TODAY IN HISTORY

In 1812,

the Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory, to avoid confusion with the recently admitted state of Louisiana.

In 1919,

Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing citizens the right to vote regardless of their gender, and sent it to the states for ratification.

In 1940,

during World War II, the Allied military evacuation of some 338,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended.

In 1942,

the World War II Battle of Midway began, resulting in a decisive American victory against Japan and marking the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

In 1943,

the president of Argentina, Ramon Castillo, was overthrown in a military coup.

In 1944,

U-505, a German submarine, was captured by a U.S. Navy task group in the south Atlantic; it was the first such capture of an enemy vessel at sea by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812.

In 1954,

French Premier Joseph Laniel and Vietnamese Premier Buu Loc signed treaties in Paris according “complete independence” to Vietnam.

In 1986,

Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in Washington to conspiring to deliver information related to the national defense to Israel.

In 1990,

Dr. Jack Kevorkian carried out his first publicly assisted suicide, helping Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Alzheimer’s patient from Portland, Oregon, end her life in Oakland County, Michigan.

In 1998,

a federal judge sentenced Terry Nichols to life in prison for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

In 2003,

Martha Stewart stepped down as head of her media empire, hours after federal prosecutors in New York charged her with obstruction of justice, conspiracy, securities fraud and lying to investigators. (Stewart was later convicted of lying about why she’d sold her shares of ImClone Systems stock in 2001, just before the stock price plunged.)