1614, American Indian princess Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia.
1792, President George Washington cast the first ever presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.
1887, Anne Sullivan achieved a major breakthrough with her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, when the girl learned the word “water” in the manual alphabet.
1900 Actor Spencer Tracy (Captains Courageous, Woman Of The Year, Bad Day At Black Rock, Desk Set, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner) is born. He dies in 1967.
1908 Actress Bette Davis (All About Eve, What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?) is born. She dies in 1989.
1916 Actor Gregory Peck (Spellbound, To Kill A Mockingbird) is born. He dies in 2003.
1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death following their conviction on charges of conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union.
1968, violence erupted in many U.S. cities due to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the day before.
1971, Mrs. Fran Phipps, wife of Canadian pilot Weldy Phipps, became the first woman to set foot at the North Pole.
1984, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Los Angeles Lakers passed Wilt Chamberlain in the record books by scoring his 31,420th point, becoming the new NBA all-time scoring leader. He finished his career in 1989 with 38,387 points, a record which may never be broken.
1986, An American soldier and a Turkish woman were killed in the bombing of the La Bell discotheque in West Berlin. The incident prompted the U.S. air raid on Libya a week later.
1987, the new Fox television network, headed by Rupert Murdoch, started with two Sunday night offerings — Married… With Children and The Tracey Ullman Show.
1988, A 15-day hijacking ordeal began as gunmen forced a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet to land in Iran.
1994, Kurt Cobain, singer and songwriter for the band Nirvana, committed suicide. He was 27.
1997, Allen Ginsberg, the counterculture guru who shattered conventions as poet laureate of the Beat Generation, died in New York City at age 70.
1998, In Leeds, England, environment chiefs from the world’s top eight industrialized nations announced plans to curb the smuggling of hazardous waste, endangered species and substances that damage the ozone layer.
1999, In Laramie, Wyoming, Russell Henderson pleaded guilty to kidnapping and felony murder in the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student.
1999, NATO missiles and aircraft blasted Serbian targets inside Yugoslavia for a 13th straight day.
1999, The United Nations suspended sanctions against Libya after Moammar Gadhafi surrendered two suspected Libyan intelligence agents for trial in the 1988 Pan Am bombing.