On this date in history:

In 1497, the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence, Italy, took place when followers of Girolamo Savonarola burned thousands of books, art and cosmetics.

In 1940, British railroads were nationalized.

In 1964, the Beatles arrived in the United States for the first time and immediately set off a frantic wave of Beatlemania.

In 1973, the U.S. Senate voted to set up a committee to investigate a break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex.

In 1984, U.S. astronauts Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart made the first untethered spacewalks. McCandless was the first to float freely in space, propelled by a nitrogen-powered jetpack after leaving the shuttle Challenger.

In 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated as Haiti's first democratically elected president in 186 years.

In 1992, the European Union was created when the Maastricht Treaty was signed.

In 1995, the mastermind in the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was arrested in Pakistan. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1998.

In 1999, King Hussein of Jordan died of cancer at age 63. Hussein ruled Jordan for 46 years.

In 2005, rescuers reported no survivors among the 104 people aboard an Afghan airliner that crashed in the mountains near Kabul. It was Afghanistan's worst air disaster.

In 2009, the most deadly series of brushfires in Australian history claimed more than 200 lives, destroyed almost 2,000 homes and burned at least 1.1 million acres in Victoria state.

In 2010, Viktor Yanukovich regained the Ukrainian presidency.

In 2012, a federal appeals court in California rejected a ban on same-sex marriage that voters had approved four years earlier.

In 2013, a Gallup poll indicated 57 percent of Americans said their standard of living was improving and 27 percent said it was getting worse.

In 2014, the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, had a spectacular opening ceremony. Performers in the show watched by 40,000 people at the Olympic stadium, included Cossack dancers, ballerinas, puppeteers and acrobats.

Copyright 2016 by United Press International