On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, King was fatally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. That evening, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.

On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. Ray was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King’s assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named “Raoul” had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning enterprise. On April 4, 1968, however, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled for Canada. Ray’s motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29 years.

During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King Jr., spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists’ minds, implicated circumstantially. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI. Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military intelligence, who may have been called to watch over King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.

Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney’s office, and three times by the U.S. Justice Department. All of these investigations have ended with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King Jr. The House committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence to definitively prove this theory. In addition to the mountain of evidence against him, such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and admitted presence at the rooming house on April 4, Ray had a definite motive in assassinating King: hatred. According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who told them of his intent to kill King. Ray died in 1998.

The post James Earl Ray, suspect in Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, is arrested appeared first on HISTORY.

Little is known of Cochise’s early life. By the mid-19th century, he had become a prominent leader of the Chiricahua band of Apache Indians living in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Like many other Chiricahua Apache, Cochise resented the encroachment of Mexican and American settlers on their traditional lands. Cochise led numerous raids on the settlers living on both sides of the border, and Mexicans and Americans alike began to call for military protection and retribution.

War between the U.S. and Cochise, however, resulted from a misunderstanding. In October 1860, a band of Apache attacked the ranch of an Irish-American named John Ward and kidnapped his adopted son, Felix Telles. Although Ward had been away at the time of the raid, he believed that Cochise had been the leader of the raiding Apache. Ward demanded that the U.S. Army rescue the kidnapped boy and bring Cochise to justice. The military obliged by dispatching a force under the command of Lieutenant George Bascom. Unaware that they were in any danger, Cochise and many of his top men responded to Bascom’s invitation to join him for a night of entertainment at a nearby stage station. When the Apache arrived, Bascom’s soldiers arrested them.

Cochise told Bascom that he had not been responsible for the kidnapping of Felix Telles, but the lieutenant refused to believe him. He ordered Cochise be kept as a hostage until the boy was returned. Cochise would not tolerate being imprisoned unjustly. He used his knife to cut a hole in the tent he was held in and escaped.

During the next decade, Cochise and his warriors increased their raids on American settlements and fought occasional skirmishes with soldiers. Many panicked settlers abandoned their homes. By 1872, the U.S. was anxious for peace, and the government offered Cochise and his people a huge reservation in the southeastern corner of Arizona Territory if they would cease hostilities. Cochise agreed, saying, “The white man and the Indian are to drink of the same water, eat of the same bread, and be at peace.”

The great chief did not have the privilege of enjoying his hard-won peace for long. In 1874, he became seriously ill, possibly with stomach cancer. He died on this day in 1874. That night his warriors painted his body yellow, black and vermilion, and took him deep into the Dragoon Mountains. They lowered his body and weapons into a rocky crevice, the exact location of which remains unknown. Today, however, that section of the Dragoon Mountains is known as Cochise’s Stronghold.

About a decade after Cochise died, Felix Telles—the boy whose kidnapping had started the war—resurfaced as an Apache-speaking scout for the U.S. Army. He reported that a group of Western Apache, not Cochise, had kidnapped him.

The post Apache chief Cochise dies appeared first on HISTORY.

Robert Kennedy, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1925, interrupted his studies at Harvard University to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was legal counsel for various Senate subcommittees during the 1950s and in 1960 served as the manager of his brother’s successful presidential campaign. Appointed attorney general by President Kennedy, he proved a vigorous member of the cabinet, zealously prosecuting cases relating to civil rights while closely advising the president on domestic and foreign issues. After John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Robert joined President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration but resigned in 1964 to run successfully in New York for a Senate seat. He became a leader of liberal Democrats in Congress and voiced criticism of the war in Vietnam.

In 1968, he was urged by many of his supporters to run for president as an anti-war and socially progressive Democratic. Hesitant until he saw positive primary returns for fellow anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy, he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on March 16, 1968. Fifteen days later, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey became the key Democratic hopeful, with McCarthy and Kennedy trailing closely behind. Kennedy conducted an energetic campaign and on June 4, 1968, won a major victory in the California primary. He had won five out of six primaries and seemed a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination and, some thought, the presidency.

