Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1474

Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, were proclaimed Queen and King of Castile.

1577

Sir Francis Drake of England set out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey that would take him around the world.

1621

The first American furs to be exported from the continent left for England aboard the Fortune, under the care of Robert Cushman.

1642

Dutch navigator Abel Tasman arrived in present-day New Zealand.

1769

Dartmouth College in New Hampshire received its charter.

1862

Confederate General Robert E. Lee's vastly outnumbered army defeated Union General Ambrose Burnside and his troops in the Battle of Fredericksburg.

1903

Molds for ice cream cones were patented by Italo Marcione of New York.

1918

President Wilson arrived in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.

1928

George Gershwin's musical work ''An American in Paris'' had its premiere, at Carnegie Hall in New York.

1937

The Japanese army occupied Nanking, China -- the beginning of the "Rape of Nanking."

1944

During World War II, the U.S. cruiser Nashville was badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze suicide attack that claimed 138 lives.

1958

The search for a squirrel monkey fired into space in the nose cone of a Jupiter missile is called off. Gordo survived a 300-mile journey into space and then traveled more than 1,500 miles in the rocket until it dropped in the South Atlantic.

1973

Great Britain cut the work week to three days to save energy.

1978

The Philadelphia Mint began stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar.

1981

Poland's Communist government declared martial law, arrested Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders, and declared the Solidarity trade union illegal. Martial law formally ended in 1983.

1988

PLO chairman Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where it had reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a visa to visit New York.

1989

South African President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk's office in Cape Town.

1991

North Korea and South Korea signed a treaty of reconciliation and nonaggression, formally ending the Korean War 38 years after fighting ceased in 1953.

1996

The U.N. Security Council chose Kofi Annan of Ghana to become the world body's seventh secretary-general.

1998

Voters in Puerto Rico rejected U.S. statehood in a non-binding referendum.

2000

Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency 36 after Election Day anda day after the U.S. Supreme Court shut down further recounts of disputed ballots in Florida. Democrat Al Gore conceded, delivering a call for national unity.

2001

A group of gunmen breaks through tight security to attack the parliament building in the Indian capital, New Delhi.

2001

President George W. Bush formally announced the United States withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

2001

The Pentagon released a videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaeda leader said the September 11 attacks exceeded his "most optimistic" expectations.

2003

A tip led U.S. soldiers to a farm outside Tikrit, Iraq, where they found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole and arrest him; the capture is announced to the world the following day.

2004

A jury in Redwood City, Calif., recommended the death penalty for Scott Peterson for the murders of his wife and unborn child.

1797

Heinrich Heine, German poet, satirist, and journalist.

1818

Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady, wife of 16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

1838

Alexis Millardet, French botanist who developed the first successful fungicide.

1903

Carlos Montoya, the Spanish-born flamenco guitarist,

1925

Dick Van Dyke, American Emmy Award-winning actor/comedian.

1948

Ted Nugent, hard rock guitarist from Detroit, Michigan.

1967

Jamie Foxx, American comedian and actor.

1466

Donatello, Italian Renaissance sculptor.

1784

Dr. Samuel Johnson, English lexicographer

1961

Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses), American folk painter, at age 101.

1992

Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, American businessman