BRIAN THOMAS
Former professional basketball player Michael Jeffrey Jordan is 57 years
old today. He played 15 seasons in the NBA, winning six championships
with the Chicago Bulls. He is considered by many fans of the sport the
greatest basketball player of all time. Known by his initials, MJ is the
principal owner of the Charlotte Hornets basketball team.
On this day in 1931, one of the most famous gangsters of all time Al Capone
is sentenced to eleven years in Federal prison for tax evasion. He is also
fined $80,000. This is the beginning of the end for Capone and his criminal
empire, that in the 1920s and 1930s, had virtually run the city of Chicago
and its environs.
Cell 181 in Alcatraz where Capone was imprisoned.
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947)
.
Capone was released early from Alcatraz in 1939 for good behavior,
after spending his final year in a prison hospital, suffering from
syphilis. He died in 1947 at age 48 at his home in Palm Island,
Florida.
Geronimo (Mescalero-Chiricahua) “the one who yawns”
(June 1829 – February 17, 1909)
Apache chief Geronimo and the Indians he led, surrendered in Skeleton
Canyon in Arizona to U.S. Gen. Nelson Miles. For 30 years, the mighty
Native American warrior had battled to protect his tribe’s homeland;
however, by 1886 the Apaches were exhausted and outnumbered. Gen.
Miles accepted Geronimo’s surrender, making him the last Indian warrior
to formally give in to U.S. forces and signaling the end of the Indian Wars
in the Southwest. Geronimo died of pneumonia on February 17, 1909, as
a prisoner of the United States at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
CARLATA BRADLEY
On this day in 1990, Nelson Mandela was freed by South Africa after
27 years in captivity.
A bronze statue depicting former South African president Nelson Mandela as he walked to freedom outside the Groot Drakenstein
prison in Paarl.
On this day in 1945, during World War II, the Yalta Agreement was
signed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt (center) British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill (left) and Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
The leaders agreed to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender
and began plans for a post-war world. Most of the agreements were
initially kept secret, but the revelations of the conference particulars became controversial after Soviet-American wartime cooperation degenerated into the Cold War.
CAMILLE BOHANNON
On this day in 1943 during World War II, the Soviets announced that
they had broken the Nazi siege of Leningrad, which had began in September of 1941. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed between September 1941 and May 1943 in the fighting.
Antiaircraft guns guarding the sky of Leningrad, in front of St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
On January 18, 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin puts flowers
on a monument at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, marking the 75th
anniversary of the battle that broke the Seige of Leningrad, in St.
Petersburg, Russia.
On this day in 1912, after a two-month ordeal, the expedition of
British explorer Robert Falcon Scott (above) arrives at the South
Pole only to find that Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer,
had preceded them by just over a month. Disappointed, the
exhausted explorers prepared for a long and difficult journey
back to their base camp.
Weather on that return journey was exceptionally bad, two
members perished, and Scott and the other two survivors
were trapped in their tent by a storm only 11 miles from their
base camp. Scott wrote a final entry in his diary in late March
and the frozen bodies of he and his two compatriots were
recovered eight months later.
This notebook spent 100 years buried in Antarctic ice, left there by explorer Robert Falcon Scott.
