| On this date in: |
| 1816 |
Indiana became the 19th state. |
| 1936 |
Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.
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| AP Photo |
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| 1941 |
Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, which responded in kind. |
| 1946 |
UNICEF (the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) was established. |
| 1972 |
Man landed on the moon for the last time during the Apollo 17 mission. |
| 1981 |
The U.N. Security Council chose Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru to be its fifth secretary-general. |
| 1994 |
Russian troops rolled into breakaway republic of Chechnya in a failed bid to restore Moscow’s control over the region. |
| 1997 |
More than 150 countries agreed at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to take steps to control greenhouse gas emissions. |
| 1998 |
The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. |
| 2000 |
Shortstop Alex Rodriguez agreed to a $252 million 10-year deal with the Texas Rangers, the most lucrative sports contract in history at the time. |
| 2002 |
A congressional report found that intelligence agencies before Sept. 11, 2001, were poorly organized, poorly equipped and slow to pursue clues that might have prevented that day’s terrorist attacks. |
| 2008 |
Bernard Madoff was arrested, accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. (He later pleaded guilty and is serving 150 years in prison.) |
| 2009 |
Tiger Woods announced on his website that he was taking an indefinite leave from golf to try to save his marriage to Elin Nordegren. (The couple divorced in August 2010.) |
