BonBagay.com::On This Day

1493 Christopher Columbus set sail from Cadiz, Spain, with a flotilla of 17 ships on his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

1513 Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama to reach the Pacific Ocean.

1775 American Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen was captured by the British as he led an attack on Montreal.

1789 The first United States Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. (Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights.)

1890 Mormon president Wilford Woodruff issued a manifesto formally renouncing the practice of polygamy.

1897 Author William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Miss.

1919 President Woodrow Wilson collapsed after a speech in Pueblo, Colo., during a tour in support of the Treaty of Versailles.

1981 Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

2001 Saudi Arabia cut its relations with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.

2001 Michael Jordan announced he was returning to basketball with the NBA's Washington Wizards.

2003 France reported a staggering death toll of 14,802 from a heat wave.

2003 Author, journalist and editor George Plimpton died at age 76.

2006 The Louisiana Superdome, a symbol of misery during Hurricane Katrina, reopened for a New Orleans Saints game.

2007 Warren Jeffs, the leader of a polygamous Mormon splinter group, was convicted in St. George, Utah, of being an accomplice to rape for performing a wedding between a 19-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl. (Jeffs was later sentenced to two consecutive terms of five years to life in prison.)

2007 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressing the United Nations, announced "the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed," and indicated Tehran would disregard Security Council resolutions imposed by what he called "arrogant powers."

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