On this date in

1636 Harvard College was founded.

1793 Eli Whitney applied for a patent for the cotton gin.

1886 The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.

1891 The largest earthquake in Japan's history struck.

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

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

1940 Italy invaded Greece during World War II.

1948 Paul Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.

1958 The Roman Catholic patriarch of Venice, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, was elected pope, taking the name John XXIII.

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

1965 Pope Paul VI issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

1971 Britain launched its only satellite.

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

1980 Republican nominee Ronald Reagan asked voters during a debate with President Jimmy Carter in Cleveland, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

1985 Daniel Ortega became president of Nicaragua.

2002 American diplomat Laurence Foley was assassinated in front of his house in Amman, Jordan.

2005 Vice President Dick Cheney's top adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, resigned after he was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the CIA leak investigation. (Libby was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison. President George W. Bush commuted his sentence.)

2006 Hall of Fame basketball coach Red Auerbach died at age 89.

2007 Argentina's first lady, Cristina Fernandez, claimed victory in the country's presidential election; she became the first woman elected to the post.

Born on this date:
Francis Borgia 1510-1572)
Cornelius Otto Jansen (1585-1638)
Eliphalet Remington (1793-1861)
Ivan Turgenev (1918-1883)
Georges Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935)
Gilbert H. Grosvenor (1875-1966)
Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
Edith Head (1897-1981)
Elsa Lanchester (1902-1986)
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
Dr. Jonas Edward Salk (1914-1995)
Butch van Breda Kolff (1922-2007)
Bowie Kuhn (1926-2007)
Suzy Parker (1932-2003)