1703 – The Man in the Iron Mask, a name given to a prisoner arrested as Eustache Dauger in 1669 or 1670, and held in a number of jails, including the Bastille and the Fortress of Pignerol, died under the name of Marchioly, during the reign of Louis XIV.

1776 – Congress pleaded for the states to send more soldiers to serve in the Continental Army, reminding them “how indispensable it is to the common safety, that they pursue the most immediate and vigorous measures to furnish their respective quotas of Troops for the new Army, as the time of service for which the present Army was enlisted, is so near expiring.”

1824 – A very cold weather caused blocks of ice to form on the Neva River, near the city of St. Petersburg. Enough ice developed that the river’s flow was nearly stopped for several weeks. Water backed up behind the ice, but did not freeze. As a result, when the weather briefly warmed, the ice jam broke apart and the water overwhelmed the city’s dam.
The flood of icy cold water was the worst in the city’s history. Hundreds of carriages and horses were swept away suddenly. Four hundred soldiers stationed in barracks climbed to the roofs to escape the flood, but were all killed. The water’s freezing temperatures made staying alive in it for any length of time impossible. At the Kronshtadt port, hundreds of sailors were killed. The surge of water was so powerful that several ships were thrown into the city’s marketplace. Although exact numbers are impossible to determine, it is generally believed that as many as 10,000 people were killed.

1863 – At the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history. Using just 272 words, Lincoln articulated the meaning of the Civil War for a public that had grown weary of the conflict, and in doing so, he brilliantly and movingly reminded the nation why the Union had to fight, and win, the war.
The speech reflected his redefined belief that the Civil War was not just a fight to save the Union, but a struggle for freedom and equality for all, an idea Lincoln had not championed in the years leading up to the war. This was his stirring conclusion:
“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

1887 – Emma Lazarus, an American poet best known for her sonnet, The New Colossus, died from Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 38. Her famous sonnet was written in 1883. Its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Among those splendid words are these:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”

1915 – Joel Emmanuel Hägglund (better known as Joe Hill, a labor activist, songwriter and member of the Industrial Workers of The World) was executed by firing squad for the murder of John G. Morrison and his son Arling in their Salt Lake City grocery store. The prevailing theory today is that Hill was framed for the murders.
Hill was memorialized in a tribute poem written about him by Alfred Hayes, titled “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”. The poem was later made into a song which remains popular among union activists.

1915 – In one of the most exciting episodes of the air war during World War I, British airman Richard Bell Davies performed a daring, swooping down in his plane to whisk a downed fellow pilot from behind the Turkish lines at Ferrijik Junction.
Davies was flying alongside Flight Sub-Lieutenant Gilbert F. Smylie on a bombing mission. Their target was the railway junction at Ferrijik, located between Bulgaria and Ottoman-controlled Europe. When the Turks hit Smylie’s plane with anti-aircraft fire, he was forced to land. As he made his way to the ground, Smylie was able to release all his bombs but one before making a safe landing behind enemy lines. He set fire to the aircraft in order to disable it.
Davies saw his comrade’s distress from the air and quickly moved to land his own plane nearby. Seeing Davies coming to his rescue and fearing the remaining bomb on his plane would explode, injuring or killing them both, Smylie quickly took aim at his aircraft with his revolver and fired, exploding the bomb safely just before Davies came within its reach. Davies then rushed to grab hold of Smylie, hauling him on board his aircraft just as a group of Turkish soldiers approached. Before the Turks could reach them, Davies took off, flying himself and Smylie to safety behind British lines.

1942 – The Soviet Red Army under General Georgi Zhukov launched Operation Uranus, the great Soviet counteroffensive that turned the tide in the Battle of Stalingrad.
On June 22, 1941, despite the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, Nazi Germany had launched a massive invasion against the USSR. Aided by its greatly superior air force, the German army raced across the Russian plains, inflicting terrible casualties on the Red Army and the Soviet population. With the assistance of troops from their Axis allies, the Germans conquered vast territory, and by mid October the Russian cities of Leningrad and Moscow were under siege.
On November 19, General Zhukov launched a great Soviet counteroffensive out of the rubble of Stalingrad. German command underestimated the scale of the counterattack, and the Sixth Army was quickly overwhelmed by the offensive, which involved 500,000 Soviet troops, 900 tanks, and 1,400 aircraft. Within three days, the entire German force of more than 200,000 men was encircled.
Starvation and the bitter Russian winter took as many lives as the merciless Soviet troops, and on January 21, 1943, the last of the airports held by the Germans fell to the Soviets, completely cutting off the Germans from supplies. On January 31, German forces finally surrendered in the southern sector, and on February 2 the remaining German troops surrendered. Only 90,000 German soldiers were still alive, and of these only 5,000 troops would survive the Soviet prisoner-of-war camps and make it back to Germany.

