On this date

1794 — The United States and Britain signed Jay’s Treaty, which resolved some issues left over from the Revolutionary War. 1831 — The 20th president of the United States, James Garfield, was born in Orange Township, Ohio. 1850 — Alfred Tennyson was invested as Britain’s poet laureate.

1863 — President Abraham Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.

1917 — Indira Gandhi, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru and, like her father, a future prime minister of India, was born in Allahabad.

1924 — Movie producer Thomas H. Ince died after celebrating his 42nd birthday aboard the yacht of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. (The exact circumstances of Ince’s death remain a mystery.)

1942 — During World War II, Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans along the Don front.

1959 — Ford Motor Co. announced it was halting production of the unpopular Edsel.

1969 — Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made the second manned landing on the moon.

1977 — Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel.

1985 — President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began their summit in Geneva.

2002 — In a moment that drew criticism, singer Michael Jackson briefly held his youngest child, Prince Michael II (known as Blanket), over a fourth-floor balcony rail at a Berlin hotel in front of dozens of fans waiting below. (Jackson said he’d made a “terrible mistake.”)

2002 — Amazon.com released its first Kindle e-book reader.