George Wallace was the 45th Governor of Alabama, a position he occupied for four terms.
June 1963
May 1972
George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998)
In his later years, Wallace suffered from deafness and Parkinson’s disease. He died of septic shock from a bacterial infection in Jackson Hospital in Montgomery on September 13, 1998. He suffered from respiratory problems in addition to complications from his gunshot spinal injury.
On this day in 1965, U.S. President Johnson (center) signed into law Social Security Act that established Medicare and Medicaid. It went into effect the following year. Former President Harry S. Truman is seated on the right.
The USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on this day in 1945. The ship had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian. Only 316 out of 1,196 men aboard survived the attack.
An artists illustration of the attack on The USS Indianapolis.
John Wilkes Booth(May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865)
Public testimony at the Iran-Contra hearing began on this day in 1987 with testimony from Oliver North.
Oliver Laurence North will be 75 in October.
On this day in 1981, United States President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
President Ronald W. Reagan talks with Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O’Conner at the White House on July 15, 1981.
Former Beatle drummer Ringo Starr (Sir Richard Starkey) is 78 today.
The amended Declaration of Independence, prepared by Thomas Jefferson, was approved and signed by John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress in America on this day in 1776.
The U.S. Military Academy officially opened at West Point, NY. on this day in 1802.
On this day in 1994, The U.S. Figure Skating Association stripped Tonya Harding (left) of the 1994 national championship and banned her from the organization for life for an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan (right).
Nancy Kerrigan just after the attack.
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne(June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010)
Twentieth-century African-American singer and actress Lena Horne famously sang "Stormy Weather," won a Grammy Award for a 1981 album entitled Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, and appeared in film versions of The Wiz, Broadway Rhythm, and Ziegfeld Follies.
Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. Horne died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010, at the age of 92.