1776 - The second Continental Congress made the term United States official, replacing United Colonies.

1850 - California became the 31st state of the union.

1893 - Frances Cleveland, wife of President Grover Cleveland, gave birth to a daughter, Esther, in the White House.

1926 - The National Broadcasting Co. was created by the Radio Corporation of America.

1943 - Allied forces landed at Salerno and Taranto during World War II.

1948 - The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was created.

1956 - Elvis Presley made the first of three appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

1957 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction.

1971 - Prisoners seized control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, N.Y., beginning a siege that claimed 43 lives.

1976 - Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung died in Beijing at age 82.

1993 - PLO leaders and Israel agreed to recognize each other.

1993 - Former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was buried in his homeland, four years after his death in exile.

1997 - Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political ally, formally renounced violence as it took its place in talks on Northern Ireland's future.

2001 - Afghanistan's military opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massood was fatally wounded in a suicide attack by assassins posing as journalists.

2003 - The Boston Roman Catholic Archdiocese agreed to pay $85 million to 552 people to settle clergy sex abuse cases.