TODAY IN HISTORY

1620: Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts, signed a compact calling for a “body politick.”

1831: Former slave Nat Turner, who’d led a slave uprising, was executed in Jerusalem, Va.

1918: Fighting in World War I ended as the Allies and Germany signed an armistice in the Forest of Compiegne.

1921: The remains of an unidentified American service member were interred in a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding.

1938: Irish-born cook Mary Mallon, who’d gained notoriety as the disease-carrying “Typhoid Mary” blamed for the deaths of three people, died on North Brother Island in New York’s East River at age 69 after 23 years of mandatory quarantine.

1942: During World War II, Germany completed its occupation of France.

1966: Gemini 12 blasted off on a four-day mission with astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard; it was the tenth and final flight of NASA’s Gemini program.

1972: The U.S. Army turned over its base at Long Binh to the South Vietnamese, symbolizing the end of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.

1987: Following the failure of two Supreme Court nominations, President Ronald Reagan announced his choice of Judge Anthony M. Kennedy, who went on to win confirmation.

1992: The Church of England voted to ordain women as priests.

1998: President Bill Clinton ordered warships, planes and troops to the Persian Gulf as he laid out his case for a possible attack on Iraq. Iraq, meanwhile, showed no sign of backing down from its refusal to deal with U.N. weapons inspectors.

2003: In Galveston, Texas, millionaire Robert Durst was found not guilty of murdering Morris Black, an elderly neighbor who Durst said he’d killed accidentally.

2004: Palestinians at home and abroad wept, waved flags and burned tires in an eruption of grief at news of the death of Yasser Arafat in Paris at age 75.