| On this date in: |
| 1502 | Christopher Columbus left Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and final trip to the Western Hemisphere. |
| 1913 | The 17th amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, was ratified. |
| 1926 | Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the first men to make an airplane flight over the North Pole. |
 |
| AP Photo |
|
| 1936 | Italy annexed Ethiopia. |
| 1961 | Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton N. Minow condemned TV programming as a "vast wasteland" in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters. |
| 1974 | The House Judiciary Committee opened hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. |
| 1974 | Bruce Springsteen performed a concert in Cambridge, Mass., that prompted rock critic Jon Landau to write, "I saw rock and roll future and it's name is Bruce Springsteen." |
| 1978 | The bullet-riddled body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who'd been abducted by the Red Brigades, was found in an automobile in the center of Rome. |
| 1994 | South Africa's newly-elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country's first black president. |
| 1994 | Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire, was placed under quarantine after an outbreak of Ebola virus. |
| 2000 | Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards was convicted of extortion schemes to manipulate the licensing of riverboat casinos. |
| 2002 | Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening suspended executions in his state while a study was done on whether the death penalty was being meted out in a racially discriminatory way. (Glendening's successor, Gov. Robert Ehrlich, lifted the moratorium seven months later.) |
| 2004 | Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov and 23 other people were killed in a bombing in the capital Grozny. |
