Today:
1794: The Great Fire of New Orleans, which destroyed over 200 buildings, raged through the French Quarter.
1854: Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, stating that the Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin.
1863: US President Abraham Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, a plan for the re-admittance of Confederate states into the Union.
1881: The Ring Theatre in Vienna, Austria, was destroyed by fire, killing at least 620 people in one of the deadliest theater fires on record.
1914: The Battle of the Falkland Islands took place during World War I, where a British naval squadron decisively defeated a German fleet.
1941: The United States formally entered World War II, declaring war on Japan one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1953: US President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations, proposing international cooperation for the peaceful use of atomic energy.
1980: John Lennon, former member of The Beatles, was fatally shot outside his apartment building in New York City.
1987: US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, eliminating an entire class of nuclear missiles.
1991: The leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine signed the Belavezha Accords, which formally dissolved the Soviet Union and established the Commonwealth of Independent States.