| On this date in: |
| 1859 |
Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state. |
| 1895 |
Oscar Wilde’s final play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opened at the St. James’ Theatre in London. |
| 1903 |
The U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor was established. |
| 1912 |
Arizona became the 48th state of the Union. |
| 1920 |
The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago. |
| 1962 |
First lady Jacqueline Kennedy conducted a televised tour of the White House. |
| 1979 |
Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists and killed in a shootout between his abductors and police. |
| 1989 |
Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” a novel Khomeini condemned as blasphemous. |
| 1989 |
Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to the government of India in a court-ordered settlement of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster. |
| 2003 |
Dolly the sheep – the first mammal cloned from an adult – was put to death at age 6 due to premature aging and disease. |
| 2005 |
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated. |
| 2006 |
Iran said it had resumed uranium enrichment, prompting Russia and France to call on Tehran to halt its work. |
| 2008 |
A former student shot five students to death in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University before committing suicide. |
| 2011 |
The TV game show “Jeopardy!” began airing the first of three episodes pitting human players Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings against an IBM computer named “Watson.” |
