On Sept. 24, 1896, author F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul.
In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill establishing Devils Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument.
In 1929 Lt. James Doolittle piloted a Consolidated NY2 biplane over Mitchel Field in New York in the first ”blind,” or all-instrument, flight.
In 1934 Babe Ruth made his farewell appearance as a regular player with the New York Yankees in a game against the Boston Red Sox. (The Sox won, 5-0.)
In 1936 Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, was born in Greenville, Miss.
In 1948 Mildred Gillars, the Nazi wartime radio propagandist ”Axis Sally,” pleaded not guilty in Washington to treason. (Convicted, she served 12 years in prison.)
In 1957 the Brooklyn Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field.
In 1960 the USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was launched at Newport News, Va.
In 1964 the sitcom “The Munsters” premiered on CBS.
In 1969 the ”Chicago Eight” went on trial on charges of conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In 1976 newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was sentenced to 7 years in prison for her part in a 1974 bank robbery. (Granted clemency by President Jimmy Carter, she was released after 22 months.) Also, Prime Minister Ian Smith of white-ruled Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) told his country he had agreed to a plan for black-majority rule within two years.
In 1991 children’s author Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, died at 87 in La Jolla, Calif.
In 1995 Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed a pact at the White House ending nearly three decades of Israeli occupation of West Bank cities.
In 1996 the United States, represented by President Bill Clinton, and the world’s other major nuclear powers signed a treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons.
In 1998 new $20 bills redesigned to be harder to counterfeit went into circulation.
In 2003 Tony-winning playwright Herb Gardner (“A Thousand Clowns,” “I’m Not Rappaport”) died at 68 in New York.
In 2005 Vice President Dick Cheney had surgery to repair aneurysms on the back of both knees.
