TODAY IN HISTORY

1779: John Adams was named by Congress to negotiate the Revolutionary War’s peace terms with Britain.

1825: The first locomotive to haul a passenger train was operated by George Stephenson in England.

1939: Warsaw, Poland, surrendered after weeks of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II.

1964: The U.S. government publicly released the report of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy. 1979: Congress gave its final approval to forming

the U.S. Department of Education.

1991: President George H.W. Bush announced in a nationally broadcast address that he was eliminating all U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons, and called on the Soviet Union to match the gesture. The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked, 7-7, on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1994: More than 350 Republican congressional candidates gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to sign the “Contract with America,” a 10-point platform they pledged to enact if voters sent a GOP majority to the House.

1996: In Afghanistan, the Taliban, a band of former seminary students, drove the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani out of Kabul, captured the capital and executed former leader Najibullah. 1999: Sen. John McCain of Arizona officially opened his campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, the same day former Vice President Dan Quayle dropped his White House bid. 2004: NBC announced that “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno would be succeeded by “Late Night” host Conan O’Brien in 2009 (however, O’Brien’s stint on “The Tonight Show” lasted just over seven months).

2010: Southwest Airlines announced the $1.4 billion purchase of AirTran. Temperatures reached 113 degrees in downtown Los Angeles, the highest in records kept since 1877.

2016: Scientists announced the first baby born from a controversial new technique that combined DNA from three people — the mother, the father and an egg donor. (The goal was to prevent the child from inheriting a fatal genetic disease from his mother.)