| On this date in: |
| 1784 | Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, was born in Orange County, Va. |
| 1871 | The National Rifle Association was incorporated. |
| 1925 | Conservative author and editor William F. Buckley Jr. was born in New York. |
| 1947 | A group of writers, producers and directors that became known as the "Hollywood 10" was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry. |
| 1950 | The musical "Guys and Dolls," based on the writings of Damon Runyon and featuring songs by Frank Loesser, opened on Broadway. |
| 1963 | Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
 | NBC reporter Tom Petit at the scene |
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| AP Photo/Ted Powers |
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| 1969 | Apollo 12 returned to Earth after the second manned mission to the moon. |
| 1971 | Hijacker D.B. Cooper parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727 over Washington state with $200,000 in ransom. His fate remains unknown. |
| 1985 | The hijacking of an Egyptair jetliner parked on the ground in Malta ended with 60 deaths when Egyptian commandos stormed the plane; two of the dead were shot by the hijackers. |
| 1987 | The United States and the Soviet Union agreed to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles in the first superpower treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. |
| 1989 | Czechoslovakia's hard-line party leadership resigned after more than a week of protests against its policies. |
| 1991 | Rock singer Freddie Mercury of Queen died at age 45 of pneumonia brought on by AIDS. |
| 1992 | Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger pleaded innocent to making a false statement in the Iran-Contra affair. |
| 1998 | America Online confirmed it was buying Netscape Communications in a deal ultimately worth $10 billion. |
| 2000 | The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider George W. Bush's appeal against the hand recounting of presidential ballots in Florida. |
| 2003 | A jury in Virginia Beach, Va., sentenced John Allen Muhammad to death for the Washington-area sniper shootings. (Muhammad was executed in 2009.) |
