On this date in history:

In 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, charged with conspiring to kill England's Queen Elizabeth I.

In 1692, a doctor in Massachusetts Bay Colony said two village girls were possibly bewitched, a charge that set off the Salem witch trials.

In 1693, the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., was granted a charter by Britain's King William III.

In 1725, Peter the Great, emperor of Russia, died and was succeeded by his wife, Catherine.

In 1915, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, a landmark in the history of cinema and the first American full-length motion picture, opened in Los Angeles and was immediately a smash hit though many found its treatment of race offensive.

In 1940, Nazis shot every 10th person in two Polish villages near Warsaw in reprisal for the deaths of two German soldiers.

In 1960, the first plaques installed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honored Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick Ernest Torrence and Joanne Woodward.

In 1974, three U.S. Skylab astronauts ended an 84-day orbital flight.

In 1993, a chartered passenger plane collided with a military aircraft near Tehran, killing 133 people.

In 2002, the Olympic Winter Games opened in Salt Lake City.

In 2007, Anna Nicole Smith, a 39-year-old actor, model and tabloid fixture, was found dead in a Hollywood, Fla., hotel. (Her death was attributed to accidental sedative overdose.)

In 2008, a man at odds with city officials went on a shooting rampage at a Kirkwood, Mo., City Council meeting, killing five people, police said. Officers killed the suspect, identified as Charles Lee Cookie Thornton, an independent contractor.

In 2013, Jeffrey Delisle, a junior Canadian naval officer who pleaded guilty to selling military secrets to Russia, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In 2014, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the federal government would soon treat people in same-sex marriages the same as heterosexual couples in court cases, such as jointly filing for bankruptcy and declining to testify against a spouse.

Copyright 2015 by United Press International