Today in History: Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964

The following is are major notable events that occurred on March 4 throughout history:

1066 – The Norman-French army under William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II’s forces at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066. Harold was killed in this decisive battle, marking the beginning of the Norman conquest of England.

1806 – In the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon I’s French forces won decisive twin victories at Jena and Auerstedt on October 14, 1806. These battles destroyed the main Prussian armies and gave France dominance over Prussia during the Napoleonic Wars.

1892 – The first Sherlock Holmes collection, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was published on October 14, 1892. This work introduced the iconic detective and became a landmark in world literature.

1942 – During the WWII Battle of Stalingrad, German forces launched a massive assault on October 14, 1942. About 2,000 Luftwaffe sorties dropped 600 tons of bombs on Soviet positions. Despite the intense bombardment, the Red Army held a narrow defensive pocket on the Volga River, a turning point that contributed to the eventual Soviet victory at Stalingrad.

1947 – On October 14, 1947, U.S. Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier in level flight. Piloting the Bell X-1 rocket plane, Yeager exceeded Mach 1 over the Mojave Desert, a landmark achievement in aviation history.

1962 – U.S. surveillance flights on October 14, 1962 revealed Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, triggering the Cuban Missile Crisis. This discovery brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war until a tense diplomatic resolution was reached.

1964 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was ousted from power on October 14, 1964. After ten years leading the USSR, Khrushchev’s removal paved the way for Leonid Brezhnev’s leadership and marked a major shift in Cold War politics.

1964 – Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was announced as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize on October 14, 1964 for his nonviolent struggle against racial segregation. At age 35 he became the youngest Nobel Peace laureate at the time, underscoring the international impact of the U.S. civil rights movement.

1990 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize on October 14, 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War. His policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in the USSR, along with easing East-West tensions, earned him this global recognition.

1990 – East Germany held its first free state parliamentary elections on October 14, 1990. These polls recreated the Länder (states) of the former GDR just after reunification, a key step in merging East Germany into the Federal Republic of Germany.