What Happened Today

Tutankhamun was a boy Pharoah who ruled Egypt in the 14th century BCE for about ten years, and overall did not stand out that much in Egyptian history. Once his tomb was discovered, intact and full of treasures, Tutankhamun would become one of the symbols of Ancient Egypt. The discovery of the tomb goes to the genius of Howard Carter, a brilliant archaeologist and Egyptologist, and the funding of Carter's excavations by Lord Carnarvon. Carter waited for Carnarvon to come to Egypt before he would actually open the tomb. It turned out Carter's thought about the value of the tomb was correct. Tutankhamun, rechristened as "King Tut," would travel the world with his funerary artifacts three millenia after his death, making the world learn more about Ancient Egypt.

William Adelin was the only legitimate son and heir to Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy. As such, he was a pampered prince (which is what "Adelin" meant) who was being groomed for his future rule, including becoming the titular Duke of Normandy. Yet when he was seventeen, he was one of the many victims of a shipwreck when he was traveling in the very fast and impressively built White Ship that was going from Normandy to England. The White Ship was trying to overtake the King's ship, which had left Normandy earlier, in a party atmosphere and subsequently hit a rock and killed all but one person aboard. More significantly, the death of William Adelin would directly lead to the large scale civil war known as the Anarchy that happened after the death of Henry I.

On Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle on November 24, 1971, a well dressed middle aged man told the flight attendant he had a bomb and was hijacking the plane. He asked for a large amount of money, four parachutes, and the flight crew to take him to Mexico at low speed and low altitude. Before the plane got to a refueling stop in Reno, he jumped about the plane's aft stairs. He bought his ticket with the name Dan Cooper, but would become known as D.B. Cooper thanks to confusion by a reporter on a deadline. No one knew what happened to D.B. Cooper after he jumped from the plane, nor even who he was when he bought his ticket. Only a few degraded bills from his ransom money has been found, and it's hard to say where he even jumped precisely. All of which has made the D.B. Cooper story an endless source of fascination.

William M. Tweed, better known as Boss Tweed, has come down through history as the chief symbol of Gilded Age political corruption. While he was a US House member and a New York State Senator, Tweed was illegally enriched less through his own elected office and more through the fact he controlled Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine in New York City. He became a landowner and railroad shareholder through political influence, then gave large city contracts to friendly businesses who would pay his businesses. This very simple scheme was free from inspection because Tammany Hall controlled everyone who might inspect them. Then a large riot showed Tammany leaders could not keep civil order, and the whole edifice came crumblin down around Tweed. At first, though, it seemed he would not be seriously prosecuted for his crimes, but eventually New York State sought damages, and Tweed ended up in jail. He decided to escape to Spain while on a home visit, but he would be returned to New York City and die in the Ludlow Street Jail.

John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while visiting Dallas, Texas, as his motorcade was moving through Dealey Plaza. Shots were fired at the motorcade from the Book Depository behind the President's car. Lee Harvey Oswald was seen fleeing the Book Depository, and then was arrested for murdering a Dallas Police Officer who asked questions about the assassination. Despite these basic facts, the Kennedy assassination has been fertile ground for conspiracy theorists. Two things stand out as causes of this conspiracy theorizing: 1) The actual lethal shot appeared to have come from in front of the President's car; and 2) Lee Harvey Oswald was himself killed by Jack Ruby just two days later. Yet when the actual assassination is looked at carefully, it's hard to find a good conspiracy theory.

A military police force marching on an athletic stadiumwould be highly troubling even if the force knew that there were actual opponents in the crowd. The Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary had no such knowledge, and they simply opened fire with little warning on the whole crowd at Croke Park in Dublin during a Gaelic football match during the Irish War of Independence. In total, fourteen people were killed, with more than sixty suffering injuries. The move was a response to targeted assasinations of British intelligence officers that morning by the Irish Republican Army. But the IRA committed a militarily strategic operation, while the RIC just committed a massacre. This basic fact turned much of Irish, and even some British, sympathy towards the idea of Irish independence.

The International Military Tribunal was specifically organized to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity against Nazi Party leaders immediately after World War II. The Allied Powers sought to punish the Germans who had been the key agressors of the war. They also knew that the Nazis were anti-Semitic and had been persecuting Jews in some ways, and there was clear evidence of war crimes committed by Nazi soldiers. Yet actually putting together an international court was extraordinarily difficuclt. Many key figures had already died, most notably Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels. The British, American, French, and Soviet authorities who were in charge did not agree on the best approach. There were also Nazi leaders who were willing to provide evidence themselves. In the end, of the 24 men brought to trial at Nuremberg, twelve were sentenced to death and seven others were given lengthy prison sentences for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The Gettysburg Address is the most famous speech in American history, so its proper meaning and context often get lost. Lincoln's speech wasn't even the top billed oration of the day. He was simply there as the President to help consecrate the National Cemetery commemorating the Battle of Gettysburg. The featured speaker that day was Edward Everett, former politician and President of Harvard, who spoke for two hours with an academic syntax, Greek references, and overwrought statements about the events of the Battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln, by contrast, spoke about the meaning of the Civil War and the best way to continue the work done by soldiers on the battlefield in front of him. His speech would speak for the nature of American government from that point forward.

More American civilians lost their lives when the Reverend Jim Jones convinced all of his followers at the Peoples Temple Agricultural Complex to drink a poison laced powdered fruit drink than anytime before September 11, 2001. Jones was an ardent Communist who had developed the belief that the best avenue to get people into Revolutionary Communism was through the Christian Church. So Jones developed the Peoples Temple as a Pentecostal, faith healing independent church that was really a platform for Communism. Although he had some success in the early to mid 1970s, he grew paranoid enough to take his most ardent followers to the jungles of Guyana. After Congressman Leo Ryan came to investigate human rights abuses, Jones had Ryan and other members of his investigative group at an airstrip killed. Then he convinced that every member of the Peoples Temple had to commit "Revolutionary Suicide." Which they all did, by famouly "drinking the Kool-Aid," which was actually Flavor Aid and really meant to kill yourself in a grand revolutionary gesture.

The New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders were the two best teams in the American Football League, and they had developed an intense rivalry, which made their November 1968 matchup hugely anticipated. The two teams delivered on the promise of the game with an intense game, and the Raiders managed to score two touchdowns in the final minute to not only win but beat the gambling spread. And the eastern half of the country did not see the finish. Instead, NBC went to its planned programming of the made for TV movie Heidi. This made football fans absolutely livid. Remarkably, all of the important NBC executives wanted to stop this exact problem, but various problems with telephones prevented this order from getting through to the people who needed to stop the broadcast switching to Heidi. The strong reaction caused a major shift in the way that football and all sports would be treated on television.