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On This Day: Thurgood Marshall sworn in as Supreme Court justice

On Oct. 2, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

By UPI Staff
On October 2, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Photo courtesy Library of Congress
1 of 5 | On October 2, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Photo courtesy Library of Congress

Oct. 2 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird performed the first test of a working television system.

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In 1950, the "Peanuts" comic strip by Charles M. Schulz was published for the first time.

In 1959, The Twilight Zone, with host Rod Serling, premiered on U.S. television.

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1970, a plane crash in Colorado killed 31 people, including members of the Wichita State University football team.

In 1984, Richard Miller became the first FBI agent to be charged with espionage. He was convicted of passing government secrets to the Soviet Union through his Russian lover.

In 1985, actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS. He was 59. The first celebrity to publicly acknowledge he suffered from AIDS, Hudson's final days were marked by visits from screen legends.

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In 2001, NATO said the United States had shown evidence, sufficient to justify military action, that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

File Photo by Chris Corder/UPI

In 2002, a 55-year-old Maryland man was slain in the first in a series of apparent random sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington area for three weeks. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were both convicted of capital murder for the killings, which numbered 17 in total. Muhammad was executed Nov. 10, 2009. Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In 2005, Connecticut issued its first licenses for "civil unions," becoming the third state (after California and Massachusetts) to offer same-sex couples a legal way to unite.

In 2006, five Amish girls were fatally shot in a rural, one-room schoolhouse in Nickle Mines, Pa. The suspect, a milk truck driver who also killed himself, had told his wife he needed to avenge something that had happened 20 years earlier.

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File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI

In 2009, Rio de Janeiro was awarded the 2016 Olympic Games, the first South American city to host the event, beating out Tokyo, Madrid and Chicago.

In 2012, Pennsylvanians could vote in November without having to show a photo identification card, a judge ruled in a challenge to the state's controversial voter ID law.

In 2013, a fiery crash involving a North Carolina-bound church bus, SUV and tractor-trailer killed eight people (six on the bus) and injured 14 in northeastern Tennessee.

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