TODAY IN HISTORY

1536

Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, was beheaded after being convicted of adultery.

1780

A mysterious darkness enveloped much of New England and part of Canada in the early afternoon.

1913

California Gov. Hiram Johnson signed the Webb-hartley Law prohibiting “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning farm land, a measure targeting Asian immigrants, particularly Japanese.

1920

Ten people were killed in a gun battle between coal miners, who were led by a local police chief, and a group of private security guards hired to evict them for joining a union in Matewan, a small “company town” in West Virginia.

1921

Congress passed, and President Warren G. Harding signed, the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants.

2003

Worldcom Inc. agreed to pay investors $500million to settle civil fraud charges.