1963: John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas; Texas Gov. John B. Connally, in the same car as Kennedy, is seriously wounded. The suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, is arrested, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as president.
Also on this day:
- 1906: The “S-O-S” distress signal is adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin.
- 1914: The First Battle of Ypres during World War I ends with an Allied victory against Germany.
- 1935: A flying boat, the China Clipper, takes off from Alameda, Calif., carrying more than 100,000 pieces of mail on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight.
- 1954: The Humane Society of the United States is incorporated as the National Humane Society.
- 1963: “Brave New World” author Aldous Huxley dies in California at age 69.
- 1965: The musical “Man of La Mancha” opens on Broadway.
- 1967: The U.N. Security Council approves Resolution 242, which calls for Israel to withdraw from territories it had captured the previous June, and implicitly calls on adversaries to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
- 1975: Juan Carlos is proclaimed King of Spain.
- 1990: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having failed to win re-election of the Conservative Party leadership on the first ballot, announces she will resign.
- 1995: Acting swiftly to boost the Balkan peace accord, the UN Security Council suspends economic sanctions against Serbia and eases the arms embargo against the states of the former Yugoslavia.
- 2017: Former sports doctor Larry Nassar, accused of molesting at least 125 girls and young women while working for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, pleads guilty to multiple charges of sexual assault.
- 2017: Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general whose forces carried out the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, is convicted of genocide and other crimes by the United Nations’ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal and sentenced to life behind bars.
