Also on this date
In 1866, Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army of the United States, the first officer to hold the rank.
In 1898, the United States invaded Puerto Rico during the SpanishAmerican War.
In 1943, Benito Mussolini was dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III, and placed under arrest. (Mussolini was later rescued by the Nazis, and reasserted his authority.)
In 1946, the United States detonated an atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device.
In 1952, Puerto Rico became a selfgoverning commonwealth of the United States.
In 1956, the Italian liner SS Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm off the New England coast late at night and began sinking; 51 people — 46 from the Andrea Doria, five from the Stockholm — were killed. (The Andrea Doria capsized and sank the following morning.)
In 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein signed a declaration at the White House ending their countries’ 46-year-old formal state of war.
In 2000, a New York-bound Air France Concorde crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground; it was the firstever crash of the supersonic jet.
Ten years ago: Wikileaks posted some 90,000 leaked U.S. military records that amounted to a blowby-blow account of the Afghanistan war, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures.
Five years ago: First lady Michelle Obama opened the Special Olympics at a star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles.
One year ago: President Donald Trump had a second phone call with the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during which he solicited Zelenskiy’s help in gathering potentially damaging information about former Vice President Joe Biden; that night, a staff member at the White House Office of Management and Budget signed a document that officially put military aid for Ukraine on hold.