “Ivan the Terrible,” a guard at the Treblinka Nazi concentration camp. (Demjanjuk was convicted, but the conviction ended up being overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.)
In 1988, seven people were shot to death during an office rampage in Sunnyvale, Calif., by a man who was obsessed with a co-worker, who was wounded in the attack. (The gunman, Richard Farley, is under sentence of death.)
In 1998, a China Airlines Airbus A300-600R trying to land in fog near Taipei, Taiwan, crashed, killing all 196 people on board, plus six on the ground.
Ten years ago
More than 100,000 people demonstrated in the streets of San Francisco to protest a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq. Michael Waltrip raced past leader Jimmie Johnson to win the rain-shortened Daytona 500 for the second time in three years. Eleanor “Sis” Daley, the matriarch of Chicago’s Daley political clan, died at age 95.
Five years ago
President George W. Bush, on a six-day tour of Africa, made his first stop in Benin (beh-NEEN’) before flying on to Tanzania. John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, picked up a total of 50 GOP national convention delegates from Michigan and Louisiana. A car plowed into a group of street-racing fans obscured by a cloud of tire smoke on an isolated Maryland highway, killing eight people in the early morning darkness.
One year ago
A federal judge in Detroit ordered life in prison for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian man who’d tried to blow up a packed Northwest jetliner with a bomb concealed in his underwear.
New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, died of an apparent asthma attack in Syria while reporting on the uprising against its president; he was 43. Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter died in West Palm Beach, Fla., at age 57.
National, International News
Today in History for Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013
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Last-minute fortune seekers buy Powerball tickets
It’s all about the odds.
With four out of every five possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, someone is almost sure to win the game’s highest jackpot, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars — and that’s after taxes. -
Today in History for Sunday, May 19, 2013
Today is Sunday, May 19, the 139th day of 2013. There are 226 days left in the year.
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Bombs targeting Sunnis kill at least 76 in Iraq
Bombs ripped through Sunni areas in Baghdad and surrounding areas Friday, killing at least 76 people in the deadliest day in Iraq in more than eight months. The major spike in sectarian bloodshed heightened fears the country could again be veering toward civil war.
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Tornado-ravaged Texas town to start recovery
Residents whose homes were torn apart or blown away by a North Texas deadly tornado can soon return to retrieve what belongings may be left and start cleaning up, authorities said Friday.
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Conn. commuter trains collide; 60 go to hospitals
Two commuter trains serving New York City collided in Connecticut during Friday’s evening rush hour, sending 60 people to the hospital, including five with critical injuries, Gov. Dannel Malloy said.
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Record Powerball jackpot inspires office pools
In workplaces across the nation, Americans are inviting their colleagues to chip in $2 for a Powerball ticket and a shared daydream.
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Today in History for Saturday, May 18, 2013
Today is Saturday, May 18, the 138th day of 2013. There are 227 days left in the year.
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Big retailers back safety accord in Bangladesh
Some of the world’s largest retailers have agreed to a first-of-its-kind pact to improve safety at some of Bangladesh’s garment factories following a building collapse that killed more than 1,100 workers in the country last month.
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Amtrak unveils locomotives to replace aging fleet
Amtrak has unveiled at a plant in California the first of 70 new locomotives, marking what the national passenger railroad service said it hopes will be a new era of better reliability, streamlined maintenance and more energy efficiency.
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Police ID suspect in New Orleans mass shooting
Police late Monday identified a 19-year-old man as a suspect in the shooting of about 20 people during a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans, saying several people had identified him as the gunman captured by surveillance camera videos.
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