TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Thursday, Feb. 1, the 32nd day of 2024. There are 334 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
■ In Feb. 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during reentry, killing all seven of its crew members: commander Rick Husband; pilot William McCool; payload commander Michael Anderson; mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark; and payload specialist Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space.
ON THIS DATE:
■ In 1790, the U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time in New York, but because only three of its six justices were present recessed until the next day.
■ In 1862, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a poem by Julia Ward Howe, was published in the Atlantic Monthly.
■ In 1865, abolitionist John S. Rock became the first Black lawyer admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court.
■ In 1943, during World War II, one of America’s most highly decorated military units, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up almost exclusively of Japanese-Americans, was authorized.
■ In 1959, men in Switzerland rejected giving women the right to vote by a more than 2-1 referendum margin. (Swiss women gained the right to vote in 1971.)
■ In 1960, four Black college students began a sit-in protest at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they’d been refused service.
■ In 1979, Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini received a tumultuous welcome in Tehran as he ended nearly 15 years of exile.
■ In 1991, 34 people were killed when an arriving USAir jetliner crashed atop a commuter plane on a runway at Los Angeles
International Airport.
■ In 1994, Jeff Gillooly, Tonya Harding’s ex-husband, pleaded guilty in Portland, Oregon, to racketeering for his part in the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan in exchange for a 24-month sentence and a $100,000 fine.
■ In 2011, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced he would not run for a new term in September elections but rejected protesters’ demands he step down immediately and leave the country.
■ In 2013, Hillary Rodham Clinton formally resigned as America’s 67th secretary of state, capping a four-year tenure that saw her shatter records for the number of countries visited.
■ In 2016, the World Health Organization declared a global emergency over the explosive spread of the
Zika virus, which was linked to birth defects in the Americas.
■ In 2020, as China’s death toll from the new coronavirus rose to
259, Beijing criticized Washington’s order barring entry to most foreigners who had visited China in the past two weeks.
■ In 2021, actor Dustin Diamond, best known as “Screech” on the 1990s sitcom “Saved by the Bell,” died of cancer at age 44.
■ In 2023, the FBI searched President Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents.