Civil Rights pioneers Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks die

On October 24, 1972, the first African-American to play Major League Baseball, Jackie Robinson, died at the age of 53 in Stamford, Connecticut. On the same day in 2005, Rosa Parks passed away in Detroit at the age of 92. Parks inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. Both Parks and Robinson were symbols of the civil rights movement, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

THIS DAY @ LAW

FDR proposed 'court-packing' plan

On February 5, 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, frustrated with the US Supreme Court's treatment of some of his economic reforms, proposed a plan to add judges to that and other federal courts whenever a sitting judge reached the age of seventy but declined to retire. Critics accused Roosevelt of indulging in autocracy and "court-packing." Review the text of Roosevelt's "fireside chat" on the proposal from March 9, 1937. Roosevelt eventually dropped the initiative but was nonetheless able to fill seven vacancies on the Court over the next four years, achieving his goal indirectly.

Panamanian dictator Noriega indicted

On February 5, 1988, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was indicted on charges of drug smuggling and money laundering. The following year, he was extradited to the United States and later sentenced to 30 years in US federal prison. In 1999, the French government requested that Noriega be extradited to France, where he had been convicted of money laundering. In that same year, the government of Panama also requested the extradition of Noriega, as a result of his 1995 conviction in absentia on murder charges.