In 1647, the English army seized King Charles I as a hostage.
In 1812, the Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory.
In 1878, Turkey turned Cyprus over to the British.
In 1896, Henry Ford made a successful test run with his car in a nightime drive through the streets of Detroit.
In 1942, the Battle of Midway began, resulting in America's first significant victory over the Japanese in World War II.
In 1944, Allied forces liberated Rome.
In 1947, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the Taft-Hartley Act. The law was later encated over President Harry S. Truman's veto.
In 1956, the State Department published a partial text of a closed-door speech given the previous February by Nikity Khrushchev, in which the Soviet leader denounced his predecessor, Josef Stalin.
In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Alabama law allowing daily moments of silence in public schools for
"meditation or voluntary prayer" by students.
In 1986, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in Washington to spying for Israel.
In 1987, the congressional Iran-Contra committees voted to grant limited immunity to former National Security Council aide Oliver North, following an appeal by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh to reject immunity.
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Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio (1917)
