| On this date in: |
| 1792 | The New York Stock Exchange was founded by brokers meeting under a tree on what is now Wall Street. |
| 1829 | John Jay, American statesman and the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, died at age 83. |
| 1875 | The first Kentucky Derby was run; the winner was Aristides. |
| 1940 | The Nazis occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War II. |
| 1946 | President Harry S. Truman seized control of the nation's railroads, delaying a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen. |
| 1973 | The Senate began hearings into the Watergate scandal.
 | Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C. |
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| AP Photo |
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| 1980 | Rioting that claimed 18 lives erupted in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood after an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of fatally beating a black man. |
| 1987 | An Iraqi warplane attacked the U.S. Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 American sailors. Iraq and the United States called the attack a mistake. |
| 1992 | Orchestra leader Lawrence Welk died at age 89. |
| 1996 | President Bill Clinton signed a measure requiring neighborhood notification when sex offenders move in. Megan's Law was named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and killed in 1994. |
| 1997 | Rebel leader Kabila declared himself president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire. |
| 1998 | New York Yankees pitcher David Wells became the 13th player in modern major league baseball history to throw a perfect game in a 4-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins. |
| 1999 | Labor Party leader Ehud Barak unseated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israeli elections. |
| 2000 | Two former Ku Klux Klansmen were arrested on murder charges in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four black girls. (Thomas E. Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry were later convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry died in 2004.) |
| 2003 | A top Vatican official confirmed that Pope John Paul II was suffering from Parkinson's disease. |
| 2004 | Massachusetts became the first state to allow legal same-sex marriages. |
| 2005 | Los Angeles Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa trounced Mayor James Hahn to be elected the city's first Hispanic mayor in more than a century. |
| 2007 | World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz announced he would resign following controversy over his handling of a pay package for his girlfriend. |
| 2007 | Trains crossed the border dividing the two Koreas for the first time in more than half a century. |
