74 years ago today, Bugsy Siegel, is shot and killed at his mistress Virginia Hill’s home in Beverly Hills, California. Siegel had been talking to his associate Allen Smiley when three bullets were fired through the window and into his head, killing him instantly.
Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker and nurse who smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, passed away on this date in 2008.
Exactly 100 years ago today, Chanel No. 5, the world’s most iconic perfume, officially debuts in Coco Chanel’s boutique on the Rue Cambon in Paris, France.
56 years ago today, Malcolm X is assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity in Washington Heights.
136 years ago today, Mark Twain publishes his famous—and famously controversial—novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (US version).
24 years ago today, in South Africa, four apartheid-era police officers, appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, admit to the 1977 killing of Bantu Stephen Biko, a leader of grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement.
64 years ago today, machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs—now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.
101 years ago today, after it was ratified a year earlier on 16 January 1919, prohibition officially goes into effect, with the passage of the Volstead Act (also known as National Prohibition Act).
Ten years ago today, one of the biggest moments in my life, the very day I changed my title from “writer” to “author”, I officially launched my first book: BLANTIKA – LINIMASA.
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce peoples surrenders to U.S. General Nelson A. Miles in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana, declaring “Hear me, my chiefs: My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”
63 years ago today, the most acclaimed musical of all time, West Side Story, opens at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.
143 years ago today, one of the most notable and iconic of Native American warriors, Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.
