The first Trial of Saddam Hussein began on October 19, 2005. He was sentenced to death November 5, 2006 and was executed (below) the following month on December 30.
Richard “Dick” Wayne Van Dyke 93 years old today.
Dick Van Dyke is the Star of The Dick Van Dyke Show on CBS (1961 – 1966) and Diagnosis: Murder on CBS (1993 – 2001).He won a SAG Life Achievement award in 2012 and a Disney Legend Award in 1998. He also starred in the 1964 classic Mary Poppins and was cast in the film’s sequel, Mary Poppins Returns.
The Fugitive Slave Act was declared by the U.S. Congress on this day in 1850. The act allowed slave owners to claim slaves that had escaped into other states.
September 18, 1975, after crisscrossing the country with her captors– or conspirators–for more than a year, Patty Hearst, or “Tania,” as she called herself, was captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. Despite her later claim that she had been brainwashed by the SLA, she was convicted on March 20, 1976, and sentenced to seven years in prison. Her prison sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was released in February 1979. She later married her bodyguard. In 2001, she received a full pardon from President Bill Clinton.
Patty Hearst poses with a Symbionese Liberation Army poster.
On this day in 2001, Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., and later tested positive for anthrax, were sent to the New York Post and NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw.
Infamous Cuban dictator and revolutionary Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and served as his country’s Prime Minister until 1976 and President from 1976 to 2008.
Present day Mexico City was captured by Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez from the Aztec Indians on this day in 1521.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980)
Iconic director Alfred Hitchcock is known as The Master of Suspense for his classic films such as Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), Dial M for Murder (1954), and The Birds (1963). One of the most influential filmmakers of all time, he directed over 50 feature films, and his work continues to circulate through film circles and classic movie channels.
It was on this day in 1995.
Mickey Charles Mantle (October 20, 1931 – August 13, 1995)
David Richard Berkowitz(Richard David Falco) turned 65 June 1st.
It was on this day in 1969.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten walking to court where a Los Angeles jury found them, along with Charles, Manson, guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy for the Tate-LaBianca killings.
Cult leader Charles Manson (center).
Franklin D. Roosevelt was stricken with polio on this day in 1921. He was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down and avoided being seen using his wheelchair in public, but his disability was well known and became a major part of his image.
Roosevelt (second from left) supporting himself on crutches in 1924.
In 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt (39) is pictured in his leg braces with wife Eleanor to his right. In 1938, he founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, leading to the development of polio vaccines.
The Smithsonian Institution was chartered by the U.S. Congress on this day in 1846. The "Nation’s Attic" was made possible by $500,000 given by scientist Joseph Smithson.
On this day in 1988, President Reagan signed a measure providing $20,000 payments to Japanese-Americans who were interned by the U.S. government during World War II.
The first prisoners arrive in March of 1942 at the Japanese evacuee community established in Owens Valley in Manzanar, Calif.
