On this day in 1942, the U.S. 1st Marine Division begins Operation Watchtower, the first U.S. offensive of the war, by landing on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands.

SANDY KOZEL

On this day in 1945, the American B-29 bomber, known as the Enola
Gay,(above) dropped the first atomic bomb on an inhabited area. The bomb named "Little  Boy" was dropped over the center of Hiroshima,
Japan. An estimated 140,000 people were killed that morning.

LTJG Kennedy (standing at far right) with his crew on PT-109 in 1943.

On this day in 1943, future President John F. Kennedy was serving as the
commander of a torpedo boat in the Solomon Islands when his ship was
fired upon by the Japanese navy.   
 

As a young man, Kennedy had desperately wanted to go into the Navy but
was originally rejected because of chronic health problems, particularly a
back injury he had sustained playing football while attending Harvard
University. In 1941, though, his politically connected father used his
influence to get Jack, as he  was called, into the Navy. In 1942,
Kennedy volunteered for PT (motorized torpedo) boat duty in the
Pacific.   

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

On this day in 1945, a U.S. Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor
of New York City’s Empire State Building, killing 14 people and
injuring 26 others. The freak accident was caused by heavy fog. The
B-25  Mitchell bomber, with two pilots and one passenger aboard,
was flying from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to LaGuardia Airport
in New York City.

A fire that was started by the crash and was put out in 40 minutes. It
is the only fire at such a height that has been successfully put out.

An elevator operator, Betty Lou Oliver, survived a fall of 75 floors, a
Guinness World Record for the longest fall survived in an elevator.

B-25 Mitchell like the one that crashed into the Empire State Building.

TIM MAGUIRE

On this day in 1996, a single homemade pipe bomb left in a knapsack exploded amid a crowd of spectators in Centennial Olympic Park,
near the main sites of the Olympic Games in Atlanta. The blast
caused by the crude device killed one person and injured 112
others.  

Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber.