In 1766 Spanish official Don Antonio de Ulloa arrived in New Orleans to take possession of the Louisiana Territory from the French.
In 1770 the Boston Massacre took place as British soldiers who had been taunted by a crowd of colonists opened fire, killing five people.
In 1868 the Senate was organized into a court of impeachment to decide charges against President Andrew Johnson.
In 1933, in German parliamentary elections, the Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote, enabling it to join with the Nationalists to gain a slender majority in the Reichstag.
In 1946 Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.
In 1953 Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died in Moscow; he was 73. Also i n 1953 Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev died in Moscow; he was 61.
In 1969 Bulls guard Jerry Sloan scored a career-high 43 points against Milwaukee.
In 1970 a nuclear non-proliferation treaty went into effect after 43 nations ratified it.
In 1991 Iraq repealed its annexation of Kuwait.
In 1997 the Ohio River rose to its highest level in decades, flooding the Louisville area. In 1998 NASA said enough water was frozen in the soil of the moon to support a base and perhaps, one day, a human colony.
In 2000 Israel’s Cabinet voted unanimously to withdraw its troops from south Lebanon by the following July. Also, a Virginia subsidiary of PPL Therapeutics of Edinburgh, Scotland, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep, produced the first cloned pigs.
In 2001 a stampede broke out during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Mina, Saudi Arabia, killing 35 Muslims.
In 2006 AT&T Inc. announced it was buying BellSouth Corp., a big step toward resurrecting the old Ma Bell telephone system.
