Hello again, Headliners! Today’s birthday belongs to W.C. Handy, Father of the Blues. Here are some other Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear:

• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: British and Hessian units capture Fort Washington from the Patriots.




• 1776 – American Revolution: The United Provinces (Low Countries) recognize the independence of the United States.
• 1822 – American Old West: Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail.







• 1849 – A Russian court sentences writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor.
• 1885 – Canadian rebel leader of the Métis and “Father of Manitoba” Louis Riel is executed for treason.







• 1907 – Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory join to form Oklahoma, which is admitted as the 46th U.S. state.
• 1914 – The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens.
• 1940 – Holocaust: In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.




• 1940 – New York City’s “Mad Bomber” George Metesky places his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by Consolidated Edison.
• 1945 – UNESCO is founded.




• 1965 – Venera program: The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus, which will be the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet.




• 1973 – Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission.
• 1992 – The Hoxne Hoard is discovered by metal detectorist Eric Lawes in Hoxne, Suffolk.

Here is today’s Headlines Du Jour:

Hoover’s letter to MLK

POST RACIAL ‘MERKA:

Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
Steam-Powered Word-0-Matic, and your rest stop on the Information
Highway. Use our valuable bandwidth to post your news comments in
today’s open thread.