Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1513

Explorer Juan Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain.

1935

The Works Progress Administration was approved by Congress.

1946

The League of Nations assembled in Geneva for the last time.

1952

President Truman seized the steel industry to avert a nationwide strike.

1970

The Senate rejected President Nixon's nomination of G. Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court.

1974

Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth's record. Braves announcer Mylo Hamilton makes the call.

1975

Frank Robinson, major league baseball's first black manager, got off to a winning start as his Cleveland Indians defeated the New York Yankees 5-3.

1987

Al Campanis, vice president of player personnel for the Los Angeles Dodgers, resigned after saying on ABC's ''Nightline'' that blacks may lack some of the ''necessities'' for becoming baseball managers.

1992

Tennis great Arthur Ashe announced at a New York news conference that he had AIDS. He died in February 1993 of AIDS-related pneumonia at age 49.

1994

Kurt Cobain, singer and guitarist for the grunge band Nirvana, was found dead in Seattle of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; he was 27.

1995

Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, in an interview with AP Network News and ''Newsweek'' magazine to promote his memoirs, called America's Vietnam War policy ''terribly wrong.''

1998

The nation's major cigarette makers withdrew support for a historic tobacco settlement, saying Congress had twisted their offer to help cut teen smoking into a harsh attack on their industry and sharp tax increases for American smokers.

1950

Ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky died in London.

1973

Artist Pablo Picasso died at his home near Mougins, France, at age 91.

1981

General Omar N. Bradley died in New York at age 88.

1990

Ryan White, the teen-age AIDS patient whose battle for acceptance gained national attention, died in Indianapolis at age 18.