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Friday, February 01, 2002 Page: 6A
Today is Friday, Feb. 1, the 32nd day of 2002. There are 333 days left in the
year. The Valley Then: In 1938, the Huber Colliery of Glen Alden Coal Company
opened in Ashley. Highlight in History: On Feb. 1, 1960, four black college
students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where
they’d been refused service. On this date: In 1861, Texas voted to secede from
the Union. In 1893, inventor Thomas A. Edison completed work on the world’s
first motion picture studio, his “Black Maria,” in West Orange, N.J. In
1920, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police came into existence. In 1943, one of
America’s most highly decorated military units of World War II, the 442d
Regimental Combat Team, made up almost entirely of Japanese-Americans, was
authorized. In 1946, Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie was chosen to be the first
secretary-general of the United Nations. In 1968, during the Vietnam War,
Saigon’s police chief (Nguyen Ngoc Loan) executed a Viet Cong officer with a
pistol shot to the head in a scene captured in a famous news photograph. In
1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini received a tumultuous welcome in Tehran as
he ended nearly 15 years of exile. In 1979, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst,
whose prison sentence for bank robbery had been commuted by President Carter,
left a federal prison near San Francisco. In 1982, 20 years ago, “Late Night
with David Letterman” premiered on NBC TV. In 1991, 35 people were killed
when a US Air jetliner crashed atop a commuter plane on a runway at Los
Angeles International Airport. Ten years ago: President George H.W. Bush and
Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin met at Camp David. Ron Carey was sworn in
as the first Teamsters president elected by the union’s rank-and-file. Federal
Judge Irving R. Kaufman, who sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death,
died in New York at age 81. Five years ago: Peruvian President Alberto
Fujimori said he would open a “preliminary dialogue” with rebels holding 72
hostages in Lima, but again rejected their main demand that the government
release their jailed comrades. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Herb Caen died
in San Francisco at age 80. One year ago: John Ashcroft won confirmation as
attorney general on a 58-42 Senate vote, completing President George W. Bush’s
Cabinet over strong Democratic opposition.