Today in history

On Nov. 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon told Associated Press managing editors in Orlando, Florida: “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”

In 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne upon the death of her half-sister, Queen Mary, beginning a 44-year reign.

In 1800, Congress held its first session in the partially completed U.S. Capitol building.

In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt. In 1889, the Union Pacific Railroad Co. began direct, daily railroad service between Chicago and Portland, Oregon, as well as Chicago and San Francisco.

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman, in an address to a special session of Congress, called for emergency aid to Austria, Italy and France. (The aid was approved the following month.)

In 1979, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 black and/or female American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

In 1987, a federal jury in Denver convicted two white supremacists of civil rights violations in the 1984 slaying of radio talk show host Alan Berg. (Both men later died in prison.)

In 2001, the Taliban confirmed the death of Osama bin Laden’s military chief Mohammed Atef in an airstrike three days earlier.

In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as the 38th governor of California.

Ten years ago: In their first meeting since the election, Barack Obama and former rival John McCain met at the president-elect’s transition headquarters in Chicago, where they pledged to work together on ways to change Washington’s “bad habits.” St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols won his second NL MVP award.

Five years ago: Intense thunderstorms and tornadoes swept across the Midwest, causing extensive damage in several central Illinois communities, killing more than half a dozen people. Doris Lessing, 94, an independent and often irascible author who won the Nobel Prize in 2007, died in London.

One year ago: Sen. Al Franken apologized to the woman who had accused him of forcibly kissing her and groping her during a 2006 USO tour; the Minnesota Democrat said he remembered the encounter differently. The Rev. Jesse Jackson disclosed that he had been receiving outpatient care for two years for Parkinson’s disease. Argentina’s Navy said it had lost contact with a submarine carrying 44 crew members off the country’s southern coast; an explosion occurred near the time and place where the sub went missing. (Argentina eventually gave up hope of finding survivors; the search for the sub was unsuccessful.)