TODAY IN HISTORY

In 1904, Charles Menches of St. Louis is said to have conceived the ice cream cone. The walk-away cone debuted at that year’s St. Louis World’s Fair. (Note: the same fair also saw the premiere of another hot-weather staple. Richard Blechyden, an Englishman who had a tea concession at the fair, invented and sold iced tea.) Also today:

In 1984, Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, became the first Miss America to relinquish her title when it was revealed she had earlier posed nude. Penthouse magazine published the photos.

In 1986, Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey. The Duke and Duchess of York divorced 10 years later. In 1997, Swiss banks published the names of more than 1,700 depositors whose accounts had been dormant since the end of the Second World War. The move was an effort to trace the heirs of Holocaust victims.

In 1999, Space shuttle Columbia blasted off with the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope and Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a U.S. space flight.

In 2000, Tiger Woods, 24, became the fifth — and youngest — golfer to win the sport’s Grand Slam when he scored a runaway, eight-stroke victory at the British Open in St. Andrews, Scotland.

In 2009, E. Lynn Harris, a pioneer of gay black fiction and a literary entrepreneur who rose from self-publishing to best-selling status, died. He was 54.

In 2010, Kristin Roe of Halifax became the first Nova Scotian to successfully swim the English Channel, completing the 34-km 17-hour swim from Dover Harbour to Calais just after midnight. She was raising money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation and the Nova Scotia-Gambia Association.