1865 – Congress passes the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in America (passes 121-24). 1865 – General Robert E. Lee named Commander-in-Chief of Confederate Armies during US Civil War. 1943 – Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrenders to Soviet troops at Stalingrad. 1950 – US President Harry Truman publicly announces support for the development of a hydrogen bomb. 1958 – Explorer 1 was the first artificial space satellite orbited by the United States, marking the country’s entry into the space race. 1966 – The Soviets launched Luna 9, the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon. 1977 – The Pompidou Centre, a French national cultural centre named for former president Georges Pompidou, opened in Paris. 1985 – South African President P. W. Botha offers to free Nelson Mandela if he denounces violence. 2001 – Libyan national Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was convicted in the 1988 Pan Am flight 103 bombing, in which 270 people were killed; in 2009 the Scottish government released Megrahi from prison after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Births & Deaths:1606 – British provocateur Guy Fawkes—one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, who sought to blow up Parliament and to assassinate King James I for his repression of Roman Catholics—was executed in London. 1981 – American singer and actor Justin Timberlake, who was a member of the hugely successful “boy band” *NSYNC before launching a solo career, was born in Memphis, Tennessee.
Sport: 2015 – 17 year old Lydia Ko of New Zealand becomes the youngest golfer in men’s or women’s golf history to be ranked No. 1 in the world.
Music: 1679 – Jean-Baptiste Lully’s opera “Bellerophon” premieres at the Palais-Royal in Paris.
TV & Film: 1949 -1st daytime soap on TV “These Are My Children” (NBC in Chicago).
