Today In History

In 461: According to tradition, St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, died in Saul.

In 1776: British forces evacuated Boston during the Revolutionary War.

In 1905: Eleanor Roosevelt married Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York.

In 1906: President Theodore Roosevelt used the term “muckrake” in a speech to the Gridiron Club in Washington.

In 1910: The Camp Fire Girls organization was formed. (It was formally presented to the public on this day two years later.)

In 1941: The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington D.C.

In 1942: General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.

In 1950: Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced they had created a new radioactive element, “californium.”

In 1966: A U.S. midget submarine located a missing hydrogen bomb which had fallen from an American bomber into the Mediterranean off Spain.

In 1969: Golda Meir became prime minister of Israel.

In 1970: The United States cast its first veto in the U.N. Security Council. (The U.S. killed a resolution that would have condemned Britain for failure to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.)