1770, Fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
1866, Congress authorized the minting of the five-cent piece called the nickel, with not more than 25 percent nickel. The silver half-dime was used previously.
1868, the U.S. Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial.
1920, St. Joan Of Arc was canonized in Rome.
1927, the Supreme Court ruled that even though the manufacturing of liquor was illegal, all bootleggers had to pay income taxes.
1929, the first Academy Awards were presented during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The movie Wings won best film while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named Best Actor and Best Actress.
1939, food stamps were introduced in the U.S.
1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Her climb came almost 22 years after Sir Edmund Hillary first climbed the world’s highest mountain.
1977, Five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling atop the Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.
1985, Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls was named NBA Rookie Of The Year.
1986, the character of Bobby Ewing, played by actor Patrick Duffy, was seen showering and greeting his wife as she woke up from a dream that had been the entire previous season’s shows on Dallas.
1994, teen tennis ace Jennifer Capriati was arrested in Florida after police found a bag of marijuana in her hotel room.
1997, President Bill Clinton publicly apologized for the notorious Tuskegee experiment, in which government scientists deliberately allowed black men in Alabama to weaken and die of treatable syphilis.