In 1802, the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

In 1827, Freedom's Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper in the United States, was published in New York.

In 1926, Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuel rocket.

In 1966, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott docked their Gemini 8 space vehicle with an Agena craft, a first in orbital history.

In 1968, about 300 Vietnamese villagers died at the hands of U.S. troops in what came to be known as the My Lai massacre.

In 1994, the International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korea barred its inspectors from checking one of the nation's seven nuclear sites.

In 1998, the Vatican apologized for not doing more to prevent the killing of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

In 2009, Japan reported its gross domestic product fell at a 12.7 percent annual rate in the last quarter of 2008, plunging the country into what experts said was its worst financial crisis since World War II.

In 2012, Belgium observed a national day of mourning for 28 people, 22 of them children, killed in a bus crash in Switzerland.

In 2013, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., told conservatives the Republican Party establishment lacks new ideas and is mired in stupidity.

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