1943 – Inmates at the Janowska concentration camp in Poland staged an uprising against the Nazis and attempted a mass escape. A few succeeded in escaping, but most were recaptured and killed. The SS staff and their local auxiliaries murdered at least 6,000 Jews who had survived the uprising

1954 – Two automatic toll collectors were placed in service on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. The nation’s first automatic toll collector accepted only correct change. One needed a quarter to activate the green light.

1959 – Ford announced the end of the Edsel program. The company had lost $350 million, or the equivalent of $2.8 Billion in 2015 dollars.

1959 – Rocky & His Friends premiered on ABC. The show aired twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, following American Bandstand at 5:30pm (ET), where it was the highest-rated daytime network program. When the show moved to NBC in 1961, it was renamed The Bullwinkle Show.

1966 – First-ranked Notre Dame and second-ranked Michigan State played to a 10-10 tie at Spartan Stadium. The Irish, per coach Ara Parseghian’s instructions, ran out the clock at the end of the game instead of passing to score and risking an interception. After the game, Parseghian defended his decision. “We’d fought hard to come back and tie it up,” he told reporters in the locker room. “After all that, I didn’t want to risk giving it to them cheap.”
Neither the Irish nor the Spartans would play in a bowl game that year, Notre Dame because – as hard as it may be to believe in today’s world – the university thought postseason play would interfere with the football team’s studies and Michigan State because they’d gone to the Rose Bowl the year before, and going twice in a row was against the Big Ten’s rules.
Since the national championship hadn’t been settled on the field, it went to a vote: the end-of-year AP and UPI polls. Complicating matters was Bear Bryant’s undefeated – and, crucially, segregated (as in all-white) – University of Alabama team. In the end, in a vote that many people viewed as a rebuke to the segregated, obstructionist Alabamians, Notre Dame kept its No. 1 ranking. MSU came in second, and Alabama came in third.

1969 – Apollo 12 astronauts Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean became the third and fourth men to stand on the surface of the Moon. When Conrad, who was somewhat shorter than Neil Armstrong – the first man to ever set foot on the lunar surface – stepped onto the lunar surface, his first words were “Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.”

1975 – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a film about a group of patients at a mental institution, opened in theaters. Directed by Milos Forman and based on a 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey, the film starred Jack Nicholson and was co-produced by actor Michael Douglas. The film went on to become the first film in four decades to win in all five of the major Academy Award categories: Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched), Best Director, Best Screenplay (Adapted) and Best Picture.

1977 – In an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat traveled to Jerusalem to seek a permanent peace settlement with Israel after decades of conflict. Sadat’s visit, in which he met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and spoke before the Knesset (Parliament), was met with outrage in most of the Arab world.

1979 – Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

1984 – A series of explosions at the Pemex Petroleum Storage Facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignited a major fire. The explosions consumed one third of Mexico City’s entire liquid petroleum gas supply, killed 500–600 people, and left 5000–7000 others with severe burns. The San Juanico disaster was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in world history.

1985 – Pennzoil won a $10.53 billion judgment against Texaco in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.
Texaco filed a suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that the Texas proceedings violated Texaco’s constitutional rights. The District Court found for Texaco, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the circuit court decision.
After Texaco filed for bankruptcy, Pennzoil agreed to settle the case for $3 billion. It turned out to be a nice payday for Pennzoil attorneys Joe Jamail and Blaine Kerr. Pennzoil paid Jamail, their lead attorney, $335 million and Kerr $10 million for the victory.

1997 – The world’s first surviving septuplets were born by Cesarean section to Bobbi McCaughey of Carlisle, Iowa. There were four boys (Kenneth, Brandon, Nathan and Joel) and three girls (Alexis, Natalie and Kelsey). The infants ranged in weight from 2 pounds, 5 ounces to 3 pounds, 4 ounces and were born over a period of six minutes. The seven newcomers joined a family that already included one daughter, Mikayla – and an undoubtedly stressed father, Ken.

1998 – The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings against President William Clinton for actions related to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

2004 – The Malice at The Palace: With less than a minute left in a game between the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers, a fight broke out on the court between several players. After the fight was broken up, a fan threw a drink from the stands at Pacers player Ron Artest while he was lying on the scorer’s table. Artest charged into the crowd and sparked a brawl between players and fans that stretched onto the court.
After the game, the NBA suspended nine players for a total of 146 games, which led to $11 million in salary being lost by the players. Artest was suspended for 86 games and lost $4.99 million in salary. Five players were also charged with assault, and eventually sentenced to a year of probation and community service. Five fans also faced criminal charges and were banned from attending Pistons home games for life.

2007 – Actor Dick Wilson (long-time television character actor but will forever be remembered for his role of finicky grocery store manager “Mr. Whipple” in over 500 Charmin commercials) died of natural causes at the age of 91.

2014 – Director Mike Nichols (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, The Birdcage and The Graduate, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Director) died of a heart attack at the age of 83.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2015 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.