George Washington, the American revolutionary leader and first president of the United States, dies at his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia. He was 67 years old. George Washington was born in 1732 to a farm family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His first direct military experience came as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia colonial militia […]

A botched burglary attempt further clouds one of the earliest kidnap-for-ransom cases. As he was about to go to bed, wealthy New Yorker Holmes Van Brunt heard burglars breaking into his brother’s house next door. After rounding up three other men to help him surprise the intruders, Van Brunt engaged the thieves in a shotgun […]

On December 14, 1909, four months after tragedy struck at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, race car drivers test out its newly resurfaced—and presumably safer—track. Workers had just finished laying down 3.2 million 10-pound brick pavers over the 2.5-mile oval, which had previously been covered in a messy and dangerous mix of crushed limestone, gravel and […]

On December 14, 1939, the League of Nations, the international peacekeeping organization formed at the end of World War I, expels the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in response to the Soviets’ invasion of Finland on November 30. Although the League of Nations was more or less the brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson, the United […]

On December 14, 1982, Charles Harrelson, father of actor Woody Harrelson, is convicted of murdering Judge John Wood outside his San Antonio, Texas, home as he bent down to look at a flat tire on his car. Wood was the first federal judge assassinated in the 20th century, and the FBI’s three-year investigation into his […]