| On this date in: |
| 1789 | North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. |
| 1922 | Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. |
| 1969 | The Senate voted down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth. |
| 1973 | President Richard Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate. |
| 1980 | A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas killed 87 people. |
| 1985 | Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested, accused of spying for Israel. (He later pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.) |
| 1989 | The proceedings of Britain's House of Commons were televised live for the first time. |
| 1991 | The U.N. Security Council chose Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt to be secretary-general. |
| 1995 | The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 5,000 for the first time. |
| 2000 | The Florida Supreme Court granted Democrat Al Gore's request to keep the presidential election recount going. |
| 2001 | Ottilie Lundgren, a 94-year-old resident of Oxford, Conn., died of inhalation anthrax. The source of the anthrax has never been determined. |
| 2002 | NATO sought to expand its membership into the borders of the former Soviet Union as it invited seven former communist countries to join the alliance: Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria. |
| 2004 | Donald Trump's casino empire filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. |
| 2004 | The NBA suspended Indiana's Ron Artest for the rest of the season following a brawl in the stands during a game against the Detroit Pistons. |
| 2005 | Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon broke away from the hardline Likud with the intention of forming a new party. |
| 2007 | Officials announced the recall of more than a half-million pieces of Chinese-made children's jewelry contaminated with lead. |
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