On this date

President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.

the Chinese city of Nanjing fell to Japanese forces during the Sino-Japanese War; what followed was a massacre of war prisoners, soldiers and citizens. (China maintains that up to 300,000 people were killed; Japanese nationalists say the death toll was far lower.)

an Air Indiana Flight 216, a DC-3 carrying the University of Evansville basketball team on a flight to Nashville, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 29 people on board.

the Philadelphia Mint began stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which went into circulation the following July.

authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. (Martial law formally ended in 1983.)

the U.N. Security Council chose Kofi Annan of Ghana to become the world body’s seventh secretary-general.

Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency a day after the U.S. Supreme Court shut down further recounts of disputed ballots in Florida; Democrat Al Gore conceded, delivering a call for national unity.

The White House weighed its options for preventing a collapse of the troubled U.S. auto industry.

Reality TV star Khloe Kardashian filed for divorce from Lamar Odom after four years of marriage.

Congressional Republicans reached agreement on a major overhaul of the nation’s tax laws that would provide generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans; middle- and low-income families would get smaller tax cuts.

Associated Press