Berlin is divided

After a three-month siege, Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés capture Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire. Cortés’ men leveled the city and captured Cuauhtémoc, the Aztec emperor. Tenochtitlán was founded in 1325 A.D. by a wandering tribe of hunters and gatherers on islands in Lake Texcoco, near the present site of Mexico City. In […]

Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro is born in the Oriente province of eastern Cuba. He would go on to become a dictator for half of a century of the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. The son of a Spanish immigrant who had made a fortune building rail systems to transport sugar cane, Fidel attended […]

On August 13, 1981, at his California home Rancho del Cielo, Ronald Reagan signs the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), a package of tax and budget reductions that set the tone for his administration’s trickle-down economic policy. During his campaign for the White House in 1980, Reagan argued on behalf of “supply-side economics,” the theory […]

Former New York Yankees star Mickey Mantle dies of liver cancer at the age of 63. While “The Mick” patrolled center field and batted clean-up between 1951 and 1968, the Yankees won 12 American League pennants and seven World Series championships. Mantle was born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, on October 20, 1931. He grew up in […]