Today:
1492: Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
1766: Christie’s, the famous auction house, held its first sale in London.
1791: Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna at the age of 35.
1776: The Phi Beta Kappa Society, the first Greek-letter fraternity in the United States, was founded at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
1848: U.S. President James K. Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in California to Congress, triggering the Gold Rush of 1849.
1933: Prohibition in the United States ended when the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which repealed the 18th Amendment, was ratified.
1945: Flight 19, a squadron of five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers, disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in the area now known as the Bermuda Triangle.
1955: The Montgomery Bus Boycott began in Montgomery, Alabama, led by Martin Luther King Jr., in response to Rosa Parks’ arrest four days earlier.
1955: The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) merged to form the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in the U.S.
2013: Nelson Mandela, South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, statesman, and former president, died at age 95.