Also on this date
In 1834,
the Spanish Inquisition was abolished more than 31⁄2 centuries after its creation.
In 1870,
Georgia became the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.
In 1913,
Augustus Bacon, D-Georgia, became the first person elected to the U.S. Senate under the terms of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for popular election of senators.
In 1918,
the Second Battle of the Marne, resulting in an Allied victory, began during World War I.
In 1976,
a 36-hour kidnap ordeal began for 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver as they were abducted near Chowchilla, California, by three gunmen and imprisoned in an underground cell. (The captives escaped unharmed; the kidnappers were caught.)
In 1985,
a visibly gaunt Rock Hudson appeared at a news conference with actress Doris Day (it was later revealed Hudson was suffering from AIDS).
In 1996,
MSNBC, a 24-hour all-news network, made its debut on cable and the Internet.
In 1997,
fashion designer Gianni Versace, 50, was shot dead outside his Miami Beach home; suspected gunman Andrew Phillip Cunanan, 27, was found dead eight days later, a suicide. (Investigators believed Cunanan killed four other people in a cross-country rampage that began the previous March.)
In 2002,
John Walker Lindh, an American who’d fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to two felonies in a deal sparing him life in prison.
Ten years ago:
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Goldman Sachs & Co. would pay a record $550 million penalty to settle charges that the firm misled buyers of mortgage investments.
Five years ago:
President Barack Obama launched an aggressive defense of a Iranian nuclear accord during a White House press conference, rejecting the idea that the agreement left Tehran on the brink of a bomb and arguing the only alternative to the deal was war.
One year ago:
White supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years for killing one and injuring dozens of others when he deliberately drove his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.