| 1889 – The Dakotas are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states. 1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”. 1920 – In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the United States presidential election, 1920. 1947 – In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the first and last flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules, the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built. 1959 – Twenty-One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance. 1960 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case. 1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war. 1967 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson and “The Wise Men” conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the Vietnam war. 1988 – The Morris worm, the first Internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.
Births
1795 – James K. Polk, American lawyer and politician, 11th President of the United States (d. 1849)
1936 – Rose Bird, American lawyer and judge, 25th Chief Justice of California (d. 1999) Deaths
1950 – George Bernard Shaw, Irish author, playwright, and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1856)
1966 – Peter Debye, Dutch-American physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1884) Cora Frederick
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