On this date in history:

In 1793, French King Louis XVI was executed in Paris, ending more than a thousand years of continuous French monarchy.

In 1861, Mississippi Sen. Jefferson Davis resigned from the U.S. Senate, 12 days before Mississippi seceded from the Union. He later became president of the Confederate States of America.

In 1915, the English steamer Durward, traveling from Leith to Rotterdam, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine near the mouth of the Meuse. The crew was rescued by a Dutch pilot boat and landed at the Hook.

In 1924, Vladimir Lenin, architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union, died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 54.

In 1949, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek headed for exile, resigning his position as president of Nationalist China to clear the way for negotiations with the Chinese Communists to end China's three-year civil war.

In 1954, the world's first atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Conn.

In 1976, the supersonic Concorde airplane was put into service by Britain and France.

In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter pardoned American Vietnam War-era draft evaders and ordered a case-by-case study of deserters.

In 1997, the full U.S. House of Representatives voted 395-28 to reprimand Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., for violating House rules and misleading congressional investigators looking into his possible misuse of tax-exempt donations for political purposes.

In 1998, Pope John Paul II arrived in Havana for his first visit to Cuba.

In 2003, the U.S. Census Bureau said Hispanics had moved past African-Americans as the largest minority group in the United States.

In 2009, Sen. Hillary Clinton won near-unanimous Senate confirmation as U.S. secretary of state.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a far-reaching and controversial 5-4 decision, ruled that the government cannot restrict the spending of corporations and unions for political campaigns.

In 2012, signaling what observers believed to be a new political era in Egypt, Islamist parties won 47 percent of the seats in parliamentary elections.

In 2013, a sudden snowfall caused two massive pileups on slippery interstates in the Cincinnati area. The crashes in near-whiteout conditions killed a young girl and injured about 20 other people. It was just chaos, absolute chaos, a sheriff's officer said.

In 2014, a report from three former war-crimes prosecutors said they found evidence of widespread killings and torture by forces of the government of Syria. The report, which included thousands of photographs apparently smuggled out of the war-torn country, told of killings that were systematic, ordered and directed from above.

Copyright 2017 by United Press International