On this date in history:

In 1775, the United States Marine Corps, then known as the Continental Marines, was formed by order of the Second Continental Congress.

In 1865, the superintendent of the notorious Andersonville prison camp, Major Henry Wirz, is hanged for war crimes.

In 1871, journalist Henry Stanley found Scottish missionary David Livingstone in a small African village. His famous comment: Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

In 1898, a mob of more than 2,000 people, angry over the election of a Fusionist white mayor and a biracial city council, went on a rampage throughout the city of Wilmington, NC, targeting and killing African Americans.

In 1918, a Western Union Cable Office in Nova Scotia received a top-secret message stating that all fighting related the Great War (World War I) would cease on Nov. 11, 1918.

In 1951, area codes were introduced in the United States, Canada and parts of the Caribbean, allowing direct-dialing of long-distance telephone calls.

In 1969, Sesame Street premiered on PBS.

In 1975, the ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald broke in two and sank during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew members.

In 1982, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev died at age 75 after 18 years in power.

In 1983, Microsoft released its Windows computer operating system.

In 1989, East German border guards tore away parts of the Berlin Wall Friday as thousands of their countrymen swarmed through the symbol of a divided Europe, testing the government's open border decree and further crumbling the Iron Curtain.

In 1994, the only privately owned manuscript of Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci was sold at auction at Christie's in New York for $30.8 million, the highest amount paid for a manuscript.

In 2006, Mexico City lawmakers officially recognized same-sex civil unions.

In 2009, John Allen Muhammad, convicted as the sniper who killed 10 people in a 2002 shooting spree in the Washington area, was executed in Virginia.

Copyright 2016 by United Press International