TODAY IN HISTORY

FEBRUARY 1

1790:The Supreme Court of the United States convened for the first time, in New York City.

1862:Julia Ward Howe's poem "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was published in the Atlantic Monthly.

1884:The first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary A–Ant, was published.

1946:A press conference announced the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was held at the University of Pennsylvania.

1960:Four black college students began a series of sit-ins at a white-only lunch counter in Woolworth’s, Greensboro, N.C.

1968:During the Vietnam War, a Viet Cong officer was executed with a pistol shot to the head by Saigon's police chief and the image captured in a famous news photograph.

1979:Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after 15 years of exile.

2003:The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it tried to reenter the Earth's atmosphere after a sixteen-day mission in space. All seven members of the crew were lost.