On this date

In 1922, Rebecca L. Felton, a Georgia Democrat, was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate; her term, the result of an interim appointment, ended the following day as Walter F. George, the winner of a special election, took office. In 1927, picketing strikers at the Columbine Mine in northern Colorado were fired on by state police; six miners were killed. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Air Quality Act. In 1973, President Richard Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 181⁄2-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate. In 1974, bombs exploded at a pair of pubs in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people. (Six suspects were convicted of the attack, but the convictions of the so-called Birmingham Six were overturned in 1991.) In 1985, U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested, accused of spying for Israel. (Pollard later pleaded guilty to espionage and was sentenced to life in prison; he was released on parole on Nov. 20, 2015.) In 1992, a three-day tornado outbreak that struck 13 states began in the Houston area before spreading to the Midwest and eastern U.S.; 26 people were killed. Ten years ago: Officials announced the recall of more than a half-million pieces of Chinese-made children’s jewelry contaminated with lead. Five years ago: Israel and the Hamas militant group in Gaza agreed to a ceasefire to end eight days of the fiercest fighting in nearly four years. One year ago: An elementary school bus crashed in Chattanooga, Tenn.; six children were killed.