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This Day In History

Arts

1814 First lady Dolley Madison saves a portrait of George Washington from being looted by British troops during the War of 1812.

Crime

2006 Natascha Kampusch, an Austrian teenager who was kidnapped at age 10, escapes from her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, after more than eight years. Shortly after her escape, Priklopil died by suicide.

Espionage

1861 Allan Pinkerton, head of the new secret service agency of the Federal government, places Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow under house arrest in Washington, D.C.

Food

1902 Pioneering cookbook author Fannie Farmer, who changed the way Americans prepare food by advocating the use of standardized measurements in recipes, opens Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston. In addition to teaching women about cooking, Farmer later educated medical professionals about the importance of proper nutrition for the sick.

Inventor

1887 Anne Connelly granted a patent for the fire escape.

Politics

2012 Carina Vance Mafla becomes the Minister for Public Health of Ecuador.

Sports

2011 Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner of Austria reaches the summit of K2 to become the first woman to climb all the “eight-thousanders,” the world’s 14 highest peaks, all of which rise above 8,000 metres (about 26,250 feet), without using bottled oxygen.