Today:
1492: Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain, on his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean with three ships: the Santa María, the Pinta, and the Niña. He was seeking a westward route to Asia.
1778: The La Scala opera house, one of the world’s most famous, opened in Milan, Italy, with a performance of Antonio Salieri’s “Europa riconosciuta.”
1914: Germany declared war on France at the start of World War I, implementing its Schlieffen Plan for a two-front war.
1923: Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th President of the United States, following the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding. The oath of office was administered by his father, a notary public, in his family home in Vermont.
1936: Jesse Owens, an African American track and field athlete, won the 100-meter dash at the Berlin Olympics, collecting the first of his four gold medals at the games, a direct contradiction to Adolf Hitler’s theories of Aryan racial superiority.
1949: The Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL) merged to form the National Basketball Association (NBA).
1958: The U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, became the first vessel to travel under the geographic North Pole.
1960: Niger, a West African nation, officially gained its independence from France.
1981: Nearly 13,000 U.S. air traffic controllers, members of the PATCO union, went on strike. In response, President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 of them who refused to return to work.
2004: The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopened to the public for the first time since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.