In 1513,

Juan Ponce de Leon sighted present-day Florida. In 1836, the first Mormon temple was dedicated in Kirtland, Ohio, by Joseph Smith Jr. In 1884, the first telephone line between Boston and New York was inaugurated. In 1912, first lady Helen Herron Taft and the wife of Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Viscountess Chinda, planted the first two of 3,000 cherry trees given to the U.S. as a gift by the mayor of Tokyo. In 1942, during World War II, Congress granted American servicemen free firstclass mailing privileges.

In 1964,

magnitude 9.2 earthquake (the strongest on record in North America) and tsunamis that together claimed about 130 lives. In 1980, 123 workers died when a North Sea floating oil field platform, the Alexander Kielland, capsized during a storm. In 1996, an Israeli court convicted Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s confessed assassin of murder, then sentenced former law student Yigal Amir to life in prison. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed landmark bipartisan legislation designed to limit the role of big money in political campaigns.