On this date in history:

In 1707, the British Parliament met for the first time.

In 1942, the British Eighth Army launched an offensive at El Alamein in Egypt, a World War II battle that eventually swept the Germans out of North Africa.

In 1945, Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player hired by a major league team, was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and sent to their Montreal farm team. He moved up to the Dodgers in 1947 and became one of the sport's greatest stars.

In 1972, earthquakes killed more than 10,000 people in Nicaragua.

In 1983, suicide bomb attacks on peacekeeping troops in Beirut killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French soldiers.

In 1989, Hungary formally declared an end to 40 years of communist rule and proclaimed itself a republic, setting the stage for creation of Western-style democracy in the Eastern Bloc state.

In 1995, the U.S. Defense Department announced it was ending a program designed to help minority-owned firms secure government contracts.

In 1998, Dr. Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician who performed abortions, was killed by a sniper who fired a bullet through a window of Slepian's home in Amherst, N.Y.

In 2005, a Nigerian plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Lagos, killing all 117 people aboard.

In 2006, Panamanians voted overwhelmingly to support a proposal to expand the Panama Canal to allow larger ships to pass through.

In 2008, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told a U.S. House committee the United States is in the midst of a once-in-a-century credit tsunami that left him in a state of shocked disbelief.

In 2010, Prime Minister David Thompson of the Caribbean nation of Barbados died of pancreatic cancer. He was 48.

In 2011, southeastern Turkey was struck by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 600 people and injured about 4,100.

In 2012, a father in Hangzhou, China, was sentenced to five years in prison for selling his 27-day-old baby for $10,300 to pay off debts.

In 2013, two days after a 12-year-old boy with a gun killed a teacher, wounded two children and then killed himself at a middle school in Nevada, a 24-year-old math teacher at Danvers High School in Massachusetts, Colleen Ritzer, was found dead in woods near the school. (A 14-year-old boy was arrested on charges including aggravated rape and murder.)

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