Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. He was 39 years old.
Only 31 days after assuming office, William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, dies of pneumonia at the White House.
On this day in 1982, hockey sensation Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers finishes the NHL season with 212 points, the first and only player in NHL history to break the 200-point barrier.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established by 12 Western nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Portugal.
Bill France Jr., the leading force behind the transformation of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) from a regional sport into a multibillion-dollar industry with fans worldwide, is born on this day in 1933 in Washington, D.C. France's father, William France Sr. (1909-92), founded NASCAR in 1948.
Just to name a few
Comments(2)