This Day…

1917 – Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari is executed by firing squad for spying for Germany during WWI at Vincennes near Paris

1934 – Bruno Hauptmann is indicted for the murder of Charles Lindbergh‘s son

1952 – Agatha Christie‘s play “The Mousetrap” opens in London (still running)

1902 – Beatrix Potter‘s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” is published by Frederick Warne & Co. in London

1868 – “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott is published in America by Roberts Brothers of Boston

1955 – American actor and cultural icon James Dean is killed in a car crash aged 24

1852 – George Aiken’s play “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” an adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s famous anti-slavery novel premieres in Troy, New York

1948  –  Mildred Gillars (Axis Sally), an American broadcaster employed by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany to proliferate propaganda during World War II, pleads not guilty to eight chargs of treason in Washington, D.C.

1875 – Billy the Kid is arrested for the 1st time and jailed after receiving clothing stolen from a Chinese laundry. Escapes two days later.

1893 – Cherokee Strip, Oklahoma, opens white settlement homesteaders