The BTK killer was sentenced to 175 years in prison. (2005) Dennis Rader, who murdered 10 people in the Wichita, Kansas, area was sentenced to 10 life terms, the equivalent of 175 years, in prison.
South Africa was banned from the Tokyo Olympic Games. (1964) The country, which was banned for its apartheid policies, didn’t return to the Olympic Games in 1992.
Hitler temporarily stopped his euthanasia program. (1941) Due to strong protests, Hitler ordered a halt to euthanizing handicapped and mentally ill people. He would later resume the practice in the concentration camps in Poland.
Helium was discovered. (1868) Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen, a French astronomer, discovered the gas while observing a solar eclipse on this day. He was ridiculed at first for discovering an element in space before it was discovered on Earth.
The first black person graduated from the University of Mississippi. (1963) James Meredith graduated with a political science degree; he continued on to earn a law degree from Columbia in 1968.
Women were given the right to vote in the US. (1920) Tennessee became the 36th state to approve the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, making it law. The amendment gave every US citizen the right to vote, regardless of their gender.
A French Catholic priest was burned at the stake after being found guilty of witchcraft. (1634) Urbain Gandier was sentenced to death for making a pact with the devil. Gandier withstood torture but never admitted to witchcraft or signing the diabolical pact documents, which likely were forged.
The first female students were admitted to the Virginia Military Institute. (1997) The class of 30 women were the first female students in the institution’s 158-year history.
The Mayor of Tokyo gifted the United States 2,000 cherry trees. (1909) US President William Howard Taft accepted the gift from Yukio Ozaki and placed the trees along the Potomac River.
Hurricane Alicia hit Texas, causing almost $3 billion US Dollars in damage. (1983) The Category 3 hurricane killed 22 people. It was the first hurricane to hit land in the US mainland since Hurricane Allen in 1980. The 1,103-day gap is the longest break in US hurricane history.