ON THIS DAY IN 1968:
LBJ ON LIFE MAGAZINE AFTER HE BECAME 36th PRESIDENT WHEN JFK WAS KILLED IN 1963
LBJ ANNOUNCES HE WILL NOT RUN FOR A SECOND TERM AFTER BOBBY KENNEDY ENTERS THE RACE FOR PRESIDENT IN 1968....
THE CAMPAIGN BUTTON THAT WAS NEVER USED:
U.S. IS STILL IN MIST OF A CIVIL RIGHTS WAR AND ARE STILL BOMBING VIETNAM
Posted at: 01:23 PM | Permalink
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ON THIS DAY IN 1981:
1981: President Reagan is shot
From the BBC
President Ronald Reagan has been shot and wounded after a lone gunman opened fire in Washington. He is currently undergoing emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital but there are unconfirmed reports he walked in unaided.
Initial reports claim he may have a punctured lung.
Five to six shots were fired as he left the Washington Hilton Hotel where he had been addressing a union convention, about one mile from the White House.
A man, firing at close range, also wounded White House Press Secretary James Brady in the head.
A Secret Service official and a Washington policeman were also injured before the gunman was pushed to the ground by police.
The president had appeared from the hotel smiling and walked towards his limousine turning momentarily to acknowledge calls from the waiting press.
A burst of gunfire was then heard before the president was bundled into a bullet proof limousine and whisked away.
First Lady Nancy Reagan is understood to be on her way to the hospital to visit her 70-year-old husband.
The attacker is described as being in his twenties and blonde.
He was pinned to the wall by secret service agents and he has now been arrested.
The assassination attempt has sent shock waves around the country where memories of the murder of president John F Kennedy remain vivid.
President Reagan has only been in office for 69 days and the attack leaves the running of the country in some confusion as his vice-president George Bush is currently on his way back from Texas.
Until the arrival of Vice-President Bush it is unclear who is in charge.
The American Stock Exchange has stopped trading and the Academy Awards have been postponed until tomorrow night in the wake of the attacks.
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| In Context | The president initially appeared to have escaped serious injury, but had been hit by a ricocheting bullet as he was bundled into his limousine by Secret Service Agents. He was operated on and made a fast recovery. Mr Brady suffered severe head injuries, and policeman Thomas Delahanty and Tim McCarthy of the Secret Service were also injured. John Hinckley, 25, the son of an affluent oil industry executive, was charged with trying to assassinate the president fuelled by an obsession with actress Jodie Foster and a desire to impress her. The following June, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to hospital. Ronald Reagan went on to win a second term in office by a wide margin almost four years later. He died in June 2004, aged 93, after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for 10 years.
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Posted at: 01:04 PM | Permalink
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ON THIS DAY IN 2009:
SPACE SHUTTLE LANDS
FROM THE BBC
Space Shuttle DIscovery has landed after a 13-day mission to the International Space Station.
The shuttle touched down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, hours after its return was postponed because of concerns about poor weather conditions.
Discovery's seven crew members installed an extra pair of solar wings on the International Space Station.
The shuttle launched on 15 March, docking with the ISS to deliver the final set of solar arrays.
An astronaut who had been stationed on the ISS for four months, Sandra Magnus, returned to Earth on Discovery.
"The wheels have stopped," said Commander Lee Archambault when the craft finally came to a halt.
Mission Control in Houston, Texas, told him: "Welcome home Discovery after a great mission of powering the International Space Station."
Cdr Archambault said it was "good to be back home".
Meanwhile, a Russian space capsule with an American billionaire passenger on board has docked with the ISS.
The passenger, Charles Simonyi, is a software designer and is making his second trip as a space tourist.
He was accompanied by Russian and American astronauts.
The shuttle undocked from the ISS on Wednesday after eight days there.
The crew spent five hours on Thursday inspecting the shuttle's outer surface using a laser and camera mounted on a 15m (50ft) boom connected to Discovery's robotic arm.
 The shuttle took new solar panels to the International Space Station |
The images were then sent back to Mission Control as part of a routine procedure that ensures the integrity of the shuttle's heat-shield tiles.
The tiles are designed to dissipate heat as the orbiter returns to Earth through an increasingly thicker atmosphere.
Under the shuttle's left wing is a single tile that includes a "bump", which interrupts the normally smooth airflow around the tiles.
The disrupted airflow will increase the temperature of the tiles around it by a small amount and is part of a test of candidate tiles for future missions.
Current designs for those missions mean spacecraft will endure significantly more heat on re-entry than the space shuttles, which might be retired next year.
Nasa is preparing space shuttle Atlantis to be rolled out towards the launch pad on 31 March.
Atlantis is scheduled for a 12 May lift-off on a mission to service the Hubble Telescope. The mission has been delayed since October 2008.
CLICK ON WEBLINK BELOW TO VIEW SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY LAND AT KSC IN FLORIDA
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7967831.stm
Posted at: 06:32 PM | Permalink
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ON THIS DAY IN 1968:
BOBBY KENNEDY ANNOUNCES THAT HE WILL RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN NOVEMBER ELECTION
SENATOR KENNEDY WAS ASSASSINATED AT THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL IN LOS ANGELES ON JUNE 6,1968
Posted at: 01:10 PM | Permalink
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ON THIS DAY IN 1964:
Jack Ruby sentenced to death
FROM THE BBC
Jack Ruby has been sentenced to death after being found guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F Kennedy.
Ruby's defence team is to launch an appeal after the jury in the Dallas court returned the guilty verdict and decided he should die in the electric chair.
The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for two hours and 19 minutes.
Oswald, who was accused of firing the gun that killed the president, was shot two days later by Ruby in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters.
There was uproar in court and Ruby's defence said the verdict was "a victory for bigotry". Melvin Belli, chief defence counsel, said: "This was a kangaroo court, a railroad court and everyone knew it."
At 1223 local time, Judge Brown read out the verdict: "We the jury find the defendant guilty of murder with malice as charged in the indictment and assess his punishment as death."
When the judge asked if this was a unanimous decision, all the jurors raised their right hand to signal that it was. They were then discharged.
Ruby, who pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, was quickly led away to prison, where he will remain as his appeal gets under way.
The district attorney said after the trial that he thought the jury had been persuaded by Dallas police officers who reported that Ruby had planned to kill Oswald for two days and had meant to shoot him three times instead of once.
The jury had been asked to consider its verdict after hearing more than five hours of summing up by prosecuting and defence barristers.
Prosecutors argued that Ruby should die in the electric chair "because he mocked American justice while the spotlight was on Dallas".
Defence lawyers had suggested that the prosecution wanted Ruby to go to the electric chair to compensate for their frustrations due to their inability to try Lee Harvey Oswald.
They also argued that there was medical evidence to suggest that Ruby suffered from epilepsy and was subject to seizures and mental blackouts.
| In Context | Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested after John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in 1963, but he was murdered before facing trial. Following Jack Ruby's trial for killing Oswald, three psychiatrists recommended that he should have a "sanity hearing" amid reports that he was mentally ill. In an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, Ruby's lawyers argued that he could not have received a fair trial in Dallas due to the excessive publicity. The court agreed and ruled that his motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted, and so Ruby's conviction and death sentence was overturned. While awaiting a new trial, Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism in hospital on 3 January, 1967.
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