On this date in...

1880...Lillian Russell, one of nation's most celebrated actresses at the turn of the century, makes her New York debut at Tony Pastor's 14th Street Theater.

1950...Seventy-nine people are killed and hundreds more are injured when two Long Island Railroad trains collide in Richmond Hill, Queens.

1963...New Yorkers join the nation in mourning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, shot and killed by an assassin in Dallas. Schools, courts, theaters and stores close as the city is silenced in sorrow.

In 1966...In an effort to increase public confidence in the police department, the city announces plans for a Civilian Review Board to monitor the NYPD. But opposition from the department soon forces the body to return to an all-police makeup, and it's not until 1993 that the city returns to a review board made up solely of civilians.

1995...Police discover the badly-beaten body of six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo in the Lower Manhattan apartment of her mother – who tells authorities that she killed the child to rid her of evil spirits. The case prompts reforms within the city's child welfare bureaucracy.