TODAY IN HISTORY

1718: English pirate Edward Teach – better known as “Blackbeard” – was killed during a battle off present-day North Carolina.

1935: A flying boat, the China Clipper, took off from Alameda, California, carrying more than 100,000 pieces of mail on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight.

1943: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kaishek met in Cairo to discuss measures for defeating Japan.

1963: John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was shot to death during a motorcade in Dallas; Texas Gov. John B. Connally, riding in the same car as Kennedy, was seriously wounded. Suspected gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president.

1967: The U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw from territories it had captured the previous June, and implicitly called on adversaries to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

1977: Regular passenger service between New York and Europe on the supersonic Concorde began on a trial basis.

1990: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having failed to win reelection to the Conservative Party leadership on the first ballot, announced she would resign.

2005: Angela Merkel took power as Germany’s first female chancellor.