On this date
In 1861,
Confederate President Jefferson Davis was elected to a six-year term of office.
In 1893,
composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age 53.
In 1962,
Democrat Edward M. Kennedy was elected Senator from Massachusetts.
In 1977,
39 people were killed when the Kelly Barnes Dam in Georgia burst, sending a wall of water through Toccoa Falls College.
In 1986,
former Navy radioman John A. Walker Jr., the admitted head of a family spy ring, was sentenced in Baltimore to life imprisonment. (Walker died in prison in 2014 at age 77.)
In 1990,
about one-fifth of the Universal Studios backlot in southern California was destroyed in an arson fire.
In 1995,
funeral services were held in Jerusalem for assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Ten years ago:
President-elect Barack Obama spoke by phone with nine world leaders and met privately at the FBI office in Chicago with U.S. intelligence officials, preparing to become commander in chief.
Five years ago:
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee on the nation’s health care law, was blistered by Republicans who challenged her honesty, pushed for her resignation and demanded unsuccessfully that she concede President Barack Obama had deliberately misled the public about his signature domestic program.
One year ago:
President Donald Trump told reporters in Tokyo that North Korea was “a threat to the civilized world.”