In 1817, the New York Stock Exchange was established.
In 1913, the Internal Revenue Service began to levy and collect income taxes in the United States.
In 1917, strikes and riots in St. Petersburg marked the start of the Russian Bolshevik revolution.
In 1921, after Germany failed to make its first war reparation payment, French troops occupied Dusseldorf and other towns on the Ruhr River in Germany’s
industrial heartland.
In 1957, Egypt reopened the Suez Canal to international traffic after Israel withdrew from occupied Egyptian territory.
In 1965, nearly 4,000 U.S. Marines landed in South Vietnam.
In 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union an “evil empire” in a speech before the British House of Commons.
In 1990, Colombia’s M-19 leftist guerrilla group surrendered its arms, ending 16 years of insurrection.
In 1992, Menachem Begin, the stern, hunted Israeli underground leader who went on to win the Nobel Prize as prime minister for making peace with Egypt,
died of heart failure.
In 1998, James McDougal, a former business partner of then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, died in prison. He had been convicted in connection with the Whitewater
land scandal.
In 1999, the U.S. Energy Department fired a Chinese-born computer scientist from the Los Alamos, N.M., National Laboratory in the theft of U.S. nuclear
secrets.
Also in 1999, baseball great Joe DiMaggio died at age 84.
In 2002, as charges of child abuse by Roman Catholic clergy emerged across the United States and dozens of priests resigned or were suspended, the bishop
of Palm Beach, Fla., stepped down after admitting he had abused a teenage seminary student in the 1970s. His predecessor had resigned in 1999 admitting
he had molested five boys.
In 2003, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car in the Gaza Strip, killing a top Hamas leader and three bodyguards.
In 2004, writer and actor Spalding Gray, missing for almost two months, was found in New York’s East River, a suspected suicide.
Also in 2004, as revenge killings continued in Haiti, Boniface Alexandre, the Supreme Court chief justice, was named interim president.
In 2005, thousands of Lebanese protested the pullout of Syrian forces.
In 2006, an official of the World Health Organization expressed strong concern that bird flu spreading to humans could cause a massive pandemic.
Also in 2006, three Alabama college students reportedly looking for cheap thrills were arrested on charges they set fire to nine rural Baptist churches.
In 2007, eight children and an adult died in a four-story house fire near Yankee Stadium in New York.
Also in 2007, the British House of Commons approved a measure requiring the House of Lords to be elected by the people rather than appointed.
In 2008, U.S. President George W. Bush vetoed legislation that would have outlawed severe interrogation methods such as waterboarding used by the CIA.
Bush said the proposal would eliminate “one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror.”
In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama said the United States may try reconciliation with Taliban moderates in an effort to turn around the Afghan war.
Also in 2009, a man on a motorcycle drove into a crowd of Baghdad police recruits and detonated an explosive vest, killing 28 people and wounding almost
60 others.
