TODAY IN HISTORY
1765: The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies, which fiercely resisted the tax. (The Stamp Act was repealed a year later.)
1882: President Chester A. Arthur signed a measure outlawing polygamy.
1894: Hockey’s first Stanley Cup championship game was played; home team Montreal Hockey Club defeated Ottawa Hockey Club, 3-1.
1941: The Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington state officially went into operation.
1945: The Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.
1963: The Beatles’ debut album, “Please Please Me,” was released in the United Kingdom by Parlophone.
1978: Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of “The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotel towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1988: Both houses of Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act.
1993: Intel Corp. unveiled the original Pentium computer chip.
1997: Tara Lipinski, at age 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest ladies’ world figure skating champion in Lausanne, Switzerland.
2010: Google Inc. stopped censoring the internet for China by shifting its search engine off the mainland to Hong Kong.
2012: Coroner’s officials ruled singer Whitney Houston died by drowning, but that heart disease and cocaine use were contributing factors.
2017: A knife-wielding man plowed a car into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four people, then stabbed an armed police officer to death inside the gates of Parliament before being shot dead by authorities.
2019: Former President Jimmy Carter became the longest-living chief executive in American history; at 94 years and 172 days, he exceeded the lifespan of the late former President George H.W. Bush.
2020: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all nonessential businesses in the state to close and nonessential workers to stay home. Kentucky Republican Rand Paul became the first member of the U.S. Senate to report testing positive for the coronavirus.