Today in History ...

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1824 – United States presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 1834 – Slavery is abolished in the Cape Colony in accordance with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. 1885 – First serving of the soft drink Dr Pepper at a drug store in Waco, Texas. 1918 – The Kingdom of Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom. 1952 – The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of sexual reassignment surgery. 1955 – American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top-ranking advisers meet to discuss plans to bomb North Vietnam. 1974 – TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of Dulles International Airport, killing all 92 people on board. 1984 – NASA conducts the Controlled Impact Demonstration, wherein an airliner is deliberately crashed in order to test technologies and gather data to help improve survivability of crashes. 1989 – East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the Communist Party the leading role in the state. 2001 – Captain Bill Compton brings Trans World Airlines Flight 220, an MD-83, into St. Louis International Airport bringing to an end 76 years of TWA operations following TWA's purchase by American Airlines. 2013 – A derailment of a Metro-North Railroad train near Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx, New York City kills four and injures 61.