| On this date in: |
| 1789 |
Georgetown University was established in present-day Washington, D.C. |
| 1849 |
English-born Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a medical degree, from the Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y. |
| 1932 |
New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. |
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| AP Photo |
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| 1937 |
Seventeen people went on trial in Moscow during Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s Great Purge. |
| 1950 |
The Israeli Knesset approved a resolution proclaiming Jerusalem the capital of Israel. |
| 1962 |
Tony Bennett recorded “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” in New York for Columbia Records. |
| 1964 |
The 24th amendment to the Constitution, eliminating the poll tax in federal elections, was ratified. |
| 1968 |
North Korea seized the U.S. Navy ship the USS Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation’s territorial waters on a spying mission. The crew was held for 11 months. |
| 1977 |
The TV mini-series “Roots,” based on the Alex Haley novel, began airing on ABC. |
| 1989 |
Surrealist painter Salvador Dali died in his native Spain at age 84. |
| 1991 |
Allied forces in the Persian Gulf War announced that they had achieved air superiority after some 12,000 sorties. |
| 1997 |
A judge in Fairfax, Va., sentenced a Pakistani man to death for an assault rifle attack outside CIA headquarters in 1993 that killed two people and wounded three. |
| 2002 |
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was abducted in Karachi, Pakistan, by a group demanding the return of prisoners from the Afghan campaign. (He was later killed.) |
| 2005 |
Former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson died at age 79. |
