On this date in history:

In 1630, John Billington, one of the first pilgrims to land in America, was hanged for murder -- the first European criminal executed in the American colonies.

In 1846, a dentist in Charleston, Mass., extracted a tooth with the aid of an anesthetic -- ether. It was the first time an anesthetic had been used.

In 1927, Babe Ruth set a Major League Baseball record with his 60th home run of the season. (The mark would stand for 34 years.)

In 1938, Germany, France, Britain and Italy met in Munich, Germany, for a conference after which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain predicted peace for our time. (World War II began less than one year later.)

In 1946, verdicts were handed down in the Nuremberg war crimes trial. Twelve Nazi leaders were sentenced to death by hanging.

In 1954, the USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy.

In 1955, movie idol James Dean died in a car crash at age 24.

In 1962, James H. Meredith, an African-American, was escorted onto the University of Mississippi campus by U.S. marshals, setting off a riot in which two men died before violence was quelled by more than 3,000 soldiers. (Meredith enrolled the next day.)

In 1992, the United States returned most of the Subic Bay Naval Base to the Philippine government after more than a century of use.

In 2008, thousands of worshipers making their way through a narrow passage to a Hindu temple in India for a religious festival broke into a stampede when a wall collapsed. Police put the death toll at 224 with more than 100 people injured.

In 2009, back-to-back earthquakes and mudslides hit Sumatra in Indonesia, leaving an official death toll of close to 1,200 and smashing thousands of homes.

In 2011, a missile from an American drone aircraft strike over Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Islamic cleric linked to several high-profile terrorist incidents in the United States and subject of a two-year manhunt.

In 2013, another wave of car bombings in Iraq killed at least 51 people and injured 140. Officials said relentless violence in the country caused nearly 1,000 deaths in September.

Copyright 2014 by United Press International