This Day…

186 – Golden Spike driven, completing the 1st US Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah and connecting the Central Pacific Railroad with the Union Pacific.

1937 – German airship Hindenburg explodes in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 of the 97 on board and 1 on the ground.

1923 – 1st nonstop north American transcontinental flight (NY-San Diego) completed.

1859 – Charles Dickens‘ “A Tale Of Two Cities” is first published in literary periodical “All the Year Round” (weekly installments until Nov 26)

1881 – Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Lincoln, New Mexico

On this day in 1865, just after the effective end of the American Civil War, U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending a production at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and died the next morning.

1955 – “Marty” directed by Delbert Mann and starring Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair premieres in New York (Best Picture 1956)

1912 – Captain Robert Scott, storm-bound in a tent near South Pole, makes last entry in his diary “the end cannot be far”.

1939-“Wuthering Heights” based on the novel by Emily Brontë, directed by William Wyler and starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, premieres in Los Angeles