• 0312: In a battle that marked the beginning of the Christian era in Europe, Constantine's army, wearing the cross, defeated the forces of Maxentius at Mulvian Bridge in Rome. Roman emperor Constantine, 32, after trusting in a vision he had seen of the cross, inscribed with the words, "In this sign conquer," Constantine was converted and became the first Roman emperor to embrace the Christian faith.
  

• 0969: After a prolonged siege, the Byzantines end 300 years of Arab rule in Antioch.
  

• 1216: Henry III of England crowned.
  

• 1348: Third Wave of the Black Death hits Europe
  

• 1412: Death of Margaret, Queen of Scandanavia
  

• 1492: Columbus discovers Cuba
  

• 1628: After a fifteen-month siege, the Huguenot town of La Rochelle surrenders to royal forces.

• 1636: Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts.
  

• 1646: John Eliot, apostle to the New England Indians, preached his first sermon, in the Indians' language
  

• 1793: Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his cotton gin (the patent was granted the following March).
  

• 1831: Michael Faraday demonstrated the first electric dynamo in England.
  

• 1886: The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Cleveland. Today's History Focus
  

• 1901: Race riots sparked by Booker T. Washington's visit to the White House kill 34.
  

• 1904: St. Louis Police try a new investigation method - fingerprints.
  

• 1919: Congress enacted the Volstead Act, which provided for enforcement of Prohibition, over President Wilson's veto.
  

• 1922: Fascism came to Italy as Benito Mussolini took control of the government.
  

• 1922: WEAF in New York broadcast the first collegiate football game heard coast to coast. Princeton played the University of Chicago at Stagg Field in the Windy City. The broadcast was carried on phone lines to New York City, where the transmission began.
  

• 1924: Fewer than 20 people paid to see an exhibition baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants in Dublin, Ireland. Newspapers reported that attendance was off because church services were going on at the time. The Sox won 8-4.
  

• 1927: Pan Am Airways launches the first scheduled international flight.
  

• 1936: President Roosevelt rededicated the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary.
  

• 1940: Italy invaded Greece during World War Two.
  

• 1946: The flying cowboy was heard on ABC Radio for the first time. "Sky King", starring Jack Lester, then Earl Nightingale and, finally, Roy Engel as Sky. Beryl Vaughn played Sky's niece, Penny; Jack Bivens was Chipper and Cliff Soubier was the foreman. "Sky King" was sponsored by Mars candy.
  

• 1950: Jack Benny took his well-known radio show [on radio for 20 years] to television without missing a beat. The show premiered in black and white and lasted for 27 years into the age of color TV.
  

• 1954: Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature
  

• 1955: Buddy Holly, a local kid from Lubbock, Texas, opened a concert for Marty Robbins and Elvis Presley.
  

• 1958: The Roman Catholic patriarch of Venice, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, was elected pope, taking the name John the 23rd.
  

• 1961: Brian Epstein, a record store owner in London, was asked by a customer for a copy of the record, "My Bonnie", by a group known as The Silver Beatles. He didn't have it in stock, so he went to the Cavern Club to check out the group. He signed to manage them in a matter of days and renamed them The Beatles.
  

• 1961: Groundbreaking ceremonies were held for the Municipal Stadium at the site of the New York World's Fair in Flushing, NY. The name was later changed to Shea Stadium, after New York Commissioner, William A. Shea.
  

• 1962: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev informed the United States that he had ordered the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
  

• 1973: Secretariat raced into history, by winning the Canadian International Stakes in Toronto. It was the last race run by this magnificent thoroughbred.
  

• 1965: the Gateway Arch (630 feet high) completed in St. Louis, Missouri.
  

• 1974: Rhoda Morgenstern made TV history when she married Joe Girard on "Rhoda." The CBS show was a spin-off from the hugely successful "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
  

• 1976: Former Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman entered a federal prison camp in Safford, Arizona, to begin serving his sentence for Watergate-related convictions.
  

• 1987: During a debate in Houston that included the six Republican presidential contenders, Vice President George Bush argued that as President Reagan's "co-pilot," he knew how to "land the plane in a storm."
  

• 1988: A French pharmaceutical company that manufactured the abortion pill RU-486 announced it would resume distribution of the drug after the government of France demanded it do so.
  

• 1989: The Oakland A's won the earthquake-interrupted World Series, completing a four-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants.
  

• 1989: Twenty people were killed in the crash of a commuter plane on the island of Hawaii.
  

• 1992: Less than a week before Election Day, President Bush continued to emphasize that voters could not trust Bill Clinton in the White House; for his part, Clinton accused Bush of abusing the powers of the presidency.
  

• 1993: Ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, speaking at the United Nations, called for a blockade of all air and sea trade to Haiti to force out its military leaders. 
  

• 1994: President Clinton visited Kuwait, where he praised US ground forces sent in response to an Iraqi threat, and all but promised the troops they'd be home by Christmas.
  

• 1996: Richard Jewell, cleared of committing the Olympic park bombing, held a news conference in Atlanta in which he thanked his mother for standing by him and lashed out at reporters and investigators who had depicted him as the bomber.
  

• 1996: Comedian Morey Amsterdam died in Los Angeles at age 81.
  

• 1997: A day after plunging 554 points, the stock market roared back, posting a 337-point recovery, with more than one billion shares traded. 
  

• 1998: In London, the High Court ruled that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was immune from prosecution in British courts (however, the House of Lords later overturned the decision, saying Pinochet's arrest could stand).
                                         

Today's History Focus