TODAY IN HISTORY
1936: The first Social Security checks are mailed . . . 1945: The American and British begin the bombing by 1,800 planes of Dresden, which kills some 40,000 - 135,000 persons. The uncertainty is caused by the number of bodies burned to ash. Some 650,000 incendiary bombs are dropped on a city with few defenses and many refugees. 27,000 homes and 7,000 public buildings are destroyed. One of the survivors is an American prisoner by the name of Kurt Vonnegut huddled in an underground meat locker who, one critic notes, would come to feel that "he was perpetrator, observer and target all at the same time." Lothat Metzger would later recall, "We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from." . . . 1959 The first Barbie Doll is introduced by Mattel.