| On this date in: |
| 1820 |
Britain’s King George III died insane at Windsor Castle. |
| 1843 |
William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States, was born in Niles, Ohio. |
| 1845 |
Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” was first published, in the New York Evening Mirror. |
| 1850 |
Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union as a free state. |
| 1860 |
Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov was born in the port city of Taganrog. |
| 1861 |
Kansas became the 34th state of the Union. |
| 1900 |
The American League, consisting of eight baseball teams, was organized in Philadelphia. |
| 1936 |
The first five members of baseball’s Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, were named in Cooperstown, N.Y. |
| 1958 |
Actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married. |
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| AP Photo |
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| 1963 |
Poet Robert Frost died at age 88. |
| 1979 |
President Jimmy Carter welcomed Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping to the White House following the establishment of diplomatic relations. |
| 1995 |
The San Francisco 49ers became the first team to win five Super Bowl titles when they beat the San Diego Chargers 49-26 in Super Bowl XXIX. |
| 1998 |
A bomb exploded at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killing an off-duty policeman and severely wounding a nurse. (The bomber, Eric Rudolph, was captured in May 2003 and is serving a life sentence.) |
| 2009 |
The Illinois Senate voted to remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office. |
