1513, Juan Ponce De Leon discovered Florida, landing in what is now St. Augustine.
1792, Congress passed the Coinage Act, which authorized establishment of the U.S. Mint. The denominations of the coins to be minted were the $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle, and $2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins, and dollar, half-dollar, quarter, dime and half-dime silver coins.
1917, Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress, was seated as a representative from Montana.
1917, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.”
1931, a 17-year-old girl struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1962, The Tonight Show debuted on NBC with a succession of guest hosts.
1982, several thousand Argentinean troops seized the disputed Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic from Britain. After a military response, Britain got the islands back in June.
1992, mob boss John Gotti was convicted in New York of murder and racketeering. He was later sentenced to life in prison.
1995, Members of the extremist group Hamas accidentally set off a bomb that tore through their hideout in the Gaza Strip, killing six people.
1996, A federal appeals court rejected New York state laws banning doctor-assisted suicide, saying it would be discriminatory to let people disconnect life support systems while refusing to let others end their lives with medication.
1997, The White House released documents showing how eager it had been to exploit the money-drawing powers of President Clinton and Vice President Gore during the 1996 campaign while coordinating with the Democratic Party’s fund-raising machine.
1998, Shaking their fists in rage, thousands of mourners marched in a funeral procession in the West Bank for a top Hamas bombmaker hailed by Palestinians as a martyr and condemned by Israel as a terrorist.
1999, The Labor Department reported that the nation’s unemployment rate fell to a 29-year low of 4.2 percent.
2000, More than 600 people set out on a five-day, 120-mile protest march to Columbia, South Carolina, to urge state lawmakers to move the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome.
2000, Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi suffered a debilitating stroke. He died less than two months later.
2000, Connecticut won its second women’s NCAA national championship with a 71-to-52 victory over Tennessee.
2001, President Bush demanded that China promptly return a U.S. spy plane and its crew members. The plane had made an emergency landing in China after colliding with a Chinese fighter.