| On this date in: |
| 1536 |
Parliament passed an act declaring the authority of the pope void in England. |
| 1872 |
Britain enacted voting by secret ballot. |
| 1918 |
Nelson Mandela, a leading anti-apartheid figure and South Africa’s first black president, was born in Mvezo. |
| 1927 |
Baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb got his 4,000th career hit. |
| 1969 |
A car driven by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard. His passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, died. |
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| AP Photo |
|
| 1989 |
Actress Rebecca Schaeffer, 21, was shot to death at her Los Angeles home by an obsessed fan. (The killing prompted California in 1990 to pass the nation’s first anti-stalking law.) |
| 1998 |
A 23-foot tsunami along the coast of Papua New Guinea killed nearly 3,000 people. |
| 1999 |
David Cone of the New York Yankees pitched the 14th perfect game in modern major league baseball history in a game against the Montreal Expos. |
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| AP Photo/Jeff Zelevansky |
|
| 2005 |
An unrepentant Eric Rudolph was sentenced in Birmingham, Ala., to life in prison for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer and maimed a nurse. |
| 2011 |
Gen. David Petraeus handed over command of American and coalition forces in Afghanistan to Gen. John Allen. |
