On this date in history:

In 1848, The Communist Manifesto was published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

In 1878, the New Haven, Conn., Telephone Co. published the first phone directory. It listed 50 subscribers.

In 1885, the Washington Monument, a 555-foot-high marble obelisk built in honor of America's revolutionary hero and first president, was dedicated in Washington.

In 1916, Germans launched the Battle of Verdun. More than 1 million soldiers in the German and French armies were killed in nearly 10 months of fighting. It was the longest battle of World War I.

In 1925, the first issue of The New Yorker was published.

In 1934, Nicaraguan guerrilla leader Cesar Augusto Sandino was killed by members of the country's national guard.

In 1953, Francis Crick and James D. Watson discovered the double helix structure of the DNA molecule.

In 1965, Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally in New York.

In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the People's Republic of China.

In 1994, longtime CIA counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames and his wife, Maria, were arrested and charged with selling information to the Soviet Union and Russia. Ames was sentenced to life in prison; his wife got a five-year term.

In 1995, a Russian commission estimated as many as 24,400 civilians died in a two-month uprising in the separatist republic of Chechnya.

In 2007, nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan signed a treaty in New Delhi aimed at preventing the accidental use of atomic weapons.

In 2013, former Illinois police Sgt. Drew Peterson, 59, was sentenced to 38 years in prison for the 2004 murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy, who disappeared in 2007, remains missing.

In 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, at the White House after the Chinese government warned the meeting would damage U.S.-China relations. A White House statement said Obama reiterated the U.S. position that Tibet is part of the People's Republic of China and that the United States does not support Tibet independence.

In 2017, the bodies of 84 migrants washed ashore in Libya after their boat sank while crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Since the beginning of the year, more than 13,000 migrants -- mostly from North Africa -- arrived in Europe by sea, nearly 300 reported dead or missing.

Copyright 2018 by United Press International