Today:
1. 1692 – Bridget Bishop became the first person to be hanged during the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts.
2. 1752 – Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm to prove that lightning is electricity.
3. 1940 – During World War II, Italy declared war on France and Great Britain.
4. 1942 – In retaliation for the assassination of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis annihilated the Czech village of Lidice, executing 172 men and deporting women and children to concentration camps.
5. 1944 – At age 15, Joe Nuxhall became the youngest player to debut in Major League Baseball, pitching for the Cincinnati Reds.
6. 1947 – The Swedish company SAAB produced its first automobile, marking its entry into the automotive industry.
7. 1967 – The Six-Day War between Israel and its neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria concluded, significantly altering the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.
8. 1977 – James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from a Tennessee prison. He was recaptured 54 hours later.
9. 2002 РU.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the arrest of Jos̩ Padilla, suspected of planning to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States.
10. 2007 – HBO aired the final episode of “The Sopranos,” a landmark TV series about Mafia boss Tony Soprano.