TODAY IN CRIME: December 28

 

1860 Harriet Tubman arrived in Auburn, New York, on her last mission to free slaves. She had evaded capture for eight years on the Underground Railroad.

1915 The British Cabinet moved to institute compulsory military service, with single men to be conscripted before married ones.

1918 Constance Markievicz became the first woman to be elected MP to the British House of Commons. At the time, she was detained in Holloway prison for her part in anti-conscription activities.

1921 The Rand Rebellion started in Southern Africa. It began as a strike by white mineworkers and became an open armed rebellion against the state.

1941 Operation Anthropoid, the plot to assassinate high-ranking Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich, commenced.

1943 Soviet authorities began the deportation of more than 93,000 people of Kalmyk nationality, and non-Kalmyk women with Kalmyk husbands, to Siberia and Central Asia. Many died en route.

1973 U.S. President Richard Nixon signed into law the United States Endangered Species Act.

1937 The Irish Free State became the Republic of Ireland when a new constitution established the country as a sovereign state under the name of Eire.

1970 Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) adopted its constitution

1971 The Dutch Opium Law (Opiumwet) now included hashish.

1972 German investigators concluded the skeletal remains found by Berlin construction workers on December 7 were those of Martin Bormann, Hitler's deputy. DNA tests in 2011 confirmed the identification.

1973 The Chamber of Commerce of Akron, Ohio, terminated its association with the All-American Soap Box Derby, stating that the race had become "a victim of cheating and fraud." Derby officials stripped the 1973 winner of his title when he was caught using an electromagnetic system to gain an advantage.

1974 At a clandestine congress, the Senegalese radical Marxist group Reenu-Rew founded the political movement And-Jëf/African Party for Democracy and Socialism.

1975 Audience member David Gelfer, 25, pointed a .44 magnum at rocker Ted Nugent at a concert in Spokane, Washington, before being brought down to the ground by members of the audience and security guards. Police charged Gelfer with "intimidating with a weapon."

1982 A police officer mortally wounded Nevell Johnson Jr., a Black man, in a Miami video arcade, setting off three days of race-related disturbances that left another man dead.

1987 Authorities in Arkansas found the bodies of 14 relatives of R. Gene Simmons at his home near Dover. Simmons had gone on a shooting spree in Russellville that claimed two other lives and wounded four, then calmly surrendered to police.

1991 Nine people were crushed to death at the “Heavy D. and Puff Daddy Celebrity Charity Basketball Game” at City College of New York after several hundred people failed to gain admission to the game. Sponsors Heavy D, Sean "Puffy" Combs, and the CCNY Student Council, as well as the city and state of New York and the security company overseeing the event, faced wrongful death lawsuits.

2005 A U.S. immigration judge ordered John Demjanjuk deported to Ukraine for crimes against humanity committed during World War II.

1995 Pressure from German prosecutors investigating pornography forced online service provider CompuServe to set a precedent by blocking access to sex-oriented newsgroups on the Internet for its customers.

1998 Singer Usher sued the Tommy Hilfigger company for alleged infringement of publicity rights and false endorsement.

2000 U.S. District Court Judge Matsch held a hearing to ensure that confessed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh understood that he was dropping his appeals. McVeigh said that he wanted an execution date set but wanted to reserve the right to seek presidential clemency.

2001 A Michigan district court judge reduced a fourth-degree criminal sexual misconduct charge against Marilyn Manson to disorderly conduct. A second charge, a misdemeanor count of assault and battery, remained unchanged. The incident stemmed from a concert in 2001 when Manson allegedly assaulted a security guard.

2005 Former top Enron Corp. accountant Richard Causey pleaded guilty to securities fraud and agreed to help pursue convictions against Enron founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling.