Today in history

On Dec. 10,1520, Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict demanding that he recant or face excommunication.

In 1817 Mississippi was admitted as the 20th state.

In 1830 poet Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Mass.

In 1851 Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System of library classification, was born in Adams Center, N.Y.

In 1869 women were granted the right to vote in the Wyoming Territory.

In 1898 a treaty was signed in Paris officially ending the Spanish-American War.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping to mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

In 1931 Jane Addams became a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman so honored.

In 1948 the U.N. General Assembly adopted its Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

In 1950 Ralph Bunche was presented the Nobel Peace Prize, the first black American to receive the award.

In 1958 the first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the U.S. as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flew 111 passengers from New York to Miami in about 2 1⁄2 hours.

In 1964 Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize during ceremonies in Oslo.

In 1965 the Grateful Dead played their first concert, at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.

In 1967 singer Otis Redding died in the crash of his private plane in Wisconsin.

In 1980 Rep. John Jenrette, D-S.C., resigned to avoid being expelled from the House following his conviction on charges relating to the FBI’s Abscam investigation.

In 1984 South African Bishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1994 Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin received the Nobel Peace Prize, pledging to pursue their mission of healing the anguished Middle East. Also in

1994 advertising executive Thomas Mosser of North Caldwell, N.J., was killed by a mail bomb blamed on the Unabomber.