On this day in ...... 1963 (45 years ago today), in Birmingham, Alabama, bomb exploded in an African-American church, killing Sunday School students Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, all aged between 11 and 14. Twenty-three others were wounded, and 2 boys were shot to death in the rioting that followed.
... 1874, in Bern, Switzerland, representatives from 22 countries convened an International Postal Conference; it led to adoption on October 9 of the Treaty of Bern, by which countries established "a single postal territory for the reciprocal exchange of
correspondence between their post-offices," in place of the system of bilateral agreements that previously had governed. Monitoring the treaty is the body now known since 1878 as the Universal Postal Union (emblem at left).
