1469: Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile. The marriage united all the dominions of Spain.
1685: King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had established the legal toleration of the Protestant population.
1767: The Mason-Dixon line was agreed upon. It was the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania.
1842: Samuel Finley Breese Morse laid his first telegraph cable.
1860: British troops burned the Yuanmingyuan at the end of the Second Opium War.
1867: The U.S. took formal possession of Alaska from Russia. The land was purchased of a total of $7 million dollars (2 cents per acre).
1873: The first rules for intercollegiate football were drawn up by representatives from Rutgers, Yale, Columbia and Princeton Universities.
1892: The first long-distance telephone line between Chicago, IL, and New York City, NY, was opened.
1898: The American flag was raised in Puerto Rico only one year after the Caribbean nation won its independence from Spain.
1929: The Judicial Committee of England’s Privy Council ruled that women were to be considered as persons in Canada.
1931: Inventor Thomas Alva Edison died at the age of 84.
1943: The first broadcast of "Perry Mason" was presented on CBS Radio. The show went to TV in 1957.
1944: Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviets during World War II.
1944: "Forever Amber", written by Kathleen Windsor, was first published.
1950: Connie Mack announced that he was going to retire after 50 seasons as the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.
1956: NFL commissioner Bert Bell disallowed the use of radio-equipped helmets by NFL quarterbacks.
1958: The first computer-arranged marriage took place on Art Linkletter's show.
1961: Henri Matiss' "Le Bateau" went on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was discovered 46 days later that the painting had been hanging upside down.
1967: The American League granted permission for the A's to move to Oakland. Also, new franchises were awarded to Kansas City and Seattle.
1968: Two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were suspended by the U.S. Olympic Committee for giving a "black power" salute during a ceremony in Mexico City.
1969: The U.S. government banned artificial sweeteners due to evidence that they caused cancer.
1970: Quebec's minister of labor was found strangled to death after eight days of being held captive by the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ).
1971: After 34 years, the final issue of "Look" magazine was published.
1977: A German special forces team stormed a hijacked Lufthansa airliner and killed all four hijackers and freed 86 hostages. The Palestinian hijackers had demanded the release of members of the Red Army Faction.
1977: Reggie Jackson tied Babe Ruth's record for hitting three homeruns in a single World Series game. Jackson was only the second player to achieve this.
1983: General Motors agreed to hire more women and minorities for five years as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
1985: South African authorities hanged black activist Benjamin Moloise. Moloise had been convicted of murdering a police officer.
1989: Egon Krenz became the leader of East Germany after Erich Honecker was ousted. Honeker had been in power for 18 years.
1989: The space shuttle Atlantis was launched on a mission that included the deployment of the Galileo space probe.
1990: Iraq made an offer to the world that it would sell oil for $21 a barrel. The price level was the same as it had been before the invasion of Kuwait.
1997: A monument honoring U.S. servicewomen, past and present, was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.
2001: In New York, four defendants were convicted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
2001: It was announced that a New Jersey letter carrier and an employee in the office of CBS news anchorman Dan Rather's office had tested positive for skin anthrax.
