TODAY IN HISTORY

1799: The first president of the United States, George Washington, died at his Mount Vernon, Va., home at age 67.

1819: Alabama joined the Union as the 22nd state. 1861: Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria,

died at Windsor Castle at age 42.

1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first men to reach the South Pole, beating out a British expedition led by Robert F. Scott.

1916: President Woodrow Wilson vetoed an immigration measure aimed at preventing “undesirables” and anyone born in the “Asiatic Barred Zone” from entering the U.S. (Congress overrode Wilson’s veto in February 1917.)

1939: The Soviet Union was expelled from the

League of Nations for invading Finland.

1964: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, ruled that Congress was within its authority to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against racial discrimination by private businesses (in this case, a motel that refused to cater to black people).

1981: Israel annexed the Golan Heights, which it

had seized from Syria in 1967.

1985: Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe as she took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Former New York Yankees outfielder Roger Maris, who’d hit 61 home runs during the 1961 season, died in Houston at age 51.

1988: President Ronald Reagan authorized the U.S. to enter into a “substantive dialogue” with the Palestine Liberation Organization, after chairman Yasser Arafat said he was renouncing “all forms of terrorism.”

2003: A weary, disheveled Saddam Hussein was displayed on television screens worldwide, a day after his capture by American troops.

2005: President George W. Bush defended his decision to wage the Iraq War, even as he acknowledged that “much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.”

2012: A gunman with a semi-automatic rifle killed 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., then killed himself as police arrived; the 20-year-old had also fatally shot his mother at their home before carrying out the attack on the school.