In 1533, Pope Clement VII excommunicated England's King Henry VIII.
In 1798, the U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by a congressional act that also created the U.S. Marine Band.
In 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton during a pistol duel in Weehawken, N.J.
In 1864, Confederate forces led by Gen. Jubal Early began an abortive invasion of Washington, D.C., turning back the next day.
In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt became the first chief executive to travel through the Panama Canal.
In 1977, the Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1979, the abandoned U.S. space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
In 1980, American hostage Richard I. Queen, freed by Iran after eight months of captivity because of poor health, left Tehran for Switzerland.
In 1995, the United States normalized relations with Vietnam.
In 2001, the Democratic-led Senate voted to bar coal mining and oil and gas drilling on pristine federally protected land in the West, dealing a fresh blow to President Bush's energy production plans.
In 2005, a top al-Qaeda lieutenant and three other terror suspects escaped from a U.S. military jail in Afghanistan. (The identity of Omar al-Farouq wasn't acknowledged until November 2005.)