Shortly after midnight, Kennedy gave a victory speech to his supporters in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. At 12:50 a.m., while making his way to a press conference by a side exit, he was shot three times in a hail of gunfire that wounded five others. One bullet entered Kennedy’s brain. The shooter, a drifter named Sirhan Sirhan, had a .22 revolver wrested from his grip and was promptly arrested. Kennedy was rushed to the hospital, where he fought for his life for the next 24 hours. At 1:44 a.m. on the morning of June 6, he died. He was 42 years old.

His assassination came only two months after civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. Like King, Robert Kennedy had advocated social reform, defended the rights of minorities, and called for an end to the Vietnam War. The loss was devastating to many Americans and was made only more tragic by memories of his older brother’s assassination five years earlier.

On the evening of June 6, Kennedy’s body was brought to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, and the next day a line of mourners 25 blocks long waited to pass by his coffin. On Saturday morning, June 8, thousands attended a funeral Mass at St. Patrick’s. The diverse collection of mourners listened to Leonard Bernstein conduct a Mahler symphony and Andy Williams sing Kennedy’s favorite anthem, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Edward M. Kennedy, Robert’s younger brother and a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, delivered a eulogy:

“My brother need not be idolized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life. [He should] be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him, and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us, and what he wished for others, will someday come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Why not?'”

On Saturday afternoon, Kennedy’s coffin was taken by funeral train from New York to Washington, D.C. Hundreds of thousands of mourners, perhaps more than a million, lined the tracks. In New Jersey, two bystanders who jumped the tracks were killed by a train passing in the other direction. The funeral train arrived at Washington’s Union Station shortly after 9 p.m. A motorcade then took Robert F. Kennedy’s body to Arlington National Cemetery for a night-time burial.

The post Senator Robert F. Kennedy buried appeared first on HISTORY.

Back in the Mediterranean, the initial air raid against the Liberty was over. Nine of the 294 crew members were dead and 60 were wounded. Suddenly, the ship was attacked by Israeli torpedo boats, which launched torpedoes and fired artillery at the ship. Under the command of its wounded captain, William L. McGonagle, the Liberty managed to avert four torpedoes, but one struck the ship at the waterline. Heavily damaged, the ship launched three lifeboats, but these were also attacked–a violation of international law. Failing to sink the Liberty, which displaced 10,000 tons, the Israelis finally desisted. In all, 34 Americans were killed and 171 were wounded in the two-hour attack. In the attack’s aftermath, the Liberty managed to limp to a safe port.

Israel later apologized for the attack and offered $6.9 million in compensation, claiming that it had mistaken the Liberty for an Egyptian ship. However, Liberty survivors, and some former U.S. officials, believe that the attack was deliberate, staged to conceal Israel’s pending seizure of Syria’s Golan Heights, which occurred the next day. The ship’s listening devices would likely have overheard Israeli military communications planning this controversial operation. Captain McGonagle was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic command of the Liberty during and after the attack.

The post Israel attacks USS Liberty appeared first on HISTORY.

Born in Mecca of humble origins, Muhammad married a wealthy widow at 25 years old and lived the next 15 years as an unremarkable merchant. In 610, in a cave in Mount Hira north of Mecca, he had a vision in which he heard God, speaking through the angel Gabriel, command him to become the Arab prophet of the “true religion.” Thus began a lifetime of religious revelations, which he and others collected as the Qur’an. These revelations provided the foundation for the Islamic religion. Muhammad regarded himself as the last prophet of the Judaic-Christian tradition, and he adopted the theology of these older religions while introducing new doctrines. His inspired teachings also brought unity to the Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia, an event that had sweeping consequences for the rest of the world.

By the summer of 622, Muhammad had gained a substantial number of converts in Mecca, leading the city’s authorities, who had a vested interest in preserving the city’s pagan religion, to plan his assassination. Muhammad fled to Medina, a city some 200 miles north of Mecca, where he was given a position of considerable political power. At Medina, he built a model theocratic state and administered a rapidly growing empire. In 629, Muhammad returned to Mecca as a conqueror. During the next two and a half years, numerous disparate Arab tribes converted to his religion. By his death on June 8, 632, he was the effective ruler of all southern Arabia, and his missionaries, or legates, were active in the Eastern Empire, Persia and Ethiopia.

