On this date in

1608 John Smith was elected president of the Jamestown colony council.

1801 Voodoo practioner Marie Laveau was born.

1813 The U.S. Navy defeated Great Britain's Royal Navy at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. Following the battle, U.S. Commander Oliver Hazard Perry hastily scrawled in pencil his now-famous note on the back of an old envelope: "We have met the enemy and they are ours."

1923 Simon Bolivar becomes president of Peru.

1846 Elias Howe received a patent for the sewing machine.

1897 A sheriff's posse killed 19 unarmed immigrant miners near Hazleton, Penn., in what became known as the Lattimer massacre.

1898 Anarchist Luigi Lucheni stabbed and killed Austrian Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria.

1914 Film director Robert Wise was born.

1919 Gen. John J. Pershing arrived in New York with 25,00 soldiers, members of the 1st Division during World War I.

1924 Baseball player Ted Kluzewski was born.

1932 New York City's third competing subway system, the IND, opens.

1934 Roger Maris was born; journalist Charles Kuralt was born

1945 Vidkun Quisling was sentenced to death for collaborating with the Nazis during his tenure in the government of occupied Norway; Mike the Headless Chicken is decapitated but lives another 18 months before choking to death.

1948 Mildred Gillars, a radio personality known as "Axis Sally" for her pro-Nazi propoganda broadcasts, was indicted for treason.

1955 "Gunsmoke" made its television premiere.

1977 Hamida Djandoubi, convicted of torture and murder, became the last person to be guillotined in France.

1988 Steffi Graf won the U.S. Open tennis tournament to capture the Grand Slam.

2002 Switzerland joined the United Nations.

2003 Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed; she died a day later.