Today:
1493: Christopher Columbus reaches the Leeward Islands during his second voyage to the New World.
1737: The Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest continuously active public opera house in Europe, is inaugurated in Naples, Italy.
1842: Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Todd at her sister’s home in Springfield, Illinois.
1890: The City and South London Railway, the world’s first deep-level electrified “tube” railway, officially opens in London.
1922: British archaeologist Howard Carter discovers the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
1924: Nellie Tayloe Ross is elected governor of Wyoming, becoming the first woman to be elected governor of a U.S. state.
1952: The National Security Agency (NSA) is established in the United States.
1956: Soviet troops invade Budapest to suppress the Hungarian Revolution.
1979: The Iran hostage crisis begins as Iranian students and militants storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans captive.
2008: Barack Obama is elected as the 44th President of the United States, becoming the first African-American to win the office.