During the next century, vast conquests continued under Muhammad’s successors and allies, and the Muslim advance was not halted until the Battle of Tours in France in 732. By this time, the Muslim empire, among the largest the world had ever seen, stretched from India across the Middle East and North Africa, and up through Western Europe’s Iberian peninsula. The spread of Islam continued after the end of the Arab conquest, and many cultures in Africa and Asia voluntarily adopted the religion. Today, Islam is the world’s second-largest religion.

The post Muhammad, the prophet who spread Islam, dies appeared first on HISTORY.

The FBI report relied largely on accusations made by “confidential informants,” supplemented with some highly dubious analysis. It began by arguing that the Communist Party in the United States claimed to have “been successful in using well-known Hollywood personalities to further Communist Party aims.” The report particularly pointed to the actions of the Academy Award-winning actor Frederic March. Suspicions about March were raised by his activities in a group that was critical of America’s growing nuclear arsenal (the group included other well-known figures such as Helen Keller and Danny Kaye). March had also campaigned for efforts to provide relief to war-devastated Russia. The report went on to name several others who shared March’s political leanings: actor Edward G. Robinson; activist, actor and musician Paul Robeson; the writer Dorothy Parker; and a host of Hollywood actors, writers and directors.

The FBI report was part of a continuing campaign by the U.S. government to suggest that Hollywood was rife with communist activists who were using the medium of motion pictures to spread the Soviet party line. Congressional investigations into Hollywood began as early as 1946. In 1947, Congress cited 10 Hollywood writers and directors for contempt because they refused to divulge their political leanings or name others who might be communists. The “Hollywood Ten,” as they came to be known, were later convicted and sent to prison for varying terms. In response to this particular round of allegations from the FBI, movie tough-guy Edward G. Robinson declared, “These rantings, ravings, accusations, smearing, and character assassinations can only emanate from sick, diseased minds of people who rush to the press with indictments of good American citizens. I have played many parts in my life, but no part have I played better or been more proud of than that of being an American citizen.”

The post FBI report names Hollywood figures as communists appeared first on HISTORY.

In 1958, the National Football League championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants drew 45 million viewers on NBC and established pro football as an entertainment commodity to rival baseball. The NFL suddenly had a line of businessmen waiting to purchase new franchises in new markets, but most were arrogantly turned away. This prompted Lamar Hunt, the wealthy son of an oil tycoon, to recruit seven businessmen from cities hungry for pro football to form a rival league. The resulting American Football League was publicly welcomed by NFL Commissioner Bert Bell, who said that competition would stimulate both leagues. However, the NFL did not sit idly by and wait for the AFL to gain market share. Instead, it quickly expanded into Hunt’s hometown of Dallas and into Minneapolis, another of the cities the AFL had designated for a franchise.

The American Football League chose Oakland as a replacement for Minneapolis, as well as Los Angeles, Dallas (for Hunt’s franchise, which moved to Kansas City in 1962), New York, Buffalo, Boston, Denver and Houston as the original eight AFL cities. The league piqued fan interest with an entertaining product on the field, a high-flying aerial brand of football that contrasted with the stingy defenses and running attacks of the older NFL. By 1962, the AFL had drawn 1 million fans to its games.

In 1965, the AFL scored a television contract with NBC. That same year, New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin lured quarterback Joe Namath out of the University of Alabama to the AFL with the biggest contract in pro football history. The NFL’s prediction and hope that the AFL would field only second-rate players and washed-up former NFL players were not to be: Instead, the two leagues began to compete over fans, players and coaches. An unspoken agreement that one league would not sign the other league’s players was broken in 1966 when the NFL’s New York Giants signed place-kicker Pete Gogolak away from the AFL’s Buffalo Bills. As neither league could afford a bidding war, owners soon began to talk of a merger.

Under the merger agreement announced on June 8, 1966, the new league would be called the NFL and split into the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC) All eight of the original AFL teams would all be absorbed by the NFL, unlike in 1949 when the NFL merged with the rival All-America Football Conference but only took in its Baltimore, Cleveland and San Francisco franchises and dissolved four other teams.

