On this date
In 1886, President Grover Cleveland, 49, married Frances Folsom, 21, in the Blue Room of the White House. (To date, Cleveland is the only president to marry in the executive mansion.)
In 1924, Congress passed, and President Calvin Coolidge signed, a measure guaranteeing full American citizenship for all Native Americans born within U.S. territorial limits.
In 1941, baseball’s “Iron Horse,” Lou Gehrig, died in New York of a degenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; he was 37.
In 1966, U.S. space probe Surveyor 1 landed on the moon and began transmitting detailed photographs of the lunar surface.
In 1976, Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles was mortally wounded by a bomb planted underneath his car; he died 11 days later. (Prosecutors believed Bolles was targeted because he had written stories that upset a liquor wholesaler; three men were convicted of the killing.)
In 1986, for the first time, the public could watch the proceedings of the U.S. Senate on television as a six-week experiment began.
In 1997, Timothy McVeigh was convicted of murder and conspiracy in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. (McVeigh was executed in June 2001.)
Ten years ago: Bo Diddley, 79, a founding father of rock ’n’ roll, died in Archer, Fla., at age 79.
Five years ago: Egypt’s highest court ruled that the nation’s interim parliament was illegally elected, though it stopped short of dissolving the chamber immediately.
One year ago: Three former Penn State administrators were handed jail and house-arrest sentences ranging up to nearly two years for burying child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky.