TODAY IN HISTORY

In 1817, Mississippi was admitted as the 20th state of the Union.

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

In 1898, a treaty was signed in Paris officially ending the SpanishAmerican 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 the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; the co-recipient was Nicholas Murray Butler.

In 1967, Singer Otis Redding, 26, and six others were killed when their plane crashed into Wisconsin’s Lake Monona; one passenger, Ben Cauley, survived. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev concluded three days of summit talks in Washington. Violinist Jascha Heifetz died in Los Angeles at age 86. 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.

In 1995, the first group of U-S Marines arrived in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo to join NATO soldiers sent to enforce peace in former Yugoslavia.

In 1996, South African President Nelson Mandela signed the country’s new constitution into law during a ceremony in Sharpeville.

In 2005, former Senator Eugene McCarthy died in Washington, D.C., at age 89; actor-comedian Richard Pryor died in Encino, California, at age 65.

In 2007, suspended NFL star Michael Vick was sentenced by a federal judge in Richmond, Virginia, to 23 months in prison for bankrolling a dogfighting operation and killing dogs that underperformed (Vick served 19 months). Former Vice President Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with a call for humanity to rise up against a looming climate crisis and stop waging war on the environment.