The first two Super Bowls proved the NFC (the former NFL) to be the better league, with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers handling their AFC challenger easily. In Super Bowl III, however, Joe Namath and the New York Jets upset the favored Baltimore Colts and ushered in a new era of greater parity between the two leagues.

The Super Bowl, played between the AFC and NFC champions at the end of every NFL season, is among the most watched televised sporting events in the world with an average of 90 million viewers.

The post NFL and AFL announce merger appeared first on HISTORY.

The Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche debuted his first design at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1900. The electric vehicle set several Austrian land-speed records, reaching more than 35 mph and earning international acclaim for the young engineer. He became general director of the Austro-Daimler Company (an outpost of the German automaker) in 1916 and later moved to Daimler headquarters in Stuttgart. Daimler merged with the Benz firm in the 1920s, and Porsche was chiefly responsible for designing some of the great Mercedes racing cars of that decade.

Porsche left Daimler in 1931 and formed his own company. A few years later, Adolf Hitler called on the engineer to aid in the production of a small “people’s car” for the German masses. With his son, also named Ferdinand (known as Ferry), Porsche designed the prototype for the original Volkswagen (known as the KdF: “Kraft durch Freude,” or “strength through joy”) in 1936. During World War II, the Porsches also designed military vehicles, most notably the powerful Tiger tank.

At war’s end, the French accused the elder Porsche of war crimes and imprisoned him for more than a year. Ferry struggled to keep the family firm afloat. He built a Grand Prix race car, the Type 360 Cisitalia, for a wealthy Italian industrialist, and used the money to pay his father’s bail. When Porsche was released from prison, he approved of another project Ferry had undertaken: a new sports car that would be the first to actually bear the name Porsche. Dubbed the Type 356, the new car was in the tradition of earlier Porsche-designed race cars such as the Cisitalia. The engine was placed mid-chassis, ahead of the transaxle, with modified Volkswagen drive train components.

The 356 went into production during the winter of 1947-48, and the aluminum prototype, built entirely by hand, was completed on June 8, 1948. The Germans subsequently hired Porsche to consult on further development of the Volkswagen. With the proceeds, Porsche opened new offices in Stuttgart, with plans to build up to 500 of his company’s own cars per year. Over the next two decades, the company would build more than 78,000 vehicles.

The post First Porsche completed appeared first on HISTORY.

Produced and directed by Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters starred Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis as disgraced parapsychology professors in New York City who turn to “paranormal investigation”–hunting down and capturing ghosts—to make money after Columbia University yanks their research grants. Suddenly overwhelmed by the demand for their services, they hire a fourth team member (Ernie Hudson) who predicts that the increased supernatural activity is building to a catastrophic Judgement Day-like scenario. His fears turn out to be right on target, and all hell breaks loose after a skeptical government official (William Atherton) pulls the plug on the ghostbusters’ containment system. Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis co-starred as Manhattan apartment dwellers possessed by followers of a long-dead deity, Gozer, with whom the ghostbusters must wage a climactic battle.

Aykroyd and Ramis co-wrote the script for the film, which Aykroyd had originally conceived as a vehicle for himself and John Belushi, his co-star in TV’s Saturday Night Live and The__Blues Brothers (1980). Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982, however, and the part was later rewritten extensively to accommodate the unique talents of Bill Murray, another SNL alum known for his work in Meatballs (1979), Caddyshack (1980) and Stripes (1980).

Despite its hefty $30 million production budget–an unprecedented amount for a comedy—Ghostbusters was a box-office hit by any standard, beating out Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to become the second-highest-grossing movie of the year with $229 million, behind only Beverly Hills Cop ($235 million). It was equally well-received by critics; Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, for one, called it “an exception to the general rule that big special effects can wreck a comedy…one of those rare movies where the original, fragile comic vision has survived a multimillion-dollar production.” Ghostbusters spawned a hit 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II, also co-written by Aykroyd and Ramis, and two animated television series. An all female-led cast of Ghostbusters, directed by Paul Feig, was released in 2016.

The post “Ghostbusters” released appeared first on HISTORY.

