1496 - Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere as he left Hispaniola for Spain.

1629 - England's King Charles I dissolved Parliament.

1785 - Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.

1848 - The Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war with Mexico.

1864 - Ulysses S. Grant became commander of the Union armies during the Civil War.

1876 - The first successful voice transmission over Alexander Graham Bell's telephone took place in Boston as his assistant heard Bell say, Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.

1948 - The body of the anti-Communist foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, Jan Masaryk, was found in the garden of Czernin Palace in Prague.

1949 - Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, also known as Axis Sally, was convicted in Washington, D.C., of treason.

1965 - Neil Simon's play The Odd Couple opened on Broadway.

1969 - James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tenn., to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

1988 - Pop singer Andy Gibb died at age 30 of heart inflammation.

1993 - Authorities announced the arrest of Nidal Ayyad, a second suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.

2004 - Teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was sentenced in Chesapeake, Va., to life in prison.