On this date

1700 — English explorer William Dampier became the first known European visitor to the island of New Britain in the Southwest Pacific.

1801 — The District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.

1911 — Inventor Charles F. Kettering demonstrated his electric automobile starter in Detroit by starting a Cadillac’s motor with just the press of a switch, instead of hand-cranking.

1922 — The Supreme Court, in Leser v. Garnett, unanimously upheld the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed the right of women to vote.

1933 — Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, was gutted by fire; Chancellor Adolf Hitler, blaming the Communists, used the fire to justify suspending civil liberties.

1951 — The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting a president to two terms of office, was ratified.

1960 — The U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets, 3-2, at the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California. (The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.)

1973 — Members of the American Indian Movement occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, the site of the 1890 massacre of Sioux men, women and children. (The occupation lasted until the following May.)

1986 — The U.S. Senate approved telecasts of its debates on a trial basis.

1991 — Operation Desert Storm came to a conclusion as President George H.W. Bush declared that “Kuwait is liberated, Iraq’s army is defeated,” and announced that the allies would suspend combat operations at midnight, Eastern time.

1993 — Actress Lillian Gish died in New York at age 99.

Thought for today

‘There is no inevitability in history except as men make it.’

Felix Frankfurter U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1882-1965)