George Orwell was the nom de plume of Eric Blair, who was born in India. The son of a British civil servant, Orwell attended school in London and won a scholarship to the elite prep school Eton, where most students came from wealthy upper-class backgrounds, unlike Orwell. Rather than going to college like most of his classmates, Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police and went to work in Burma in 1922. During his five years there, he developed a severe sense of class guilt; finally in 1927, he chose not to return to Burma while on holiday in England.

Orwell, choosing to immerse himself in the experiences of the urban poor, went to Paris, where he worked menial jobs, and later spent time in England as a tramp. He wrote Down and Out in Paris and London in 1933, based on his observation of the poorer classes, and in 1937 The Road to Wigan Pier, which documented the life of the unemployed in northern England. Meanwhile, he had published his first novel, Burmese Days, in 1934.

Orwell became increasingly left wing in his views, although he never committed himself to any specific political party. He went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War to fight with the Republicans, but later fled as communism gained an upper hand in the struggle on the left. His barnyard fable, Animal Farm (1945), shows how the noble ideals of egalitarian economies can easily be distorted. The book brought him his first taste of critical and financial success. Orwell’s last novel, 1984, brought him lasting fame with its grim vision of a future where all citizens are watched constantly and language is twisted to aid in oppression.

Orwell died of tuberculosis in 1950.

The post George Orwell’s “1984” is published appeared first on HISTORY.

A schoolteacher by profession and a World War I veteran, the 37-year-old Mallory was already one of England’s most celebrated climbers. This marked his third attempt in three years to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, something no known climber had ever accomplished. Irvine, 22, had little climbing experience, but had expertise on the oxygen-tank apparatus that would make it easier for them to breathe at the high altitude.

Whether Mallory and Irvine ever reached the summit remains one of history’s most tantalizing mysteries. It wasn’t until May 29, 1953 that Everest would finally be conquered beyond any doubt, by New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa guide from Nepal.

A 1999 expedition discovered Mallory’s body some 27,000 feet up the mountain, lying face-down and much of it well-preserved. He had apparently fallen, breaking a leg and possibly an arm. A small Kodak camera he was believed to be carrying was nowhere to be found. The expedition had hoped it would hold clues to whether he and Irvine were coming down from the peak after successfully summiting—or still on their way up.

The expedition left Mallory where he lay, but covered his body with stones to afford it some protection.

Irvine’s body has never been officially found, although rumors persist that it was discovered in the 1970s and secretly removed by the Chinese government, possibly with the missing camera. In September 2024, a boot and sock with the label "A.C. Irvine" stitched into it were found by a National Geographic documentary team on a glacier below the north face of Everest. A foot was recovered inside the boot as well.

The post Final sighting of George Mallory on Mount Everest appeared first on HISTORY.

Wallace won the governorship on a platform of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and rose to national prominence in 1963 when he appeared on the steps of the University of Alabama to block Black students from attending. He won five Southern states as a third-party candidate in the 1968 presidential election, promising to end the federal government’s attempts at desegregation. Chisholm, who began her career as an early-childhood educator before entering politics, won her Bedford-Stuyvesant seat the same year, presenting herself as “Unbought and unbossed.”

Chisholm’s campaign was a long shot—she would later state that her Democratic colleagues refused to take her seriously because she was a woman—but Wallace’s prospects looked decent until he was shot five times at a campaign stop in Laurel, Maryland on May 15, 1972, leaving him permanently paralyzed.

Chisholm’s unexpected visit to Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring lasted roughly fifteen minutes. The congresswoman recounted that she told Wallace “I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone,” and that the governor “cried and cried” in response. She added that, despite their profound disagreements on fundamental issues like racial equality, she agreed with Wallace’s criticisms of “the domination of corporate institutions…and unresponsiveness of the Government to the people.” Wallace won two primary races after the shooting, but it effectively ended his campaign.

Senator George McGovern of South Dakota ultimately won the nomination, only to lose to incumbent Richard Nixon by a count of 520 electoral votes to 17. Two years later, Wallace threw his support behind Chisholm’s bill to give domestic workers the right to a minimum wage, marshaling enough support from Southern Democrats to get the bill passed.

The post Shirley Chisholm visits her opponent George Wallace in the hospital appeared first on HISTORY.