TODAY IN HISTORY

1787: Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1870: Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first Black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.

1913: Authorities in Florence, Italy, announced that the “Mona Lisa,” stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, had been recovered.

1915: Singer-actor Frank Sinatra was born Francis Albert Sinatra in Hoboken, New Jersey.

1917: During World War I, a train carrying some 1,000 French troops from the Italian front derailed while descending a steep hill in Modane; at least half of the soldiers were killed in France’s greatest rail disaster. Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Nebraska.

1977: The dance movie “Saturday Night Fever,” starring John Travolta, premiered in New York.

1985: 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.

1995: By three votes, the Senate killed a constitutional amendment giving Congress authority to outlaw flag burning and other forms of desecration against Old Glory.

2000: George W. Bush became president-elect as a divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida’s contested election. The Marine Corps grounded all eight of its high-tech MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft following a fiery crash in North Carolina that killed four Marines. (The Osprey program was revived by the Pentagon in 2005.)

2010: The inflatable roof of the Minneapolis Metrodome collapsed following a snowstorm that had dumped 17 inches on the city. (The NFL was forced to shift an already rescheduled game between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants to Detroit’s Ford Field.)

2015: Nearly 200 nations meeting in Paris adopted the first global pact to fight climate change, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on countries that didn’t do so.

2019: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson led his Conservative Party to a landslide victory in a general election that was dominated by Brexit.