On this day in 1942, Japanese forces began an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.
On this day in 1948, US President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan, authorizing US$5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
On this day in 1948, in Jeju, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses began. The event would come to be known as the Jeju massacre.
And on this day in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech.