Did someone kill Beethoven? A Viennese pathologist claims the composer’s physician did — inadvertently overdosing him with lead in a case of a cure that went wrong.
Other researchers are not convinced, but there is no controversy about one fact: The master had been a very sick man years before his death in 1827.
Previous research determined [...]

Dropping something may have saved Joy Horton’s life. The 73-year-old woman was preparing some food in her western New York home on Monday morning when she dropped a spoon on the floor of her kitchen. When she bent down, her house exploded.
The explosion leveled her home in the Wayne County town of Sodus, on Lake [...]

On Aug. 30, 1963, the hot-line communications link between Washington, D.C., and Moscow went into operation. (Go to article.)
1797 “Frankenstein” author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in London.
1862 Union forces were defeated by the Confederates at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Va.
1893 Huey P. Long, the “Kingfish” of Louisiana politics, was born in Winn Parish, [...]

Steven Truscott, sentenced at age 14 to hang for a murder he has always claimed he did not commit, has been acquitted of the 1959 killing of Lynne Harper.
“I never in my wildest dreams expected in my lifetime for this to come true,” Mr. Truscott, 62, told a news conference. “So this is a dream [...]

On Aug. 29, 1991, the Supreme Soviet, the parliament of the U.S.S.R., suspended all activities of the Communist Party, bringing an end to the institution. (Go to article.)
1533 The last Incan king, Atahualpa, was murdered on orders from Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro.
1632 English philosopher John Locke was born in Somerset.
1877 Brigham Young, the second president of the Mormon [...]