TODAY IN HISTORY

Highlights in history on this date:

1502 — Christopher Columbus lands in what is now Costa Rica on his fourth and last voyage to the New World.

1967 — United States announces it will build anti-missile network to counter any attack by China.

1970 — Jimi Hendrix, US rock singer and guitarist, dies of a drug overdose aged 27.

1973 — East Germany, West Germany and the Bahamas are admitted to United Nations.

1991 — Two earthquakes rock Guatemala, killing at least 17 people and injuring dozens when their houses collapse.

1994 — US President Bill Clinton announces that Haiti’s strongman Raoul Cedras has agreed to leave power by October 15 and permit US troops to enter the country.

2001 — Letters postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey, which test positive for anthrax, are sent to the New York Post and the US NBC broadcasting network anchor Tom Brokaw.

2005 — Voters in Afghanistan brave threats from the Taliban to vote in their first parliamentary elections in decades.

2011 — Dominique StraussKahn breaks his silence four months after a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault, calling his encounter with the woman a ‘‘moral failing’’ he deeply regrets but insisting in an interview on French television that no violence was involved.

2013 — Tony Abbott is sworn in as Australian Prime Minister, 11 days after his election win over Labor’s Kevin Rudd.