What Happened On This Day In History?

1519

Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain on a voyage to find a western passage to the Spice Islands in Indonesia. (Magellan was killed en route, but one of his ships circumnavigated the world.)

1870

Italian troops took control of the Papal States, leading to the unification of Italy.

1881

Chester A. Arthur was sworn in as the 21st president of the United States, succeeding James A. Garfield, who had been assassinated.

1884

The Equal Rights Party was formed during a convention of suffragists in San Francisco. The convention nominated Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood of Washington, D.C., for president.

1962

Black student James Meredith was blocked from enrolling at the University of Mississippi by Governor Ross R. Barnett. (Meredith was later admitted.)

1963

In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Kennedy proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition to the moon.

1973

Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in a $100,000 winner-take-all tennis match.

1977

The first wave of Southeast Asian ''boat people'' arrived in San Francisco under a new U.S. resettlement program.

1984

A suicide car bomber attacked the U.S. Embassy annex in north Beirut, killing a dozen people.

1998

After playing in a record 2,632 consecutive games over 16 seasons, Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles sat out a game against the New York Yankees.

1999

Lawrence Russell Brewer became the second white supremacist to be convicted in the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas. (Brewer was later sentenced to death.)

1999

International peacekeepers landed in East Timor.

1947

Former New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia died.

1973

Singer-songwriter Jim Croce died in a plane crash near Natchitoches, La., at age 30.

1998

Muriel Humphrey Brown, widow of Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his brief successor in the U.S. Senate, died in Minneapolis at age 86.

1999

Raisa Gorbachev, wife of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, died after a battle with leukemia; she was 67.