Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1492

Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, on a voyage that would take him to the present-day Americas.

1914

Germany declared war on France.

1923

Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th president of the United States, following the death of Warren G. Harding.

1943

Gen. George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice. Patton was later ordered by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to apologize for this and a second, similar episode.

1948

Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist, publicly accused former State Department official Alger Hiss of having been part of a Communist underground, a charge Hiss denied.

1949

The National Basketball Association was formed.

1958

The nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater.

1981

U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike, despite a warning from President Reagan they would be fired.

1988

The Iran-Contra congressional hearings ended, with none of the 29 witnesses tying President Reagan directly to the diversion of arms-sales profits to Nicaraguan rebels.

1988

The Soviet Union released Mathias Rust, the young West German pilot who had landed a light plane in Moscow's Red Square in May 1987.

1993

The Senate voted 96-3 to confirm Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

1994

Stephen G. Breyer was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in a private ceremony at Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's Vermont summer home.