TODAY IN HISTORY

1994: Nelson Mandela claimed victory in the wake of South Africa’s first democratic elections; President F.W. de Klerk acknowledged defeat.

1519: artist Leonardo da Vinci died at Cloux, France, at age 67.

1670: the Hudson’s Bay Co. was chartered by England’s King Charles II.

1863: during the Civil War, Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was accidentally wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville, Virginia; he died eight days later.

1890: the Oklahoma Territory was organized.

1927: the U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, upheld 8-1 a Virginia law allowing the forced sterilization of people to promote the “health of the patient and the welfare of society.”

1957: Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., died at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

1972: a fire at the Sunshine silver mine in Kellogg, Idaho, claimed the lives of 91 workers who succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. Longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover died in Washington at age 77.