Schindler’s List, starring Liam Neeson in the true story of a
German businessman who saves the lives of more than a
thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust, opens in
theaters.

The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and took
home seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best
Director.

It was the first Best Director win for Spielberg, who had been
nominated in the category for three of his earlier films: 1977’s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1981’s Raiders of the
Lost Ark and 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

Oskar Schindler (1908 – 1974)

Liam Neeson (72)

Ben Kingsley and Liam Neeson

Steven Allan Spielberg

In Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who
organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,
” is condemned to death by an Israeli war crimes tribunal.

He claimed he was just following orders, but the judges
disagreed, finding him guilty on all counts on December
15 and sentencing him to die.

George Washington, the American revolutionary leader and
first president of the United States, died at his estate in
Mount Vernon, Virginia. He was 67 years old.

Modern medical authors largely have concluded that the
former president likely died from extensive bloodletting
which may have caused hypovolemic shock.  

 

George Washington’s Death Mask.

President Abraham Lincoln announced a grant of amnesty for
Emilie Todd Helm, his wife Mary Lincoln’s half sister and the
widow of a Confederate general.

The pardon was one of the first under Lincoln’s Proclamation
of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which he had announced less
than a week before.

Emilie Todd Helm (1836 – 1930)