Here's Some News

Associated Press photo

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago today. Anybody doing the 40th anniversary story....? (See Ted Pease columns on Martin Luther King Jr.)

Dream On

“Oh, our government, and the press generally, won’t tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.”
—Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), civil rights leader, from his 1967 “Where Do We Go From Here?” speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia (Thanks to alert WORDster Tom Hodges)

On This Day . . .
. . . In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed by a sniper at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis (see video clip from the History Channel)
. . . In 1818, Congress approved a new national flag, with 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars.
. . . In 1841, President William Henry Harrison was the first president to die in office, of pneumonia, which he caught giving his inauguration speech.
. . . In 1850, the city of Los Angeles was incorporated.
. . . In 1945, U.S. forces liberated the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany.
. . . In 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves tied Babe Ruth’s career home run record by hitting his 714th, in Cincinnati.

Birthdays:
80 . . . Maya Angelou, poet
64 . . . Craig T. Nelson, actor
Muddy Waters (1915-1983), blues musician
Dorothea Dix (1802-1887), social reformer and humanitarian
Arthur Murray (1895-1991), ballroom-dancing instructor and entrepreneur