On this date

In 1620, the passengers and crew of the Mayflower sighted Cape Cod.

In 1918, it was announced that Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II would abdicate; he then fled to the Netherlands.

In 1935, United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (later renamed the Congress of Industrial Organizations).

In 1965, the great Northeast blackout began as a series of power failures lasting up to 131⁄2 hours left 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.

In 1967, a Saturn V rocket carrying an unmanned Apollo spacecraft blasted off from Cape Kennedy on a successful test flight.

In 1976, the U.N. General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as “illegitimate.”

In 1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.

Ten years ago: Six U.S. troops died in an insurgent ambush in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan, making 2007 the deadliest year for American forces in Afghanistan since 2001.

Five years ago: Retired four-star Army Gen. David Petraeus resigned as CIA director after an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was revealed by an FBI investigation.

One year ago: Democrat Hillary Clinton conceded the presidential election to Republican Donald Trump, telling supporters to accept Trump and the election results, urging them to give him “an open mind and a chance to lead.”