History"> Today in History
• 1891 American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum dies in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Though he was gravely ill, the 81-year-old showman’s sense of humor hadn’t deserted him. He requested that a New York paper run his obituary before he died so he could enjoy reading it, and the paper obliged.
• 1927 The first simultaneous telecast of image and sound takes place on this day in 1927. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover read a speech in Washington, D.C., which was transmitted to Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, where an audience saw and heard a tiny televised image of Hoover, less than 3 inches square.
• 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower coins one of the most famous Cold War phrases when he suggests the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a “domino” effect in Southeast Asia. The so-called “domino theory” dominated U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade.
• 1945 On this day in 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato, ostensibly the greatest battleship in the world, is sunk in Japan’s first major counteroffensive in the struggle for Okinawa. Weighing 72,800 tons and outfitted with nine 18.1-inch guns, the battleship Yamato was Japan’s only hope of destroying the Allied fleet off the coast of Okinawa. But insufficient air cover and fuel cursed the endeavor as a suicide mission. Struck by 19 American aerial torpedoes, it was sunk, drowning 2,498 of its crew.
Born On This Day
Jackie Chan 1954
Francis Ford Coppola 1939
Billie Holiday 1915-1959
