On this date in history:

In 1498, on his third voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus discovered the island of Trinidad.

In 1556 Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic missionaries and educators, died in Rome.

In 1792, director David Rittenhouse laid the cornerstone in Philadelphia for the U.S. Mint, the first building of the federal government.

In 1964, Ranger 7, an unmanned U.S. lunar probe, took the first close-up images of the moon.

In 1974, Watergate figure John Ehrlichman was sentenced to prison for his role in the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. He was in prison 18 months. Ellsberg was the Pentagon consultant who leaked the Pentagon Papers, documents about the war in Vietnam.

In 1991, the U.S. Senate overturned a 43-year-old law and voted to allow women to fly military warplanes in combat. The House had already approved similar legislation.

In 2011, with default by the U.S. government just days away and after months of frustrating debate, U.S. President Barack Obama and congressional leaders announced an agreement that would raise the debt ceiling by up to $2.4 trillion in two stages, enough to keep borrowing into 2013.

In 2012, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, visiting Cairo, said newly elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is his own man and is committed to democracy. Morsi was ousted by the military less than a year later; then sentenced to death.

In 2013, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Barack Obama's choice of B. Todd Jones, U.S. attorney for Minnesota, to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Jones had been part-time acting ATF director.

In 2014, officials reported the number of people killed in a 3-week-old Israeli-Hamas Gaza conflict had risen to 1,360 Palestinians and 59 Israelis, including 56 soldiers.

Copyright 2016 by United Press International