TODAY IN HISTORY

1763

Britain, Spain and France signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War in North America).

1840

Britain’s Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-coburg (Koh’-borg) and Gotha (Gah’-thuh).

1936

Nazi Germany’s Reichstag passed a law investing the Gestapo secret police with absolute authority, exempt from any legal review.

1959

A major tornado tore through the St. Louis area, killing 21 people and causing heavy damage.

1967

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, was ratified as Minnesota and Nevada adopted it.

1981

Eight people were killed when a fire set by a busboy broke out at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino.

1989

Ron Brown was elected the first Black chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

1992

Boxer Mike Tyson was convicted in Indianapolis of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss Black America contestant. (Tyson served three years in prison.) “Roots” author Alex Haley died in Seattle at age 70.

1996

World chess champion Garry Kasparov lost the first game of a match in Philadelphia against an IBM computer dubbed “Deep Blue.” (Kasparov ended up winning the match, 4games to 2; he was defeated by Deep Blue in a rematch the following year.)

2005

North Korea boasted publicly for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons.

2015

NBC announced it was suspending Brian Williams as “Nightly News” anchor and managing editor for six months without pay for misleading the public about his experiences covering the Iraq War. Jon Stewart announced he would step down as host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central later in the year.

2020

U.S. health officials confirmed the first case of the novel coronavirus among the hundreds of people who’d been evacuated from China to military bases in the United States; it was among the 13 confirmed cases in the U.S. Britain declared the new coronavirus a “serious and imminent threat to public health” and said people with the virus could now be forcibly quarantined.