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• • On this date: • In 1533, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared the marriage of England's King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid. • In 1892, the Sierra Club was organized in San Francisco. • In 1912, the Senate Commerce Committee issued its report on the Titanic disaster that cited a "state of absolute unpreparedness," improperly tested safety equipment and an "indifference to danger" as some of the causes of an "unnecessary tragedy." • In 1929, the first all-color talking picture, "On with the Show," opened in New York. • In 1934, the Dionne quintuplets -- Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne -- were born to Elzire Dionne at the family farm in Ontario, Canada. • In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington signaling that vehicular traffic could begin crossing the just-opened Golden Gate Bridge in California. Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Britain. • In 1940, during World War II, the Belgian army surrendered to invading German forces. • In 1959, the U.S. Army launched Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, aboard a Jupiter missile for a suborbital flight which both primates survived. • In 1961, Amnesty International had its beginnings with the publication of an article in the British newspaper The Observer, "The Forgotten Prisoners." • In 1977, 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Ky. • In 1987, to the embarrassment of Soviet officials, Mathias Rust (mah-TEE'-uhs rust), a young West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow's Red Square without authorization. (Rust was freed by the Soviets the following year.) • In 1998, comic actor Phil Hartman of "Saturday Night Live" and "NewsRadio" fame was shot to death at his home in Encino, Calif., by his wife, Brynn, who then killed herself. • • Ten years ago: President George W. Bush signed a 10-year, $350 billion package of tax cuts, saying they already were "adding fuel to an economic recovery." Amnesty International released a report saying the U.S.-led war on terror had made the world a more dangerous and repressive place, a finding dismissed by Washington as "without merit." Actress Martha Scott died in Van Nuys, Calif., at age 90. • Five years ago: The White House reacted angrily to a highly critical memoir by (Continued on page 31)
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